Court Opinion

ID: 9428740
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:37.469691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.921281
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
dissenting.
I have frequently dissented from this Court’s progressive emasculation of collateral review of criminal convictions. E. g., Engle v. Isaac, ante, p. 107; Sumner v. Mata, 449 U. S. 539, 552 (1981); Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 99 (1977); Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 502 (1976); see also Davis v. United States, 411 U. S. 233, 245 (1973) (Marshall, J., dissenting). Today the Court takes a further step down this unfortunate path by declaring the plain-error standard of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure inapplicable to petitions for relief under 28 U. S. C. § 2255. In so doing, the Court does not pause to consider the nature of the plain-error Rule. Nor does the Court consider the criminal character of a proceeding under § 2255 as distinguished from *179the civil character of a proceeding under 28 U. S. C. § 2254. Because the Court’s decision is obviously inconsistent with both, I dissent.
I
A
The Court declares that the plain-error Rule, Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 52(b), was intended for use only on direct appeal and is “out of place” when the prisoner is collaterally attacking his conviction. Ante, at 164. But the power to notice plain error at any stage of a criminal proceeding is fundamental to the courts’ obligation to correct substantial miscarriages of justice. That obligation qualifies what the Court characterizes as our entitlement to presume that the defendant has been fairly and finally convicted. Ibid.
The Court correctly points out, ante, at 163, n. 13, that Rule 52(b)1 was merely a restatement of existing law. The role of the plain-error doctrine has always been to empower courts, especially in criminal cases, to correct errors that seriously affect the “fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” United States v. Atkinson, 297 U. S. 157, 160 (1936). Significantly, although some of the Rules of Criminal Procedure appear under headings such as “Preliminary Proceedings,” “Trial,” or “Appeal,” Rule 52(b) is one of the “General Provisions” of the Rules, applicable to all stages of all criminal proceedings in federal courts. See Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 1.
*180The Rule has been relied upon to correct errors that may have seriously prejudiced a possibly innocent defendant, see, e. g., United States v. Mann, 557 F. 2d 1211, 1215-1216 (CA5 1977), and errors that severely undermine the integrity of the judicial proceeding, see, e. g., United States v. Vaughan, 443 F. 2d 92, 94-95 (CA2 1971). The plain-error Rule mitigates the harsh impact of the adversarial system, under which the defendant is generally bound by the conduct of his lawyer, by providing relief in exceptional cases despite the lawyer’s failure to object at trial. The Rule thus “has a salutary effect on the prosecution’s conduct of the trial. If the intelligent prosecutor wishes to guard against the possibility of reversible error, he cannot rely on the incompetence or inexperience of his adversary but, on the contrary, must often intervene to protect the defendant from the mistakes of counsel.” 8B J. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 52.02 [2] (1981).
The Rule does not undermine our interest in the finality of criminal convictions. Rule 52(b) permits, rather than directs, the courts to notice plain error; the power to recognize plain error is one that the courts are admonished to exercise cautiously, see United States v. Diez, 515 F. 2d 892, 896 (CA5 1975), and resort to only in “exceptional circumstances,” Atkinson, supra, at 160. Yet, it is this power that the Court holds Congress intended to deny federal courts reviewing actions brought under § 2255. But the text and history of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, § 2255, and the special Rules governing §2255 actions make clear that the Court errs.2
*181B
The Court’s assumption that Rule 52(b) is inapplicable to proceedings under § 2255 is built upon dictum in Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U. S. 145, 154 (1977), which suggests that the plain-error Rule is inapplicable in a habeas corpus action under 28 U. S. C. § 2254. Even if I were to agree, and I do not, that the plain-error doctrine has no role in §2254 actions, I could not accept the Court’s analysis because it fails to consider the explicit congressional distinction between § 2254,3 a civil collateral review procedure for state prisoners, and § 2255,4 a criminal collateral review procedure for federal prisoners.
