Court Opinion

ID: 9428739
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:37.464023+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.916038
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
concurring in the judgment.
Like Justice Brennan, I believe that the plain-error rule of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b) has some applicability in a § 2255 proceeding. In my view, recognizing a federal court’s discretion to redress plain error on collateral review neither nullifies the cause-and-prejudice requirement articulated in Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72 (1977), nor disserves the policies underlying that requirement.
*176Despite the Court’s assertions that Rule 52(b) was intended for use only on direct appeal and that the Court of Appeals ignored “long-established contrary authority,” ante, at 164, I find nothing in the Rule’s seemingly broad language supporting the Court’s restriction of its scope. In fact, the plain-error doctrine is specifically made applicable to all stages of all criminal proceedings, which, as the dissenting opinion points out, include the collateral review procedures of § 2255. See post, at 179-180, 182, and nn. 5, 6. Even more striking, § 2255 Rule 12 explicitly permits a federal court to “apply the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, whichever it deems most appropriate, to motions filed under these rules.”*
The cause-and-prejudice standard of Wainwright v. Sykes, supra, is premised on the notion that contemporaneous-objection rules are entitled to respect — in the interests of preserving comity and effecting the administrative goals such rules are designed to serve. See 433 U. S., at 88-90. As the Court concedes, considerations of comity are not at issue here. See ante, at 166. The second objective of the cause- and-prejudice requirement — to enforce contemporaneous-objection rules and, in particular, to ensure finality — is, in *177my view, similarly irrelevant where, as the Court of Appeals found here, an explicit exception to the contemporaneous-objection rule is applicable. Giving effect to an express exception to a contemporaneous-objection rule is hardly inconsistent with that rule. Where a jurisdiction has established an exception to its contemporaneous-objection requirement and a prisoner’s petition for collateral review falls within that exception, I see no need for the prisoner to prove “cause” for his failure to comply with a rule that is inapplicable in his case.
In the federal courts, the plain-error doctrine constitutes an exception to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 30’s requirement that defendants make timely objections to instructions. If the Court of Appeals properly characterized the errors identified by respondent as plain error, it correctly refused to require him to make the cause-and-prejudice showing described in Wainwright v. Sykes, supra.
This approach does not, as the Court charges, “affor[d] federal prisoners a preferred status when they seek post-conviction relief.” Ante, at 166. The Court has long recognized that the Wainwright v. Sykes standard need not be met where a State has declined to enforce its own contemporaneous-objection rule. See, e. g., Ulster County Court v. Allen, 442 U. S. 140, 148-154 (1979); Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S., at 87; Francis v. Henderson, 425 U. S. 536, 542, n. 5 (1976). Similarly, the cause-and-prejudice standard should not be a barrier to relief when the plain-error exception to the federal contemporaneous-objection requirement is applicable. The federal contemporaneous-objection rules may differ from those of the States, and the applicability of the Wainwright v. Sykes standard therefore may vary according to the contours of the particular jurisdiction’s contemporaneous-objection requirement. But that variance does not improperly distinguish between federal and state prisoners, just as respecting any differences between the contemporaneous-objection rules of two States creates no impermissible *178distinction. In fact, it is the Court’s approach — refusing to give effect to the plain-error exception to the federal contemporaneous-objection rule, while recognizing exceptions to the analogous state rules — that gives some prisoners a “preferred status.”
Similarly, my approach does not afford prisoners “a second appeal,” ante, at 164, thus sacrificing the interest in finality of convictions. As the dissenting opinion observes, acknowledging the applicability of Rule 52(b) in § 2255 proceedings does not merge direct appeal and collateral review. See post, at 180-181, n. 2; see also United States v. Addonizio, 442 U. S. 178, 186 (1979); Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U. S. 145, 154 (1977).
Because I agree with the Court, however, that respondent has not demonstrated that the erroneous jury instructions of which he complains “so infected the entire trial that the resulting conviction violates due process,” Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U. S. 141, 147 (1973), I conclude that the Court of Appeals erred in holding that respondent was entitled to relief under Rule 52(b). Accordingly, I concur in the reversal of the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 Although § 2255 Rule 12 does not “mandate by its own force the use of any particular Rule of Civil or Criminal Procedure,” ante, at 167, n. 15, it does afford a federal court discretion in determining whether to apply the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Court’s extended discussion, in the same footnote, of the Advisory Committee’s Note to § 2254 Rule 11, is beside the point. The Advisory Committee’s Note to § 2255 Rule 12 expressly observes that Rule 12 “differs” from § 2254 Rule 11 in that the former “includes the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure as well as the civil.” 28 U. S. C., p. 287. And the note to Rule 12 apparently refers to the note accompanying § 2254 Rule 11 “[f]or discussion” only of “the restrictions in Fed. R. Civ. P. 81(a)(2). . . .” Even if the note to § 2254 Rule 11 is relevant to our decision in this case, I do not subscribe to the Court’s conclusion that the plain-error doctrine is “ ‘inconsistent or inequitable in the overall framework’ ” of collateral review pursuant to § 2255. See ante, at 167-168, n. 15, quoting Advisory Committee’s Note to § 2254 Rule 11.