Court Opinion

ID: 9487408
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:15:55.226839+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:14.076359
License: Public Domain

BOWMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the Court’s holding that the state, in applying its escape rule to Branch, has violated her right to substantive due process.
The Missouri legislature first announced in 1835 that, upon a criminal conviction, “an appeal to the supreme court shall be allowed,” subject to certain procedural requirements. Mo.Rev.Stat. at 498 § 1 (1835). In 1889, the Missouri Supreme Court further modified the statutory right to appeal and adopted the common-law escape rule, noting that an escaped convict “is in contempt of the authority of the court and of the law” and “[t]o permit such a course of conduct to be successful would be trifling with justice, and will not be tolerated,” regardless that the state might bring in the prisoner via a capias warrant. State v. Carter, 98 Mo. 431, 11 S.W. 979, 980 (1889). Subsequently, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the escape rule. Allen v. *377Georgia, 166 U.S. 138, 140-41, 17 S.Ct. 525, 526-27, 41 L.Ed. 949 (1897). Recognizing its own limits in a ease challenging the powers reserved to the states, the Court said, “[I]f the supreme court of a state has acted in consonance with the constitutional laws of a state and its own procedure, it could only be in very exceptional circumstances that this court would feel justified in saying that there had been a failure of due legal process.” Id. at 140, 17 S.Ct. at 526. The rule as it has developed in Missouri is still viable today. See State v. Peck, 652 S.W.2d 244, 245 (Mo.Ct.App.1983) (“Missouri has long had the rule that a defendant who escapes or flees the jurisdiction of its courts either during trial or in the process of post-trial proceedings forfeits his rights to an appeal upon the merits of the cause.”).
Branch does not challenge the constitution-, ality of the escape rule per se. The only issue before this Court on appeal from the District Court’s denial of the writ is whether Missouri violates a defendant’s due process rights1 by dismissing an appeal under the common-law escape rule when the fleeing defendant is recaptured three days after failing to appear for sentencing, and before she has filed her notice of appeal.
I begin with the undisputed fact that the Constitution does not compel the states to offer an appeal as of right to criminal defendants upon conviction. Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U.S. 387, 393, 105 S.Ct. 830, 834, 83 L.Ed.2d 821 (1985). But “when a State opts to act in a field where its action has significant discretionary elements, it must nonetheless act in accord with the dictates of the Constitution— and, in particular, in accord with the Due Process Clause.” Id. at 401, 105 S.Ct. at 839. In addition to the better-known (and better-understood) concept of procedural due process, the Supreme Court has recognized the concept of substantive due process, which “prevents the government from engaging in conduct that ‘shocks the conscience’ or interferes with rights ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’ ” United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 746, 107 S.Ct. 2095, 2101, 95 L.Ed.2d 697 (1987) (citations omitted). Notwithstanding the uncertain scope of substantive due process,21 believe the Court misapplies the concept in this situation to justify granting the writ.
Considering the second substantive due process test first, if state action encroaches upon a fundamental right, then “the infringement [must be] narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. ‘Substantive due process’ analysis must begin with a careful description of the asserted right....” Reno v. Flores, — U.S.-,-, 113 S.Ct. 1439, 1447, 123 L.Ed.2d 1 (1993) (citations omitted). As noted above, there is no fundamental right “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty”- implicated here — that is, no right to appeal a criminal conviction is in the text of the Constitution and such a right has not been discovered in the “emanations” from that document. The Court’s opinion does not so assert. Therefore, it is unnecessary to consider whether Missouri’s interests in the escape rule are compelling or whether the escape rule is narrowly tailored to serve *378those interests. Because no fundamental right is implicated, there is no justification for the Court’s finding a federal constitutional violation here merely because Missouri’s appellate process is not adversely affected by Branch’s escape.
As for the other substantive due process test, which presumably becomes relevant in the absence of a fundamental right, Missouri’s escape rule as applied to Branch does not shock the conscience. Cf. Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172, 72 S.Ct. 205, 209-10, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952) (concluding that pumping the stomach of a suspect in the search for evidence “shocks the conscience”). It does not shock the conscience for Missouri to apply a rule that strips a criminal defendant of her statutory (not constitutional) right to appeal her conviction when she chooses to show contempt for the courts and the laws of the state by failing to appear for sentencing after her conviction by a jury. It does not shock the conscience for the Missouri courts to conclude that “[tjhose who seek the protection of this legal system must ... be willing to abide by its rules and decisions” or else forfeit its protections. State v. Wright, 763 S.W.2d 167, 168-69 (Mo.Ct.App.1988). It does not shock the conscience to punish a fleeing felon, subject to imprisonment for life, by divesting her of the statutory appeal process that otherwise would be available to her, rather than to punish her indiscernibly by adding prison time for contempt onto a life sentence. It does not shock the conscience to deprive a convicted felon who has taken it on the lam of her right to appeal her conviction in order to deter others from flaunting the law and putting the system to the expense and effort of finding fleeing felons and returning them to the jurisdiction of the court, .regardless of the length of time they may be missing.
I do not agree that the escape rule as applied to Branch is “arbitrary” or without a “rational justification,” as the Court’s opinion, ante at 375, 376, asserts, but those are not substantive due process tests in any event. The case upon which the Court relies for the “arbitrary” standard does in fact quote the word in passages found in Supreme Court cases that describe state actions prohibited by the Due Process Clause, but it is clear that in the cases quoted (both from the 1880’s) the term was used in connection with procedural due process rights (to criminal indictment) or with fundamental rights (to pursue a lawful profession). Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 331, 106 S.Ct. 662, 665, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986). In any case the Supreme Court cited those cases in dicta for a purpose unrelated to. determining substantive due process violations. In its discussion of substantive due process protections further on, the Daniels Court cites Rochin, where the Court set forth the “shocks the conscience” standard. Id. In any event, in the- very same term the Court recognized that it “has no license to invalidate legislation [under substantive due process] which it thinks merely arbitrary or unreasonable.” Regents of the Univ. of Mich. v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214, 226, 106 S.Ct. 507, 513, 88 L.Ed.2d 523 (1985) (quoting Moore v. City of E. Cleveland, Ohio, 431 U.S. 494] 544, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 1958, 52 L.Ed.2d 531 (1977) (White, J., dissenting)); cf. Collins v. City of Harker Heights, Tex., — U.S.-,-, 112 S.Ct. 1061, 1070, 117 L.Ed.2d 261 (1992) (holding that alleged omission by city could not “properly be characterized as arbitrary, or conscience-shocking, in a constitutional sense”). In Salerno, 481 U.S. at 746, 107 S.Ct. at 2101, decided two years later, the Court made no mention of an “arbitrary” standard in setting out what sort of government actions may constitute a violation of substantive due process rights.
The Court’s analysis here apparently is drawn from the Supreme Court’s opinion in Ortega-Rodriguez v. United States, — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1199, 122 L.Ed.2d 581 (1993), rather than from constitutional jurisprudence. The Ortega-Rodriguez Court concluded that, “when a defendant’s flight and recapture occur before appeal, the defendant’s former fugitive status may well lack the kind of connection to the appellate process that would justify an appellate sanction of dismissal.” Id. at-, 113 S.Ct. at 1209. The Ortega-Rodriguez decision, however, was an exercise of the Supreme Court’s supervisory power over the lower federal courts and, as no constitutional claims were considered in the case, the rationale of the *379decision is irrelevant to a proper adjudication of the present case. It is of no consequence to the constitutionality of state procedures that the United States Supreme Court has used its supervisory power to limit the scope of the federal common-law escape rule. “[T]he right of appeal may be accorded by the state to the accused upon such terms as in its wisdom may be deemed proper.... [Wjhether an appeal should be allowed, and, if so, under what circumstances, or on what conditions, are matters for each state to determine for itself.” McKane v. Durston, 153 U.S. 684, 687-88, 14 S.Ct. 913, 915, 38 L.Ed. 867 (1894). Absent a constitutional violation, the principles of federalism require this Court to accept Missouri’s escape rule as formulated by Missouri’s courts. See Allen, 166 U.S. at 140-41, 17 S.Ct. at 526 (“We might ourselves have pursued a different course in this case, but that is not the test. The [appellant] must have been deprived of one of those fundamental rights, the observance of which is indispensable to the liberty of the citizen, to justify our interference.”). Ortegar-Rodriguez thus has relevance only to the extent it may influence the Missouri Supreme Court in the exercise of its supervisory authority over Missouri’s escape rule. See Robinson v. State, 854 S.W.2d 393, 395 n. 2 (Mo.1993) (en banc) (suggesting the possibility of that court’s reviewing Missouri’s escape rule in light of Ortegau-Rodriguez, but noting the issue had not yet come before it).
In the absence of a federal constitutional violation, this Court cannot grant habeas relief. Neither Branch nor the Court has described such a violation. We must resist the temptation to find in the Constitution a license to write into law our personal vision of how things ought to be. Fidelity to the Constitution demands, among other things, that we scrupulously refrain from asserting powers the Constitution, properly understood, does not give us. I would affirm the District Court’s denial of the writ.

