Court Opinion

ID: 9428698
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:29.098681+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.756565
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall joins,
dissenting.
In my view, the opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit not only accords with the views I expressed last Term, which, as the Court points out, ante, at 595, n. 6, *599did not prevail, but also with the principles expressed in the Court’s opinion last Term and restated by the Court today. It is on this basis that I dissent from the Court’s second, and in this instance summary,* vacation.
When this case was before us last Term, I expressed the view that it was unnecessary for the Court of Appeals to explain its failure to consider the restrictions of § 2254(d), because “the difference between the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the California Court of Appeal was over the applicable legal standard, and not over the particular facts of the case,” rendering § 2254(d) obviously inapplicable. Sumner v. Mata, 449 U. S. 539, 558-559 (1981). The Court disagreed, holding that in all cases federal courts must apply § 2254(d) or explain why it was inapplicable: “No court reviewing the grant of an application for habeas corpus should be left to guess as to the habeas court’s reasons for granting relief notwithstanding the provisions of § 2254(d).” 449 U. S., at 552. But I thought then, and the Court today agrees, that § 2254(d) is inapplicable to the ultimate question whether pretrial identification procedures are “impermissibly suggestive,” Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377, 384 (1968). Ante, at 597.
The Court’s explicit recognition that § 2254(d) does not govern the ultimate question as to the constitutionality of the pretrial identification procedures used in this case renders all the more confounding the Court’s present disposition. Following this Court’s directive on remand, the Court of Appeals clarified the basis for its original opinion: Section 2254 (d) was inapplicable because the federal court “substantially agree[d] with the ‘historical’ or ‘basic’ facts adduced by the *600California Court of Appeal,” but disagreed with “the legal and constitutional significance of certain facts,” and thus the “legal conclusion” of the state court. 649 F. 2d 713, 716-717 (1981).
I can only interpret this second vacation as evincing either the suspicion that the Court of Appeals, despite its protestations to the contrary, actually relied on factual findings inconsistent with those of the state court or that the Court of Appeals failed to distinguish its ultimate conclusion from subsidiary questions of fact. The unfairness of such suspicion is manifest. There is no reason to think, borrowing from this Court’s declaration to the Court of Appeals last Term, that, despite this Court’s difference of opinion, the judges of the Ninth Circuit are "not doing their mortal best to discharge their oath of office.” 449 U. S., at 549.
There is no basis for disbelieving the Court of Appeals’ assurance that it has accepted the factual findings of the California Court of Appeal and that it granted relief only because it concluded that the pretrial identification procedures employed in this case were, as a matter of law, unconstitutional. Accordingly, I dissent and would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 Although a case in which a lower court misunderstands the terms of our remand might in some instances be an appropriate candidate for summary reversal, in this case, where there is no unanimous agreement that the remand was not complied with, I would not reverse without plenary consideration.