Court Opinion

ID: 9419569
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:12.872348+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:18.987556
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
dissenting.
At the request of one charged with a felony and unable to employ counsel, Missouri requires its courts to assign counsel. In State v. Williams, 320 Mo. 296, 6 S. W. 2d 915, a defendant on trial for a capital offense requested the court to assign counsel, and the court accordingly appointed two lawyers for his defense. After a plea of guilty and the imposition of a death sentence, an appeal was taken from a denial of a motion in arrest of judgment *480on the ground that the trial court violated the Missouri statute in that the record did not show that the judge had ascertained the inability of the accused to employ counsel before appointing them. The Missouri Supreme Court held that the absence of such a specific finding did not constitute a violation of the Missouri statutes. “The record shows that it was upon defendant’s request that the court assigned him counsel. Having requested the court to assign counsel, it will then be presumed that defendant was without counsel and that he lacked funds to employ them.” 320 Mo. at 306. The court thus rejected the frivolous claim that by giving the accused what he asked for, counsel not of his choice had been forced on him. That decision can hardly serve as a springboard for concluding in this case that the Supreme Court of Missouri violated the Constitution of the United States in finding that the record did not show that the trial court, in denying the present defendant’s request for the assignment of counsel, denied him rights under the law of Missouri as well as the United States Constitution. To be sure, the Missouri Supreme Court did not write an opinion in support of its conclusion that the petitioner’s writ for habeas corpus “fails to state a cause of action.” There is nothing significant about that, and it does not affect the basis or scope of this Court’s review of state court decisions. During its 1942 judicial year the Supreme Court of Missouri disposed of 300 cases by opinion and 217 cases without opinion; during its 1942 judicial year this Court disposed of 218 cases by opinion and 146 cases without opinion (apart from dispositions of petitions for certiorari). If the determination by the Missouri court can reasonably be justified on failure to comply with a requirement of Missouri law, then it must be so justified. And the record here plainly allows the inference that the petitioner did not meet the procedural requirements of Missouri law for relief by habeas corpus. If a decision *481of a state court can rest on a state ground, it is our duty to conclude that it does so rest; it is our duty not to assume that the state court rejected a claim under the United States Constitution.
From the beginning, such has been the principle governing our review of state court decisions. In cases coming here from the state courts, this Court has no power to pass on questions of state law; it can review a state court decision only insofar as that raises a question of federal law; and it can only then pass on the federal question if a decision on federal law was necessary for the judgment rendered by the state court. This historic distribution of judicial authority as between the state courts and this Court was confirmed and reinforced during the Reconstruction period when the influences toward expansion of federal jurisdiction were at floodtide. Murdock v. Memphis, 20 Wall. 590.1
*482These sound like dry rules of technical jurisdiction. In fact they express an important phase of due regard for our federal constitutional system. State courts are no less under duty to observe the United States Constitution than is this Court. To be sure, authority is vested in this Court to see to it that that duty is observed. But to assume disobedience instead of obedience to the Law of the Land by the highest courts of the States is to engender friction between the federal and state judicial systems, to weaken the authority of the state courts and the administration of state laws by encouraging unmeritorious resorts to this Court, and wastefully to swell the dockets of this Court.
This case gives point to the importance of adhering to the principles that govern our review of state decisions. Nothing is a more fundamental characteristic of a civilized society than those securities which safeguard a fair trial for one accused of crime. Those assurances were written into the Federal Constitution even against State action by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A central safeguard is the opportunity for an accused to have adequate facilities for presenting his defense. But a full half century before the United States Constitution made this requirement of the States, Missouri, while yet a Territory, provided for the assistance *483of counsel for accused in need. Digest of the Laws of Missouri Territory, 1818, Crimes and Misdemeanors § 35. There is nothing to warrant the assumption that the Supreme Court of Missouri was unmindful of the exactions of its own historic law or of the extent to which that is now embedded in the Due Process Clause. On the contrary, every assumption must be indulged that that court was mindful of the right which may be claimed by an indigent accused to have a lawyer's aid for his defense. But it may also have been mindful of the requirement of her law that a trial judge be reasonably convinced that an accused is in need of counsel.
Of course this Court will not withhold its reviewing power over a decision of a state court by presuming that the state court founded its decision on a wholly untenable basis of local law. See, e. g., Neilson v. Lagow, 12 How. 98, 109-111. But nothing in the record before us precludes the assumption that the Missouri Supreme Court found a local inadequacy in the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. If the Missouri Supreme Court had in fact refused to grant the writ of habeas corpus because it concluded that there was not a sufficient allegation by petitioner that he had need for counsel, certainly this Court would not reject that as an inadequate state ground. And if that would have furnished an adequate state ground, we must assume that it did, instead of attributing to the Supreme Court of Missouri a flagrant violation of the Constitution. If the Missouri Supreme Court enforces its requirement that an accused make manifest his need for appointed counsel and if Missouri enforces this requirement even with procedural strictness against those convicted of felonies years after their sentence, it is not for us to be hypercritical in denying to the highest tribunal of a State what it may conceive to be its duty to see to it *484that the great writ of habeas corpus is not abused2 and that the administration of criminal justice is not needlessly weakened by astute devices. While the petition in this case was signed by Williams alone, it bears every evidence of having been drawn by one aware of the relevant legal issues and skilled in legal drafting.
If, perchance, we were to interpret erroneously the decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri in finding that the present writ failed to state a cause of action because it was wanting in requirements of Missouri law, no real harm will have been done. By proper application to the state court, the ambiguity of the present record may be removed by showing, if indeed such be the fact, that the Missouri Supreme Court necessarily rejected a federal claim here reviewable. See Whitney v. California, 269 U. S. 530; 274 U. S. 357, 360-362; Lynch v. New York, 293 U. S. 52; Honeyman v. Hanan, 300 U. S. 14. Or, another petition for a writ of habeas corpus making the necessary allegations would quickly reveal whether the Supreme Court of Missouri flagrantly disregarded a law of Missouri older than the State itself, let alone a right sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States. Petitioner is now represented by able and devoted counsel who would quickly enough bring to light any such disregard. Certainly we ought not to attribute illegality to the Supreme Court of Missouri when the assumption of *485obedience to its own traditions lies so readily on the surface of this record.
The petition should be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
Mr. Justice Roberts joins in this opinion.

