Court Opinion

ID: 9429819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:01.865033+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:21.806935
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice
joins, dissenting.
In this case the Court creates virtually out of whole cloth a Fourteenth Amendment due process right to effective assistance of counsel on the appeal of a criminal conviction. The materials with which it works — previous cases requiring that indigents be afforded the same basic tools as those who are not indigent in appealing their criminal convictions, and our cases interpreting the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of the “assistance of counsel” at a criminal trial — simply are not equal to the task they are called upon to perform.
The Court relies heavily on the statement in Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U. S. 600, 608-609 (1974), that “[t]he precise rationale for the Griffin and Douglas lines of cases has never been explicitly stated, some support being derived from the Equal Protection Clause . . . and some from the Due Process Clause.” But today’s Court ignores the conclusion of the six Justices who joined in Ross:
“Unfairness results only if indigents are singled out by the State and denied meaningful access to the appellate system because of their poverty. That question is more profitably considered under an equal protection analysis.” Id., at 611.
As further precedential support for a right to due process on appeal, the Court cites passing dictum in Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U. S. 660 (1983), but that case has nothing to do with appellate review. In fact, this Court’s precedents have not imposed any procedural requirements on state appeals other *407than to bar procedures that operate to accord indigents a narrower scope of appellate review than nonindigents.
At one place in Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353, 357 (1963), the Court stated that the additional obstacles placed in the path of an indigent seeking to appeal a conviction did not “comport with fair procedure,” but it explained this unfairness entirely in terms of inequality:
“There is lacking that equality demanded by the Fourteenth Amendment where the rich man, who appeals as of right, enjoys the benefit of counsel’s examination into the record, research of the law, and marshalling of arguments on his behalf, while the indigent, already burdened by a preliminary determination that his case is without merit, is forced to shift for himself.” Id., at 357-358.
Even the plurality in Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12, 18-19 (1956), simply held that the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses protect indigents from “invidious discrimina-tions” on appeal and that such persons “must be afforded as adequate appellate review as defendants who have money enough to buy transcripts.” Moreover, Justice Frankfurter, whose concurrence was necessary to the decision, viewed the decision as a matter of equal protection. Id., at 21-22.
In similar vein, a fair reading of our other cases dealing with appellate review cited by the Court reveals uniform reliance on equal protection concepts and not due process.* *408Contrary to the Court’s characterization, Anders v. California, 386 U. S. 738 (1967), Entsminger v. Iowa, 386 U. S. 748 (1967), and Jones v. Barnes, 463 U. S. 745 (1983), do not create for indigents a right to effective assistance of counsel on appeal and thus per force confer such a right on non-indigents; these cases simply require appointed appellate counsel to represent their clients with the same vigor as retained counsel ordinarily represent their paying clients.
Neither the language of the Constitution nor this Court’s precedents establish a right to effective assistance of counsel on appeal. The Sixth Amendment provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right. . . to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense” (emphasis added). As the Court observes, this language has been interpreted to confer a right to effective assistance of counsel, and its guarantee has been extended to state criminal prosecutions by incorporation into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But the words “prosecutions” and “defense” plainly indicate that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel applies only to trial level proceedings. At this stage, the accused needs an attorney “as a shield to protect him against being 'haled into court’ by the State and stripped of *409his presumption of innocence.” Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U. S., at 610-611.
An appeal by a convicted criminal is an entirely different matter. He has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and, if sentenced to a term of imprisonment, is subject to immediate deprivation of his liberty without any constitutional requirement of further proceedings. He seeks “to upset the prior determination of guilt” and universally is permitted to retain an attorney to serve “as a sword” in that endeavor. Id., at 611. There is no question that an attorney is of substantial, if not critical, assistance on appeal, and those who can afford an attorney are well advised to retain one and commonly do so. Accordingly, as a matter of equal protection, we held in Douglas v. California, supra, that the States must provide an attorney to those who cannot afford one so that they stand on equal footing with nonindigents in seeking to upset their convictions. The Court, however, extends that right beyond its supporting rationale.
There is no constitutional requirement that a State provide an appeal at all. “It is wholly within the discretion of the State to allow or not to allow such a review.” McKane v. Durston, 153 U. S. 684, 687 (1894). If a State decides to confer a right of appeal, it is free to do so “upon such terms as in its wisdom may be deemed proper.” Id., at 687-688. This decision was not a constitutional aberration. There was no right of appeal from federal convictions until 1889 when Congress granted a right of direct review in the Supreme Court in capital cases. In 1891 Congress extended this right to include “otherwise infamous” crimes. See Carroll v. United States, 354 U. S. 394, 400, n. 9 (1957); 1 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law *325 (1896). Similarly, there was no right of appeal from criminal convictions in England until 1907. See Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S., at 21 (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment); E. Jenks, A Short History of English Law 353 (6th ed. 1949). In both coun*410tries, the concept of due process in criminal proceedings is addressed almost entirely to the fairness of the trial.
