Court Opinion

ID: 9470114
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:57:29.156342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:44.417361
License: Public Domain

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the result in this case, but write with a regretful pen because I do not embrace the apologia juxtaposed to the remanding words. I cannot and do not endorse the concept suggested by the majority in its footnote two that no difference exists between a case in which a man’s life is at issue and a case in which a fifty dollar fine is the maximum sanction. To the contrary, I submit that capital cases demand special consideration, both at trial and on appellate review, because of the exceptional and irrevocable nature of the penalty involved. In pronouncing the ultimate sentence, our enunciation must be positive, definite, unconditional, and without prefix, for once the words are pronounced there is no suffix. Surely, when a life hangs in the balance, extraordinary care and rigorous scrutiny are not too much to ask.
I wholeheartedly agree with Judge Gee’s assessment that this cause must be remanded to the district court. Although judges’ lights emanate at times from different judicial spectra, in this instance they focus upon the necessity for a plenary hearing on Bass's exhausted claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. As the Supreme Court observed in Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 312, 83 S.Ct. 745, 756, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963), unconstitutional detention is so insupportable that “the opportunity to be heard, to argue and present evidence, must never be totally foreclosed.” In Townsend the Court emphasized the plenary nature of the federal courts’ power of inquiry in habeas cases, substantially increasing the availability of evidentiary hearings in such proceedings. Outlining the situations in which hearings would be required, the Court made mandatory much that previously had been discretionary with the district courts. See Smith v. Yeager, 393 U.S. 122, 125, 89 S.Ct. 277, 279, 21 L.Ed.2d 246 (1968). The Court decreed:
Where the facts are in dispute, the federal court in habeas corpus must hold an evidentiary hearing if the habeas applicant did not receive a full and fair evidentiary hearing in a state court, either at the time of the trial or in a collateral proceeding. In other words a federal evidentiary hearing is required unless the *1161state-court trier of fact has after a full hearing reliably found the relevant facts.
Townsend, 372 U.S. at 312-13, 83 S.Ct. at 756-57 (footnote omitted).
No court, state or federal, has ever held a hearing to ventilate Bass’s claims that his legal assistance at trial was ineffective. Townsend requires the federal court to address the merits of these factual claims in a full and fair evidentiary hearing. Undeniably, a remand for such a hearing is the appropriate resolution of this matter, and with this resolution I concur.
Perhaps in underscoring the necessity for granting a hearing in Bass’s case I belabor the point. I do so, however, because I fear that the ultimate result in this case — a remand for an evidentiary hearing — is overshadowed by other language in the majority opinion. I do not wish to see a habeas applicant’s right to an evidentiary hearing denigrated by the apologetic fashion in which the majority grants a remand.
My concern for Bass’s right to a hearing is magnified by the overriding fact that this is a death penalty case. As the Supreme Court has recognized and reiterated, “there is a significant constitutional difference between the death penalty and lesser punishments.” Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625, 637, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 2389, 65 L.Ed.2d 392 (1980). “[DJeath is a punishment different from all other sanctions in kind rather than degree.” Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 303-04, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 2990-91, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976). See Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 286-91, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 2750-53, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring); id. at 306, 92 S.Ct. at 2760 (Stewart, J., concurring). Because “death as a punishment is unique in its severity and irrevocability,” Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 187, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2931, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), the Supreme Court has been especially sensitive to ensure that every possible safeguard is observed in capital cases. Id. Death cases truly and deservedly are in a class by themselves, see Furman, 408 U.S. at 287-88 & n. 34, 92 S.Ct. at 2751 & n. 34 (Brennan, J., concurring), for death has a uniqueness that no philosopher’s stone has ever transmuted, no mill stone has ever crushed.
I view these pronunciamento as more homiletical than precatory. To me, the teachings of the Supreme Court admonish that fastidious trial procedures and meticulous scrutiny on posttrial review are mandated before the death penalty may be imposed. We do not demean the criminal law by suggesting a different treatment for capital cases; rather, we elevate life over death.