. As the opinion of the Court suggests, ante at 374, it is rather clear that Branch's broad asser-tionof a due process violation, as set forth in her petition for the writ, did not properly raise the substantive due process issue in the District Court. It was not a subject of discussion in the court's denial of the writ. Moreover, the argument Branch makes in her brief is a procedural due process argument. See Brief of Appellant at 10-12. It was not until prodded by this Court at oral argument that counsel for Branch acknowledged he was advancing an argument based on substantive due process. Thus the issue may not be properly before this Court in the first instance, and I do not agree that “our refusal to consider the substantive due process question would be inconsistent with substantial justice.” Ante at 375. Nevertheless, because the Court bases its decision on substantive due process, I respond with this dissent addressing the merits of Branch’s putative substantive due process claim.

. Although the Court regularly proceeds on the assumption that the Due Process Clause has more than a procedural dimension, we must always bear in mind that the substantive content of the Clause is suggested neither by its language nor by preconstitutional history; that content is nothing more than the accumulated product of judicial interpretation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Regents of the Univ. of Mich. v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214, 225-26, 106 S.Ct. 507, 513-14, 88 L.Ed.2d 523 (1985) (quoting Moore v. City of E. Cleveland, Ohio, 431 U.S. 494, 543-44, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 1958-59, 52 , L.Ed.2d 531 (1977) (White, J., dissenting)).