Court Opinion

ID: 9486827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:01:34.691072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:57.500145
License: Public Domain

ROBERT E. JONES, District Judge,
concurring:
I join Judge Noonan’s interpretation of footnote nine of Brecht v. Abrahamson, - U.S. -, - n. 9, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 1722 n. 9, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993), and, because I share a concern for the implications of this interpretation, I write separately to set forth my analysis.
There are two main categories of constitutional violations that can occur in a criminal proceeding. A “structural error”, such as occurs when the judge is biased or the defendant is denied counsel, affects the basic elements of the trial and requires reversal; it may not be considered harmless. A “trial error” is a constitutional mistake made in the course of presentation of the case to the jury and is subject to review for harmless error.
There are also two types of harmless-error review. “Chapman ” review considers whether the error is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. “Kotteakos” review considers whether the error resulted in actual prejudice. The Chapman standard applies in cases of direct review. The Kotteakos standard applies on collateral review — this is the holding of Brecht, arrived at in part because there is no reason for the federal courts to conduct the exact same review as the state courts.
In footnote nine of Brecht, the Supreme Court identified a third possible category of constitutional violation, as follows:
Our holding does not foreclose the possibility that in an unusual case, a deliberate and especially egregious error of the trial type, or one that is combined with a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct, might so infect the integrity of the proceeding as to warrant the grant of habeas relief, even if it did not substantially influence the jury’s verdict. Cf. Greer v. Miller, 483 U.S. 756, 769, 107 S.Ct. 3102, 3110, 97 L.Ed.2d 618 (1987) (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment). We, of course, are not presented with such a situation here.
- U.S. at - n. 9, 113 S.Ct. at 1722 n. 9 (emphasis added). The problem is, the Court did not specify whether this hybrid ease is a trial error subject to either Chapman or Kotteakos harmless-error review, or whether it is considered a structural error requiring automatic reversal. Judge Noonan takes the latter view; Judge Schroeder contends that the Chapman standard applies.
In my opinion, the clearest reading that can be given to footnote nine is that the Court considers footnote nine error to be of the structural variety, requiring automatic reversal. What I consider to be the strongest support for this view is the citation in footnote nine to Justice Stevens’ concurring opinion in Greer v. Miller, where he wrote:
In Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509 [102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379] (1982), I argued that there are at least four types of alleged constitutional errors.
“The one most frequently encountered is a claim that attaches a constitutional label to a set of facts that does not disclose a violation of any constitutional right.... The second class includes constitutional violations that are not of sufficient import in a particular case to justify reversal even on direct appeal, when the evidence is still fresh and a fair retrial could be promptly conducted. A third category includes errors that are important enough to require reversal on direct appeal but do not reveal the kind of fundamental unfairness to the accused that will support a collateral attack on a final judgment. The fourth category includes those errors that are so fundamental that they infect the validity of the underlying judgment itself, or the integrity of the process by which that judgment was obtained.” [Rose v. Lundy ], at 543-544 [102 S.Ct. at 1216-1217] (dissenting opinion) (footnote omitted).
In my view, Doyle violations which cannot be deemed harmless beyond a reasonable doubt typically fall within the third of these categories. On direct review, a conviction should be reversed if a defendant can demonstrate that a Doyle error occurred at trial, and the State cannot demonstrate that it is harmless beyond a rea*884sonable doubt. But, in typical collateral attacks, such as today’s, Doyle errors are not so fundamentally unfair that convictions must be reversed whenever the State cannot bear the heavy burden of proving that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. On the other hand, there may be extraordinary cases in which the Doyle error is so egregious, or is combined with other errors or incidents of prosecuto-rial misconduct, that the integrity of the process is called into question. In such an event, habeas corpus relief should be afforded.
483 U.S. 756, 768-69, 107 S.Ct. 3102, 3110-3111 (Stevens, J., concurring) (citations omitted) (emphasis added; emphasis from original deleted).1
I think the citation to Greer seals it. The Court’s language in footnote nine parallel’s the emphasized portion of Justice Stevens’ concurrence in Greer; and whereas footnote nine doesn’t come right out and say it, Justice Stevens did: in the “extraordinary”/footnote nine case, “habeas relief should be afforded.” Neither footnote nine nor Justice Stevens mentions anything about harmless error review. It is clear to me that both the Brecht Court and Justice Stevens place the footnote nine case, which “infect[s] the integrity of the proceedings,” in the fourth category of constitutional errors.
Although Judge Schroeder advances fine reasoning in support of her position, I support Judge Noonan’s interpretation, which reflects the intent of the Brecht Court.

. Footnote nine cites only 483 U.S. at page 769, 107 S.Ct. at page 3111 of the Greer concurrence, which includes only the portion of the quotation that I have emphasized. I have included the paragraphs preceding the emphasized portion for purposes of context.