Court Opinion

ID: 9427032
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:30.214828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.422051
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Blackmun join,
concurring in the result.
I am not at all certain that the petitioner properly raised before the Court of Appeals the error upon which we today reverse and remand. While petitioner filed a pro se application for probable cause and for leave to appeal in forma pau-peris with the Court of Appeals, as far as the record shows, he did not allege any particular error on the part of the District Court. Again as far as the record shows, petitioner failed to bring the District Court’s error to anyone’s attention until his petition for certiorari in this Court. The lower courts are better equipped and suited to resolve factual errors of the nature raised here and such errors should therefore be raised before them in "{he first instance. Indeed, we would seem limited to only those questions explicitly presented to the Court of Appeals.
However, because it is now clear that the District Court erred in concluding that the petitioner had not raised the in-court identification issue before the state courts, I defer to the Court’s necessarily implied conclusion that the question was presented to the Court of Appeals and concur in the result.