Citing Wainwright v. Torna, 455 U. S. 586, 587-588 (1982) (per curiam), the Court candidly acknowledges that “[o]f course, the right to effective assistance of counsel is dependent on the right to counsel itself." Ante, at 397, n. 7. Proper analysis of our precedents would indicate that apart from the Equal Protection Clause, which respondent has not invoked in this case, there cannot be a constitutional right to counsel on appeal, and that, therefore, even under the logic of the Court there cannot be derived a constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel on appeal.
The Court cites by analogy Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254 (1970), for the proposition that a State that confers a right to appeal, though not required to confer such a right, must establish appellate procedures that satisfy the Due Process Clause. Goldberg and the other so-called “entitlement” cases are totally inapposite. They turn on the fact that the State has created a form of “property,” and the Due Process Clause by its express terms applies to deprivations of “property.” True, the Due Process Clause also expressly applies to deprivations of “liberty,” which is the basis for incorporating the Sixth Amendment right to counsel into the Fourteenth Amendment. But respondent’s “liberty” was deprived by his lawful state criminal conviction, see Ross v. Moffitt, supra, at 610-611, not his unsuccessful attempt to upset that conviction by appellate attack. The statement in Griffin v. Illinois, supra, at 18, that Illinois has created appellate courts as “an integral part of the Illinois trial system for finally adjudicating the guilt or innocence of a defendant” is only a characterization of the Illinois court system by a plurality of the Court and is inconsistent with the general view of state appellate review expressed more recently by six Members of the Court in Ross v. Moffit, supra, at 610-611.
*411The consequences of the Court’s decision seem undesirable. Challenges to trial counsel’s performance have become routine in federal habeas petitions. Now lawfully-convicted criminals who have no meritorious bases for attacking the conduct of their trials will be able to tie up the courts with habeas petitions alleging defective performance by appellate counsel. The result is akin to the effect created when a mirror is held facing another mirror, the image repeating itself to infinity.
Today’s decision also undermines the ability of both the state and the federal courts to enforce procedural rules on appeal. Presumably, rules which are common to almost every appellate system in our country providing for dismissal of an appeal for failure to comply with reasonable time limits, see, e. g., Fed. Rule App. Proc. 31(c), can no longer be enforced against a criminal defendant on appeal. The Court’s understandable sympathy with a criminal defendant who has been badly served by the lawyer whom he hired to represent him in appealing his conviction has lead it to treat the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as a general dispensing authority, by the use of which the Court may indiscriminately free litigants from the consequences of their attorneys’ neglect or malpractice. In most other areas of fife and law we are bound, often to our prejudice, by the acts and omissions of our agents, and I do not believe that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States from carrying over that generally recognized principle to the prosecution of appeals from a judgment of conviction.

See Eskridge v. Washington State Board of Prison Terms and Paroles, 357 U. S. 214, 216 (1958) (per curiam) (“[W]e . . . hold that, ‘[d]estitute defendants must be afforded as adequate appellate review as defendants who have money enough to buy transcripts,’ ” quoting Griffin, 351 U. S., at 19); Burns v. Ohio, 360 U. S. 252, 258 (1959) (“Indigents must. . . have the same opportunities to invoke the discretion of the Supreme Court of Ohio”); Lane v. Brown, 372 U. S. 477, 484-485 (1963) (“The present case falls clearly within the area staked out by . . . Griffin, Burns, Smith [v. Bennett, 365 U. S. 708 (1961)], and Eskridge. ...” “Such a procedure, based on indigency alone, does not meet constitutional standards”); Draper *408v. Washington, 372 U. S. 487, 496 (1963) (“[T]he duty of the State is to provide the indigent as adequate and effective an appellate review as that given appellants with funds — the State must provide the indigent defendant with means of presenting his contentions to the appellate court which are as good as those available to a nonindigent defendant with similar contentions”); Anders v. California, 386 U. S. 738, 745 (1967) (“assure penniless defendants the same rights and opportunities on appeal — as nearly as is practicable — as are enjoyed by those persons who are in a similar situation but who are able to afford the retention of private counsel”); Swenson v. Bosler, 386 U. S. 258, 259 (1967) (per curiam) (assistance of counsel on only appeal as of right “may not be denied to a criminal defendant, solely because of his indigency”). See also Entsminger v. Iowa, 386 U. S. 748, 751-752 (1967) (relies on Griffin-Douglas line of cases and Anders); Jones v. Barnes, 463 U. S. 745, 750-754 (1983) (interpreting Douglas and Anders).