*182In enacting 28 U. S. C. §§ 2254 and 2255, Congress could not have been more explicit: Section 2254 provided for a separate civil action, but a § 2255 motion was “a further step in the criminal case in which petitioner is sentenced.” S. Rep. No. 1526, 80th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1948).5 This was reaffirmed in the 28 U. S. C. §2254 Rules and the 28 U. S. C. § 2255 Rules, approved by Congress in 1976. 90 Stat. 1334. The Advisory Committee’s Notes for the § 2255 Rules emphasize repeatedly that a proceeding under § 2255 is a continuation of the criminal trial and not a civil proceeding. Advisory Committee’s Notes to § 2255 Rules 1, 3, 11, 12, 28 U. S. C., pp. 280, 282, 287.6
Section 2255 Rule 12 directs that “[i]f no procedure is specifically prescribed by these rules, the district court [consid*183ering a motion under § 2255] may proceed in any lawful manner not inconsistent with these rules, or any applicable statute, and may 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.” (Emphasis added.) This is in contrast to the parallel Rule governing motions under § 2254, which provides: “The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, to the extent that they are not inconsistent with [the Rules governing § 2254 cases], may be applied, when appropriate . . . .” 28 U. S. C. § 2254 Rule 11 (emphasis added). The Court today blurs the distinction between § 2255 and § 2254, ignores Congress’ insistence that a § 2255 motion is a continuation of the criminal trial, and makes no mention of Congress’ express authorization to apply the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
The Court suggests that to apply the plain-error Rule in §2255 proceedings and not in §2254 habeas actions would grant federal prisoners a “preferred” status. Ante, at 166. To the contrary, to bar federal judges from recognizing plain errors on collateral review is to bind the federal prisoners more tightly than their state counterparts to this Court’s procedural barriers. State-court judges may have power to recognize plain error in collateral review of state-court convictions, see, e. g., Nelson v. State, 208 So. 2d 506, 509 (Fla. App. 1968); People v. Weathers, 83 Ill. App. 3d 451, 453, 404 N. E. 2d 1011, 1012 (1980); Wright v. State, 33 Md. App. 68, 70, 363 A. 2d 520, 522 (1976); Riggs v. State, 50 Ore. App. *184109, 114, 622 P. 2d 327, 329 (1981); indeed, by waiving a procedural bar, state courts can permit the petitioner collateral review in federal court as well. See Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 688, n. 7 (1975). But the federal prisoner’s only source of respite from this Court’s “airtight system of [procedural] forfeitures,” Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S., at 101 (Brennan, J., dissenting), lies with the discretionary exercise of the federal courts’ power. The Court’s ruling does not establish parity between federal and state prisoners; rather it unduly restricts the power of the federal courts to remedy substantial injustice.
As the Court notes, ante, at 166, the concerns of comity which underlie many of the opinions establishing obstacles to §2254 review of state confinement, e. g., Sumner v. Mata, 449 U. S., at 550; Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S., at 491, n. 31; Francis v. Henderson, 425 U. S. 536, 541 (1976), are absent here. If it is true, as the Court has repeatedly asserted, that the tensions inherent in federal-court review of state-court convictions require that substantive rights yield at times to procedural rules, no similar tension exists in a § 2255 proceeding. Under § 2255, the prisoner is directed back to the same court that first convicted him. The plain-error doctrine merely allows federal courts the discretion common to most courts to waive procedural defaults where justice requires.
