Court Opinion

ID: 9460070
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:40:01.862289+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:27.616261
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge, with whom COLEMAN, AINSWORTH and GEE, Circuit Judges, join,
dissenting:
I dissent from the court’s denial of rehearing en banc.
Judge Ainsworth’s dissent to the panel opinion aptly puts my views on the jeopardy effect of the adjudication of delinquency.
Exceptional importance is also present because the court relies on Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky, 410 U.S. 484, 93 S.Ct. 1123, 35 L.Ed.2d 443 (1973), as authority for the unprecedented use of the writ of habeas corpus to prelitigate a constitutional defense to a state criminal prosecution. With deference, this not only cuts across the express caveat of the Supreme Court;1a but it also hurls the injunctive effect of the writ of habeas corpus into the path of this pending State court proceeding, contrary to 28 U.S.C. § 2283 and the rationale of Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971).
Braden required a trial to be held. Today’s decision converts the power to require into the power to halt.

. We emphasize that nothing we have said would permit the derailment of a pending state proceeding by an attempt to litigate constitutional defenses prematurely • in federal court. The contention in dissent that our decision converts federal habeas corpus into “a pretrial motion forum for state prisoners,” wholly misapprehends today’s holding. Braden, supra, 410 U.S. at 493, 93 S.Ct. at 1129, 35 L.Ed.2d at 451.