Court Opinion

ID: 9778581
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:13:04.611586+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:11.796386
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge
(concurring in result).
I respectfully observe that the federal habeas corpus act permits an appeal. An appeal from Judge Oliver’s decision (if it were though to be in error) could have been taken by the state attorney general to the federal court of appeals and then by appeal or certiorari to the United States Supreme Court if necessary. The resolve whether to take such an appeal is up to the attorney general, not us. Instead, the attorney general filed with us a motion asking us to vacate our judgment. The point is, the decision of the federal district court was not necessarily final and it overstates the situation to declare the congressional statute, Sec. 2254, Title 28, U.S.C.A., makes us “subservient” to the federal trial courts.
In considering whether the effect of the statute is as baneful as the majority contend, it is helpful to me to keep firmly in mind that we, as well as the federal courts, are dealing here with the rights of the defendant under the Constitution of the United States.1 As to these, the United States Supreme Court, under the Supremacy Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, not the federal district courts, has the final word, binding on us and all other courts. This fact of life does not, it seems to me, cause us to be “subservient” in any improper sense.
For these reasons, I respectfully am unable to agree with the assertions of the principal opinion, but do concur with the result reached in the setting aside of the affirmance, reversal of judgment of the trial court, and the remand for a new trial.

. In tlie present ease, for example, Judge Oliver concluded defendant was entitled to relief “ * * s on two separate and independent grounds: (1) the federal standards enunciated in Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 86 S.Ct. 836, 15 L.Ed. 2d 815 (1966), although recognized by the Supreme Court of Missouri, were not properly applied to the undisputed factual situation presented; and (2) petitioner was denied the effective assistance of counsel as guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.” See Brizendine v. Swenson, 302 F.Supp. 1011, decided August 11, 1969.