Court Opinion

ID: 9470763
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:15:25.995141+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:05.789761
License: Public Domain

NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the result:
Although I applaud the majority for its seeming concern that civil commitment proceedings be conducted fairly, I find its method of handling this appeal so incongruous that I cannot join its opinion. First, the majority refuses to decide the question raised by Tyars in his habeas petition— whether the privilege against self-incrimination applies in civil commitment proceedings. Second, the majority proceeds to expound on the issue it refuses to reach, concluding in the abstract that the applicability of the privilege against self-incrimination in a civil commitment proceeding is to be judged by a flexible “fundamental fairness” test. Third, the majority then raises sua sponte a different constitutional question— whether physically restraining Tyars in the presence of the jury and using an interpreter to “translate” his testimony violated due process. Finally, the majority partially addresses the merits of the due process issue on a record the majority itself acknowledges is incomplete, and does so before knowing whether procedural defaults will preclude us from ever considering that issue as a basis for habeas relief. With that, the majority reverses the district court and remands with instructions to consider first, whether the state had any justification for restraining Tyars in the presence of the jury, and second, whether Tyars is barred from seeking habeas relief on the due process issue for failure to raise it in a timely manner in compliance with state procedural rules. All this strikes me as a strange way to run an appellate court.
Unlike the majority, I would decide the self-incrimination issue because it was presented to and decided by the California Supreme Court and is the sole basis for Tyars’ petition for habeas relief. It was, understandably, the issue decided by the trial judge and the issue originally briefed and argued to this court.1 I see no point in finessing decision of that issue in favor of a different constitutional issue raised sua sponte by the majority. If, however, we choose to ignore the self incrimination claim, it is all the more objectionable that the majority says we should do so in the *1287context of a sweeping discussion of standards of “fundamental fairness” that appears to be designed, sab silentio, to do two things: first, to reverse Judge Hauk’s holding that Tyars was entitled to invoke the privilege against self incrimination in his civil commitment proceeding; and second, to make it both the law of this circuit and the law of this case that the availability of the privilege in civil commitment proceedings will be determined by a fundamental fairness test. This is all accomplished in dictum which is completely unnecessary to and is in fact in conflict with the majority’s decision not to reach the self incrimination issue.
I would also refrain from commenting on the merits of the due process issue for several reasons. First, the Ninth Circuit has concluded, rightly I believe, that an appellate panel “may properly reach only the issues presented in [the appellant’s] original [habeas] petition,” Powell v. Spalding, 679 F.2d 163, 166 (9th Cir.1982). Second, it may be inappropriate for us to address a due process claim at any time since it appears that Tyars may be barred for procedural reasons from ever raising it on habeas.2 To address the merits of the due process claim at this time, therefore, is to do violence to the principle that we should not “decide constitutional questions in advance of the necessity of doing so,” Kolender v. Lawson, - U.S. -, -n. 10, 103 S.Ct. 1855, 1860 n. 10, 75 L.Ed.2d 903 (1983). Finally, we simply do not have in the record before us the predicate facts necessary to make an informed and final decision on the due process question at this time. The record, as the majority itself recognizes, is “incomplete” on issues crucial to a determination whether physically restraining Tyars before the jury or using an interpreter during his commitment proceeding violated due process. To reach its result, therefore, the majority is forced to contort sensible appellate procedure: it asks the district court to make a finding on remand — whether the state can demonstrate any justification for presenting Tyars to the jury under physical restraints — that should be an integral part of the opinion the majority has already rendered on the due process issue. Not only does that opinion seem to prevent the district court on remand from considering the due process issue as a unitary question, it also makes a shambles of the majority’s professedly “efficient” approach to the case.
To my mind, then, the majority has undermined the very goals of judicial restraint and judicial economy it seeks to serve by its opinion, and has “resolved” Tyars’ case in a piecemeal fashion that is by no means final. I cannot join an opinion that answers the wrong questions, skirts the right ones, and leaves open the distinct possibility that we will have to engage in this exercise all over again when, as seems likely, the case returns to us on the self-incrimination issue.

. The only time the parties raised the due process issue was in response to our order of March 25, 1983, calling for supplemental briefs on the question “whether the state’s placing of physical restraints on Tyars during the proceedings and use of a state witness as an interpreter to “translate” Tyars’ testimony to the jury violated his constitutional right to due process.” Predictably, the state raised what it termed an exhaustion problem — that Tyars had never raised a due process objection to the state court on appeal or to the district court on habeas. [Supplemental Brief for Appellee at 2-3] Tyars has yet to respond to that claim.

. The state claims in its response to our request for supplemental briefing on the due process issue that Tyars failed to raise the due process issue either on appeal to the California Supreme Court or to the federal district court on habeas. As noted above, Tyars raised the due process issue before us only after we had, sua sponte, requested supplemental briefs on it.