Court Opinion

ID: 9427049
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:32.744093+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.664451
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
dissenting.
I cannot agree with the Court of Appeals that the failure of a state trial judge to express the legal standard under which *518he has declared a mistrial is, in itself and without further examination of the record, sufficient reason to infer constitutional error foreclosing a second trial. The Court’s opinion in Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293 (1963), is to the contrary. There, in the course of a full scale exposition of the proper approach to be followed by a federal court in determining whether a writ of habeas corpus should be issued on the petition of a state prisoner, the Court addressed the situation where the state trial judge, in making the challenged ruling, did not articulate the constitutional standard under which he acted. The Court concluded that “the coequal responsibilities of state and federal judges in the administration of federal constitutional law are such that we think the district judge may, in the ordinary case in which there has been no articulation, properly assume that the state trier of fact applied correct standards of federal law to the facts, in the absence of evidence . . . that there is reason to suspect that an incorrect standard was in fact applied.” Id., at 314-315. A silent record is not a sufficient basis for concluding that the state judge has committed constitutional error; the mere possibility of error is not enough to warrant habeas corpus relief.
The Court of Appeals, as well as the District Court, was therefore in error in granting relief without further examination of the record to determine whether the use of an incorrect legal standard was sufficiently indicated by something beyond mere silence and, if not, whether the declaration of a mistrial, which the Court of Appeals said it was “normally inclined to uphold,” at least in the absence of “clear abuse of discretion,” was constitutionally vulnerable. I would not, however, undertake an examination of the record here in the first instance. Rather, I would vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and direct that court to remand the case to the District Court to make the initial judgment, under the correct legal standard, as to whether the writ should issue. *519This disagreement with the Court’s disposition leads me to dissent.