The majority opinion implies that the procedures, the penology, and the attitudes of the decisionmaker should be the same, whether the defendant is charged with speeding or subject to a capital offense. But all cases are not alike. The law is replete with discrepant standards for the application of many of its maxims and apothegms. For example, the proper scope of appellate review depends upon whether the factfinder was judge or jury; a recidivist may be punished more harshly for a particular crime than a first-time offender. These too are “double standards” in the law, but they shock neither the conscience nor the intelligence.
When the criminal justice system exacts the ultimate penalty, and an individual is executed, no constitutional wrong can ever be rectified. The penalty is irrevocable and inexorable. Therefore we must be certain, and I would underscore deadly certain, that no germ of constitutional error has infected the prosecutorial treatment. Two things must be indisputable: that the accused is in fact guilty, and that no facts or factors militate against putting the accused to death. There are no writs of habeas corpus from a casket.
That capital cases create an extraordinary situation for the accused, the decision-maker, and the appellate judges on review cannot fairly be denied. Such an extraordinary situation demands extraordinary treatment: exacting procedural protections at trial and close scrutiny on appellate review. I am even emboldened to suggest that the standard for effectiveness of trial counsel defending an accused on a capital *1162charge should be elevated, in order to ensure that the fundamental constitutional rights of an accused are asserted and protected. See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 118, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 2522, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977). (Brennan, J., dissenting) (suggesting that limitations on scope of habeas jurisdiction may force reconsideration of standards for adequacy of counsel). Only the most unyielding criteria for representation and review can guarantee that the death penalty is imposed only where appropriate.1
In recent years, postconviction relief from unconstitutional detentions has been hedged about by a plethora of statutory and judicial procedural barriers that have obstructed the view of habeas corpus afforded by Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963). The majority opinion highlights the most perilous of these obstacles — the contemporaneous objection rule and the “cause and prejudice” standard of Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977). Judge Gee intimates strongly that if he were a free agent he would hold that venireman Hall should not have been excused. Yet, as he conclusively convinces me, Supreme Court treatment of the contemporaneous objection rule forecloses our consideration of this constitutional claim. In response, I can only say that while I agree with Judge Gee’s interpretation of the law enunciated by my superiors, I find it profoundly regrettable. Only the , sweeping synoptic language of the majority opinion in Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 102 S.Ct. 1558, 71 L.Ed.2d 783 (1983), compels me to concur with the majority’s analysis. Engle is the law, and Judge Gee has read it according to the King’s English, but its holding is myopic and not subject to my approbation. It saddens me to admit that there is rarely any escape from the executioner’s activities under the lethal blows rained upon the Great Writ, which seems to become less great as the years pass. Were I musician rather than judge, I would compose a dirge; instead, I sorrowfully file this special concurrence. I am not ready to put Fay v. Noia in the hangman’s noose; I pray that, for all its recent modifications and exceptions, it shall never die.
To justify its refusal to address certain of Bass’s claims, the majority invokes the importance of finality in criminal cases. There is a natural collision of consciences in rendering justice when a human life has been taken by the individual who must approach the gallows. I share the majority’s respect for finality, for concluding the lengthy process of criminal appeals. Even those incarcerated on death row, those who live beneath the sword of Damocles, must in some ways long for a sense of closure. Yes, there must be an end to criminal litigation. Our duty as judges, a duty we may not shirk, is to ensure that the ending is a constitutional one. Some things go beyond time.

. The majority states that in this case “there can be no doubt of Bass’s guilt,” ante at 1159, suggesting somewhat obliquely that the certainty with which an appellate court views the determination of an accused’s guilt should affect the resolution of the accused’s collateral claims. This rationale conflates the issues of culpability and constitutionality. To resolve that an accused is guilty is one thing; to declare that he has constitutionally been sentenced to die is quite another.