I might add that this is not the first instance in which the Court has obscured the distinction between § 2254 and § 2255. In Francis v. Henderson, supra, and then in Wainwright v. Sykes, supra, the Court ignored the distinction between § 2255 and § 2254 in order to apply a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure to the purely civil §2254 proceeding. Now, ironically, the Court again obscures the distinction, this time to avoid application of a Criminal Procedure Rule to a criminal § 2255 proceeding. With each obfuscation of the distinction between § 2254 and § 2255, the Court has erected a new “procedural hurdl[e],” see Engle v. Issac, ante, at 136 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), for prisoners seeking collateral review of their convictions. Indeed, *185the “cause and prejudice” standard, which the Court today decides pre-empts the plain-error Rule, and which I continue to view as antithetical to this Court’s duty to ensure that “ ‘federal constitutional rights of personal liberty shall not be denied without the fullest opportunity for plenary federal judicial review,’ ”7 has its origin in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure that the Court now finds inapplicable. As the cause-and-prejudice standard has taken on its talismanic role in the law of habeas corpus only through the Court’s past application of the principles of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure in both § 2254 and § 2255 actions, perhaps a brief review of this history is in order.
The “cause and prejudice” standard originated in Davis v. United States, 411 U. S. 233 (1973). In Davis, the Court applied Rule 12(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure8 to hold that a federal prisoner seeking collateral review under §2255 had waived his objection to the composition of the grand jury. Relying on the exception for “cause shown” in Rule 12(b)(2), and Shotwell Manufacturing Co. v. United States, 371 U. S. 341 (1963) (a case of direct appeal from a federal conviction in which the Court construed the cause exception to Rule 12(b)(2) as encompassing an inquiry into prejudice), the Court divined a rule for § 2255 challenges to the composition of the grand jury: such claims were cognizable only if the prisoner showed both “cause” and “prejudice.” Davis v. United States, supra, at 243-245.
*186On the foundation of Davis, the Court has built an incredible “house of cards whose foundation has escaped any systematic inspection.” Wainwright v. Sykes, supra, at 100, n. 1 (Brennan, J., dissenting). Notwithstanding the lack of any evidence of congressional purpose to apply the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure except in § 2255 proceedings,9 Francis v. Henderson, supra, applied the Davis “cause and prejudice” standard to a state prisoner who, in a § 2254 proceeding, raised a constitutional challenge to the composition of the grand jury. 425 U. S., at 541-542; see id., at 548 (Brennan, J., dissenting). Building upon this strained foundation, Wainwright v. Sykes relied on Davis and Francis to declare the “cause and prejudice” standard applicable to all procedural defaults occurring during the trial of a state criminal defendant. Finally, coming full circle, the Court today relies on this “cause and prejudice” standard to pre-empt the plain-error standard of Rule 52(b).
Francis and Wainwright held applicable to a civil proceeding an inapplicable Rule of Criminal Procedure in order to defeat substantial claims of state prisoners. Today the Court excludes the applicablity in a criminal proceeding of a Rule of Criminal Procedure plainly intended by Congress to be available to federal prisoners. Any consistency in these decisions lies in their announcement that even in the teeth of clear congressional direction to the contrary, this Court will strain to subordinate a prisoner’s interest in substantial justice to a supposed government interest in finality.
*187HH HH
The Court’s determination to ride roughshod over congressional intention in order to curtail the collateral remedies of prisoners, state and federal, is evident in its passing up the opportunity to decide this case on the ground offered by the Government, Brief for United States 41, n. 34, and adopted by Justice Blackmun in his opinion concurring in the judgment, that, in any event, petitioner did not show that the instructions constituted plain error affecting his substantial rights. That admittedly is a close question on this record.10
The Government argues that because the jury could not have found premeditation without also inferring malice, the unobjected to instructions did not affect “substantial rights.” A plausible counter to this argument occurs to me in that the trial court instructed the jury that malice and premeditation were two separate elements of the crime, App. 26-29. The premeditation instruction did not, in terms, require the jury to find that the defendant acted without such provocation as would preclude a finding of malice. Yet, if the Court had concluded that there was not “plain” error, it might be difficult to support a dissent from that conclusion, given the particular facts of this case. As the Court did not base it’s holding upon this ground, I dissent.

