Court Opinion

ID: 9487434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:16:26.408736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:16.018882
License: Public Domain

RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Chief Judge,
with whom McMILLIAN, Circuit Judge, joins,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the judgment of the Court in this case and with much of its scholarly opinion. I write separately to express what is primarily a difference of emphasis.
It is certainly true that under Stone we should focus on the procedure afforded by the state courts in their consideration of Fourth Amendment claims. The Court rightly emphasizes that it is the “opportunity for full and fair litigation, Stone, 428 U.S. at 482, 494 [96 S.Ct. at 3046, 3052],” ante at 1270, that is important. We may not review the results reached by the state courts on such issues, either on questions of law or on those of fact. To this extent I agree completely that the language of Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963), about findings fairly supported by the state-court record as a whole, is inappo-site in the Stone context. This language refers to the results reached by state courts on a given factual record. We should not concern ourselves with that issue.
If, on the other hand, a state formally offers an opportunity to a litigant to urge a Fourth Amendment claim, and the litigant avails himself of the opportunity by offering evidence and argument in support of his claim, it seems to me that the state court may in fact deny him a full and fair hearing if it, for example, excludes important relevant evidence on the issue of probable cause. A petitioner in such a case receives an opportunity for a full and fair hearing, but the opportunity is illusory. Maybe this would be an example of what the Court refers to as an unconscionable breakdown in the state-court mechanism for considering Fourth Amendment claims. Because I’m not sure of the Court’s precise meaning on this point, I content myself with concurring in the result, there being no reason to believe that the Arkansas state courts in this case denied Willett either an opportunity for a full and fair hearing or such a hearing in fact.