Court Opinion

ID: 9420865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:56:11.405238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:27.370384
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Douglas join,
dissenting.

Nos. 22 and 82.

The Court is holding today that a denial of certiorari in habeas corpus cases is without substantive, significance. The Court of Appeals sustained denials of applications for writs of habeas corpus chiefly because it treated our denial of a petition for certiorari from the original conviction in each of these cases as a review on the merits and a rejection of the constitutional claims asserted by these petitioners. In short, while the only significance of the denials of certiorari was a refusal to review, the Court of Appeals for all practical purposes, though disavowing the full technical import of res judicata, treated substantively empty denials as though this Court had *555examined and approved the holdings of the Supreme Court of North Carolina that there was no purposeful discrimination against Negroes in the selection of juries in these cases.
This Court could have reached the constitutional claims in controversy had it seen fit to review the cases. It declined to do so, and that is all that the orders in 340 U. S. 835 and 341 U. S. 943 signify. Accordingly, the proceedings were left precisely as though the petitions for certiorari had not been filed here and habeas corpus had been brought initially in the District Court, as in Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U. S. 519. If that had been the case, could it be held that the District Court was foreclosed from going into the merits and was barred from determining whether these cases came within our decisions finding systematic discrimination against Negroes in five North Carolina trials? Brunson v. North Carolina, 333 U. S. 851.
Suppose that the District Court in these circumstances had found against Brown and Speller. What basis is there for assuming that on appeal the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, with its specialized local knowledge about such matters, would not have decided in favor of the petitioners? And what basis in reason have we for assuming, if the cases had come here with a powerful opinion from Judge Parker, let us say, finding that there was systematic discrimination, that this Court would have deemed it appropriate to review so weighty a conclusion, or, if we had taken the case, that we would have found the facts and their meaning to be different from those which the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found? Such assumptions are unwarranted, especially in light of the impressive showing by Mr. Justice Black that in fact there was unconstitutional discrimination in the make-up of the juries in these two cases where life is at stake.
*556I cannot protest too strongly against affirming a decision of the Court of Appeals patently based on the ground that that court was foreclosed on procedural grounds from considering the merits of constitutional claims, when we now decide that the court was wrong in believing that it was so foreclosed. The affirmance by this Court of the District Court’s denial of writs of habeas corpus in these cases is all the more vulnerable in that this Court, without guidance from the Court of Appeals, proceeds to consider the merits of the constitutional claim. This Court concludes that there was not a systematic discrimination in keeping Negroes off juries. If this Court deemed it necessary to consider the merits, the merits should equally have been open to the Court of Appeals. As I have already indicated, that court is far better situated than we are to assess the circumstances of jury selection in North Carolina and to draw the appropriate inferences.

No. 80.

