Court Opinion

ID: 9486826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:01:34.684155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:57.498198
License: Public Domain

SCHROEDER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment and with all of the majority’s opinion except the interpretation of footnote .nine of Brecht v. Abrahamson, - U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993). That troublesome footnote creates a special category of “deliberate and especially egregious error[s] of the trial type” for which habeas relief is available even if the error “did not substantially influence the jury verdict.” In my view, this special category of “trial error” is one for which reversal is required unless the state can show the error to have been harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Because I conclude that the prosecutorial misconduct in this case, although serious, could not have affected the jury’s deliberation in any way, I agree with the majority that habeas relief is not warranted.
The majority opinion, however, while concluding that any error in this case was harmless, equates the new category of footnote nine error with “structural error” that requires automatic reversal or habeas relief. See Brecht, - U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 1717; Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 290, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 1254, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991). Structural errors have included, for example, deprivation of the right to counsel, denial of trial by an impartial judge, or denial of a public trial. Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 290, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 1265, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991) (citing Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), Turney v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749 (1927), and Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 104 S.Ct. 2210, 81 L.Ed.2d 31 (1984)). Structural error, until now, has never been equated with discrete, albeit deliberate and egregious, errors during trial. The majority opinion thus injects further confusion in an area that is confused enough already.
The Supreme Court’s principal holding in Brecht established the standard for determining the point at which trial errors become sufficiently prejudicial to warrant habeas relief. Prior to Brecht, the Court had held that constitutional error requires reversal unless the state can show that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). In Brecht, the Court rejected use of the Chapman standard in habeas cases, looking instead to whether the error “ ‘had a substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.’ ” Brecht, - U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 1722 (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 1253, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946)). Under this, the Kotteakos standard, a petitioner must show “actual prejudice.” Id.
In footnote nine, the Court identified an exception to its holding:
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 *882warrant 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, 3111, 97 L.Ed.2d 618] [(1987)].
Brecht, - U.S. at - n. 9, 113 S.Ct. at 1722 n. 9.
The majority concludes that footnote nine errors cannot be saved by harmless error review under either Chapman or Kotteakos. But the footnote itself does not say that. What it does say is that such error is grounds for habeas relief “even if it did not substantially influence the jury’s verdict.” The text in the paragraph just before the marker for footnote nine makes it clear that this is a reference to the Kotteakos test. Brecht, - U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 1722 (“The test under Kotteakos is whether the error had a ‘substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.’ ”).
Footnote nine’s reference to Greer v. Miller, 483 U.S. 756, 769, 107 S.Ct. 3102, 3111, 97 L.Ed.2d 618 (1987), is not particularly illuminating and does not support the majority. The portion of Greer cited by the Court is a concurring opinion by Justice Stevens, expanding upon his description, first articulated in Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 543-45, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 1216-17, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982) (Stevens, J., dissenting), of the type of errors requiring habeas relief. According to Justice Stevens, habeas relief is warranted only for “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.” Greer, 483 U.S. at 768, 107 S.Ct. at 3110 (quoting Rose, 455 U.S. at 543-44, 102 S.Ct. at 1216-17). Justice Stevens concurring opinion in Greer does not even discuss “structural error.” It is about when Doyle error may lead to habeas relief.
I therefore cannot agree with Judge Jones’ concurrence in this case concluding that Justice Stevens was discussing structural error requiring automatic habeas relief without regard to any prejudice analysis. Even if Justice Stevens’ opinion were capable of such an interpretation, I find it difficult to believe that the Supreme Court adopted it in Brecht by such an oblique citation in a footnote. Because the entire issue in Brecht was whether Kotteakos or Chapman review should be applied to trial errors in habeas proceedings, and because the Court adopted the Kotteakos standard, footnote nine’s exception is most reasonably interpreted as preserving such errors for Chapman review.
By analogizing footnote nine trial error to “structural error,” the majority blurs and weakens the concept of structural error. It makes habeas review more difficult. The reason that structural errors require reversal without any analysis of prejudice is because they defy prejudice analysis. Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 309-11, 111 S.Ct. at 1265. The problem with the majority’s position in this case is demonstrated by the fact that in order to determine whether footnote nine error has occurred — i.e., whether the errors in this case have “so infect[ed] the integrity of the proceeding” — the majority reviews for prejudice. Thus, in order for the majority to conclude that the jury must have rejected the prosecutor’s improper references to out-of-court statements, the majority must engage in harmless error analysis that is inappropriate for determining structural error.
It admittedly is difficult to conceive of a class of errors which infect the integrity of proceedings but are harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. But it is at least as difficult to envision the class of errors, expressly described in footnote nine, that infect the integrity of the proceedings but are not actually prejudicial. Cf. Brecht, - U.S. at - - -, 113 S.Ct. at 1724-25 (Stevens, J., concurring) (noting the relative insignificance of the difference between the Kotteakos standard and the Chapman standard). If there exists a category of trial-type errors, repugnant to the integrity of criminal proceedings, which are identifiable without resort to actual prejudice analysis, I can only conclude that such errors are subject to the Chapman standard.
I therefore find it unnecessary to determine whether footnote nine error, whatever it may be, has occurred in this case. Even assuming the error in this case has infected the integrity of the proceedings, and the Brecht/Kotteakos actual prejudice standard *883therefore does not apply by virtue of footnote nine, the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.