 Rule 52(b) provides:
“Plain errors or defects affecting sustantial rights may be noticed although they were not brought to the attention of the court.”
Although the Rule applies to “plain errors or defects affecting substantial rights,” one commentator has suggested that the disjunctive form of the Rule is only a means of distinguishing between “errors” ( e. g., exclusion of evidence) and “defects” (e. g., defective pleading), and that in either event plain error applies only to errors affecting substantial rights. 8B J. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 52.02 [2] (1981).

 The Court suggests that allowing federal courts to recognize plain error on collateral review would obscure the differences between collateral review and appeal. Ante, at 165. But the significant differences between § 2255 and direct appeal remain unaffected by the application of Rule 52(b) to § 2255 actions. Even if an objection is properly preserved, an error which can be raised on appeal is not cognizable under § 2255 unless it is a constitutional violation or an error of law or fact of such “fundamental char*181acter” that it “renders the entire proceeding irregular and invalid.” United States v. Addonizio, 442 U. S. 178, 186 (1979). See also Hill v. United States, 368 U. S. 424, 428 (1962).

 Title 28 U. S. C. § 2254 provides in pertinent part:
“State custody; remedies in State courts
“(a) The Supreme Court, a Justice thereof, a circuit judge, or a district court shall entertain an application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court only on the ground that he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.”

 Title 28 U. S. C. § 2255 provides in pertinent part:
“Federal Custody; remedies on motion attacking sentence:
“A prisoner in custody under sentence of a court established by Act of Congress claiming the right to be released upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States, or that the court was without jurisdiction to impose such sentence, or that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law, or is otherwise subject to collateral attack may move the court which imposed the sentence to vacate, set aside or correct the sentence.
“A motion for such relief may be made at any time.
“An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to this section, shall not be entertained if it appears that the applicant has failed to apply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced him, or that such court has denied him relief, unless it also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”

 Section 2255 was intended to be in the nature of, but much broader than, the ancient writ of coram nobis. Unlike the writ of habeas corpus provided for state prisoners under § 2254, § 2255 directs the prisoner back to the court that sentenced him. The habeas writ remains available to federal prisoners where the motion provided under § 2255 is for some reason inadequate. S. Rep. No. 1526, 80th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1948). See also H. R. Rep. No. 308, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., A180 (1947). See generally United States v. Hayman, 342 U. S. 205 (1952).

 The Advisory Committee’s Note to Rule 1 states in pertinent part:
“Whereas sections 2241-2254 (dealing with federal habeas for those in state custody) speak of the district court judge ‘issuing the writ’ as the operative remedy, section 2255 provides that, if the judge finds the movant’s assertions to be meritorious, he ‘shall discharge the prisoner or resentence him or grant a new trial or correct the sentence as may appear appropriate. ’ This is possible because a motion under § 2255 is a further step in the movant’s criminal case and not a separate civil action, as appears from the legislative history of section 2 of S. 20, 80th Congress, the provisions of which were incorporated by the same Congress in title 28 U. S. C. as §2255.” 28 U. S. C., p. 280.
The Note to Rule 3 states that the filing fee required for actions under § 2254 actions is not required for motions under § 2255: “[A]s in other motions filed in a criminal action, there is no requirement of a filing fee.” 28 U. S. C., p. 283.
Rule 11 was amended in 1979 to provide that the time for appeal of § 2255 motions is governed by Rule 4(a), the civil provison of the Federal Rules of *183Appellate Procedure, rather than Rule 4(b), the criminal provision. But the Note to Rule 11 states: “Even though section 2255 proceedings are a further step in the criminal case, [this provision] correctly states current law.” 28 U. S. C., p. 695 (1976 ed., Supp. IV).
The Note to Rule 12 states:
“This rule differs from rule 11 of the § 2254 rules in that it includes the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure as well as the civil. This is because of the nature of a § 2255 motion as a continuing part of the criminal proceeding (see advisory committee note to rule 1) as well as a remedy analogous to habeas corpus by state prisoners.” 28 U. S. C., p. 287.

 Francis v. Henderson, 425 U. S. 536, 543 (1976) (BRENNAN, J., dissenting), quoting Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 424 (1963).

 Rule 12(b)(2), amended in 1974, provided in pertinent part at the time Davis was decided:
“Defenses and objections based on defects in the institution of the prosecution or in the indictment or information other than that it fails to show jurisdiction in the court or to charge an offense may be raised only by motion before trial. . . . Failure to present any such defense or objection as herein provided constitutes a waiver thereof, but the court for cause shown may grant relief from the waiver.”

 The Court stated in Davis, without citation, that “[t]he Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure do not ex proprio vigore govern post-conviction proceedings.” 411 U. S., at 241. This statement was plainly wrong! The special § 2255 Rules had not yet been adopted and the Criminal Rules expressly state that they govern all criminal proceedings, see n. 7, supra. At any rate, the Court then went on, ipse dixit, to find it “inconceivable” that Congress did not intend to have Rule 12(b)(2) govern in the § 2255 action. 411 U. S., at 242.

 I certainly agree with the Court of Appeals that “[a] clear miscarriage of justice has occurred if [respondent] was guility of manslaughter and is now serving the penalty for murder.” 204 U. S. App. D. C. 234, 240, 636 F. 2d 506, 512 (1980). But it is by no means clear that there was a basis for finding that such a miscarriage may have occurred in this case.