Court Opinion

ID: 9460712
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:58:23.435144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:44.954002
License: Public Domain

BROWNING, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
I concur in the reversal of the judgment essentially for the reasons stated by Chief Judge Bazelon in his opinion in Mordecai v. United States, 421 F.2d 1133 (1969). As Judge Bazelon said of Mordecai, “appellant presents a forceful claim that the absence of counsel . at the time of his waiver must seriously undermine our confidence in the reliability of the process that led to *580his trial in an adult court,” but “[e]ven if nonpunitive rehabilitation in the juvenile process would have been the proper path in [1940], society can no longer offer what was then, rightly or wrongly, denied.” 421 F.2d at 1138.
The solution offered in' dissent only highlights the problem. The dissent recognizes that a person of Harris’s age (48) would not now be a fit and proper subject for juvenile court treatment. The alternative, it is suggested, is “a new trial in adult court.” See page 585, infra (Hufstedler, J., dissenting). But Harris does not suggest that his adult court proceeding was in any way defective. The proposed remedy is wholly unrelated to the fault.
It is true that the same impossibility of affording a suitable remedy was present in Kent itself. See page 585, n. 7, infra (Hufstedler, J., dissenting). However, retroactive application to Kent was necessitated by the Article III limitation of the power of federal courts to the decision of “Cases” and “Controversies.” Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 301, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967).