Court Opinion

ID: 9738139
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:43:24.123051+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:03.965849
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(concurring in part). The issue for which we took this case, namely, the state’s complaint that the court of appeals erroneously reversed a conviction by improperly applying the harmless error test, does not, as the state candidly admitted in its petition to review (p. 3), meet any of the specific criteria set out in Rule 809.62(1), Stats. 1985-86, for granting a petition for review. As it turns out, however, the case has raised for the court a significant issue of law upon which the court is divided. The issue of law is the validity of one of the court’s holdings in State v. Dyess, 124 Wis. 2d 525, 370 N.W.2d 222 (1985), namely, that the test for harmless error does not turn on whether the error is of constitutional or non-constitutional magnitude (here*89after referred to as the Dyess issue). The state, the party involved in all criminal cases, has questioned the validity of the Dyess approach.
Unfortunately, the court decides the issue which does not meet the criteria for review and fails to decide the issue that does meet the criteria. Because the issue of harmless error arises in almost every criminal case in the circuit court, the court of appeals, and this court, I believe the court should decide the Dyess issue now and not leave it open, as it does in this case.
I recognize that the court raised the Dyess issue sua sponte in this case. The parties did not raise, brief, or argue the issue. I further recognize that this court should not decide cases on issues not raised, briefed or argued by the parties without giving the parties an opportunity to be heard. Of course in this case the court is deciding the case on the issue raised by the parties. It is therefore arguable that the court may decide the Dyess issue — which is not the determinative issue in the case — without affording the parties an opportunity to be heard. Nevertheless, I believe that the court would benefit from adversarial briefs on this important legal issue and that the court’s resolution of the issue would, in all probability, be sounder with the benefit of counsels’ assistance.
I conclude that the court should, as it has done in previous cases, order the parties to brief the issue the court has raised sua sponte and request amicus briefs so that the court can decide the Dyess issue promptly for the guidance of litigants, the circuit courts and the court of appeals. Accordingly, regardless of my position on the reversal of the decision of the court of appeals, I cannot join the majority opinion because it *90does not address what has turned out to be the major legal issue presented in the case.