Court Opinion

ID: 9684251
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:51:58.59542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:54.326114
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
Our opinion in this case is supported by the subsequent decision in Wainwright v. Sykes,-U.S.-, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 2507-8, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977) rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States on June 23, 1977. The opinion of the Court states:
A contemporaneous objection rule may lead to the exclusion of the evidence objected to, thereby making a major contribution to finality in criminal litigation. Without the evidence claimed to be vulnerable on federal constitutional grounds, the jury may acquit the defendant, and that will be the end of the case; or it may nonetheless convict the defendant, and he will have one less federal constitutional claim to assert in his federal habe-as petition. * * * An objection on the spot may force the prosecution to take a hard look at its whole card, and even if the prosecutor thinks that the state trial judge will admit the evidence he must contemplate the possibility of reversal by the state appellate courts or the ultimate issuance of a writ of federal habeas corpus based on the impropriety of the state court’s rejection of the federal constitutional claim.
We think that the rule of Fay v. Noia, broadly stated, may encourage ‘sand bagging’ on the part of defense lawyers, who may take their chances on a verdict of not guilty in a state trial court and intend to raise their constitutional claims in a federal habeas court if their initial gamble does not pay off. The refusal of federal habeas courts to honor contemporaneous objection rules may also make state courts themselves less stringent in their enforcement. Under the rule of Fay v. Noia, supra, state appellate courts know that a federal constitutional issue raised for the first time in the proceeding before them may well be decided in any event by a federal habeas tribunal. Thus *929their choice is between addressing the issue notwithstanding the petitioner’s failure to timely object, or else face the prospect that the federal habeas court will decide the question without the benefit of their views.
The failure of the federal habeas courts generally to require compliance with a contemporaneous objection rule tends to detract from the perception of the trial of a criminal case in state court as a decisive and portentous event. A defendant has been accused of a serious crime, and this is the time and place set for him to be tried by a jury of his peers and found either guilty or not guilty by that jury. To the greatest extent possible all issues which bear on this charge should be determined in this proceeding; the accused is in the court room, the jury is in the box, the judge is on the bench, and the witnesses, having been subpoenaed and duly sworn, await their turns to testify. Society’s resources have been concentrated at that time, and place in order to decide, within the limits of human fallibility, the question of guilt or innocence of one of its citizens. Any procedural rule which encourages the result that those proceedings be as free of error as possible is thoroughly desirable, and the contemporaneous objection rule surely falls within this classification.
* ⅜ * There ⅛ nothing in the Constitution or in the language of § 2254 which requires that the state trial on the issue of guilt or innocence be devoted largely to the testimony of fact witnesses directed to the elements of the state crime, while only later will there occur in a federal habeas hearing a full airing of the federal constitutional claims which were not raised in the state proceedings. If a criminal defendant thinks that an action of the state trial court is about to deprive him of a federal constitutional right there is every reason for his following state procedure in making known his objection.
The petition for rehearing is DENIED.
ALL CONCUR.