 “The rules which govern the action of this court in cases of this sort are well settled. Where it appears by the record that the judgment of the State court might have been based either upon a law which would raise a question of repugnancy to the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States, or upon some other independent ground; and it appears that the court did, in fact, base its judgment on such independent ground, and not on the law raising the Federal question, this court will not take jurisdiction of the case, even though it might think the position of the State court an unsound one. But where it does not appear on which of the two grounds the judgment was based, then, if the independent ground on which it might have been based was a good and valid one, sufficient of itself to sustain the judgment, this court will not assume jurisdiction of the case; but if such independent ground was not a good and valid one, it will be presumed that the State court based its judgment on the law raising the Federal question, and this court will then take jurisdiction.” Klinger v. Missouri, 13 Wall. 257, 263.
These settled principles were very recently again summarized in a per curiam opinion in Southwestern Bell Tel. Co. v. Oklahoma, 303 U. S. 206, 212-213:
“We have repeatedly held that it is essential to the jurisdiction of this Court in reviewing a decision of a court of a State that it must *482appear affirmatively from the record, not only that a federal question was presented for decision to the highest court of the State having jurisdiction but that its decision of the federal question was necessary to the determination of the cause; that the federal question was actually decided or that the judgment as rendered could not have been given without deciding it. De Saussure v. Gaillard, 127 U. S. 216, 234; Johnson v. Risk, 137 U. S. 300, 306, 307; Wood Mowing & Reaping Machine Co. v. Skinner, 139 U. S. 293, 295, 297; Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 360, 361; Lynch v. New York, 293 U. S. 52, 54.”

 “We are dealing with a writ antecedent to statute, and throwing its root deep into the genius of our common law. ... It is perhaps the most important writ known to the constitutional law of England, affording as it does a swift and imperative remedy in all eases of illegal restraint or confinement. It is of immemorial antiquity, an instance of its use occurring in the thirty-third year of Edward I. It has through- the ages been jealously maintained by Courts of Law as a check upon the illegal usurpation of power by the Executive at the cost of the liege.” Secretary of State For Home Affairs v. O’Brien [1923] A.C. 603, 609.