In this case the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit also sustained the District Court in dismissing applications for writs of habeas corpus based on the claim by the two petitioners here that their convictions for murder in the North Carolina court were vitiated by disregard of rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. But this case is unlike the Brown and Speller cases; here the Court of Appeals did not find itself foreclosed to consider the merits by deeming itself bound by an adjudication of the merits in the Supreme Court of North Carolina followed by a denial of a petition for cer-tiorari in this Court.1 And the Court here does not sus*557tain the District Court’s dismissal by contending that the North Carolina Supreme Court had already adjudicated the merits, nor does this Court pass on the merits.
This Court sustains the lower courts on the ground that the right of review on the merits was foreclosed because the petitioners lost their right of review through failure to comply with the requirements of North Carolina law for perfecting an appeal in the Supreme Court of North Carolina. State v. Daniels, 231 N. C. 17, 341, 56 S. E. 2d 2, 646; id., 232 N. C. 196, 59 S. E. 2d 430.
We were given to understand on the argument that if petitioners’ lawyer had mailed his “statement of case on appeal” on the 60th day and the prosecutor’s office had received it on the 61st day the law of North Carolina would clearly have been complied with, but because he delivered it by hand on the 61st day all opportunities for appeal, both in the North Carolina courts and in the federal courts, are cut off although the North Carolina courts had discretion to hear this appeal. For me it is important to emphasize the fact that North Carolina does not have a fixed period for taking an appeal. The decisive question is whether a refusal to exercise a discretion which the Legislature of North Carolina has vested in its judges is an act so arbitrary and so cruel in its operation, considering that life is at stake, that in the circum*558stances of this case it constitutes a denial of due process in its rudimentary procedural aspect.
For here we are not dealing with a frivolous or even a tenuous claim of a denial of rights guaranteed under the United States Constitution in the proceedings that led to a death sentence. It suffices to quote what was said in dissent by Circuit Judge Soper, one of the most experienced and hardheaded of federal judges:
“There is no attempt on the part of the State of North Carolina in the pending appeal to show that there was not a gross violation of the constitutional rights of the prisoners in the trial court.” Daniels v. Allen, 192 F. 2d 763, 770, 771.
And this statement was not questioned by the Court of Appeals.
The basic reason for closing both the federal and State courts to the petitioners on such serious claims and under these circumstances is the jejune abstraction that habeas corpus cannot be used for an appeal. Judge Soper dealt with the deceptiveness of this formula by quoting what Judge Learned Hand had found to be the truth in regard to this generality thirty years ago:
“We shall not discuss at length the occasions which will justify resort to the writ, where the objection has been open on appeal. After a somewhat extensive review of the authorities twenty-four years ago, I concluded that the law was in great confusion; and the decisions since then have scarcely tended to sharpen the lines. We can find no more definite rule than that the writ is available, not only to determine points of jurisdiction, stricti juris, and constitutional questions; but whenever else resort to it is necessary to prevent a complete miscarriage of justice.” Kulick v. Kennedy, 157 F. 2d 811, 813.
*559The reasons for finding that we have here so complete a miscarriage of justice are so powerfully stated by Judge Soper that I cannot do better than to adopt them as my own:
“The [trial] court’s strict application of the procedural rules in a capital case in these two instances [of rulings by that court preventing defendants’ attorneys from raising the jury question] can hardly be approved as a proper exercise of judicial discretion. The defendants merely asked for rulings which would have enabled them to obtain a review by the highest court of the state of the trial court’s action on a grave constitutional question; and the relief could have been granted without interfering with the enforcement of the criminal laws of the state. It can hardly be doubted that the decision in each case lay within the discretion of the judge, but once it was taken, the Supreme Court of the state deemed itself powerless to interfere. Thus there is presented an impasse which can be surmounted only by a proceeding like that before this court. We have been told time and again that legalistic requirements should be disregarded in examining applications for the writ of habeas corpus and the rules have been relaxed in cases when the trial court has acted under duress or perjured testimony has been knowingly used by the prosecution, or a plea of guilty has been obtained by trick, or the defendant has been inadequately represented by counsel.[2] Hawk v. Olson, 326 U. S. 271 . . .; *560Darr v. Bu[r]ford, 339 U. S. 200, 203 .... It is difficult to see any material distinction in practical effect between these circumstances and the plight of the prisoners in the pending case who have been caught in the technicalities of' local procedure and in consequence have been denied their constitutional right.” 192 F. 2d, at 773.

 Although there was such a denial in this Court, no petition for certiorari was sought from the latest of the three decisions by the North Carolina Supreme Court prior to the initiation of the habeas *557eorpus proceedings now under review. It is not inappropriate to say that the certiorari that was denied here affords a good illustration of the reason for holding that no legal significance attaches to such a denial. It would be beyond the wit of the wisest panel of judges to determine on what ground, for what reason, the petition was denied. The papers in the case do not afford a rational foundation for saying that it was this ground rather than that. The conflicting bases for rejection not only may well have influenced different members of the Court; it is not at all unlikely that individual members of the Court did not feel it necessary to determine which of two grounds was decisive.

 This language is of course not to be read to mean that constitutional rights may not be freely waived. Under appropriate circumstances, conscious failure to appeal may constitute such waiver; the very question here is whether there has been a failure to appeal.