Court Opinion

ID: 9463391
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:04:58.652897+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:04.169821
License: Public Domain

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
In Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 496, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 3052, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976), the Supreme Court held that “where the State has provided an opportunity for full and fair litigation of a Fourth Amendment claim, a state prisoner may not be granted federal habeas corpus relief on the ground that evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure was introduced at his trial.” In Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963), the Supreme Court held inapplicable to federal habeas proceedings the doctrine under which state judgments resting on an independent state procedural ground were not directly reviewable in that Court. Under Fay the district court might deny relief only where a petitioner had deliberately bypassed or knowingly waived his right to raise a federal constitutional claim in the state courts. This appeal raises the question whether a state that refuses to adjudicate a fourth amendment claim because of a defendant’s noncompliance with a state procedural rule when that noncompliance cannot be equated with a deliberate bypass nonetheless may be said to have afforded the “opportunity” to litigate a fourth amendment claim in the state courts, triggering Stone’s preclusion of federal habeas relief.
I read the majority opinion as equating O’Berry’s failure to make timely objection with the opportunity for full and fair consideration of his fourth amendment claim. The majority arrives at this equation without discussing, almost without noting, the very case in which the Supreme Court directly held that the independent state procedural ground doctrine, on which the majority here relies, does not apply to federal habeas corpus.
If this case stands, Fay has been effectively overruled as far as fourth amendment rights are concerned. The Stone Court did not clearly indicate such an intention. With all respect, I do not think that the majority opinion, thoughtful and sensitive in so many particulars, has offered sufficient justification for carrying Stone to this extent. Nor do I find that other developments in the Supreme Court have sapped Fay of vitality.
Perhaps one should reconcile oneself to the New Stone Age of jurisprudence. The imperative of judicial somnolence, however, is not yet unequivocal. I will not indulge the presumption that the Great Writ is to be further eroded, in this or any other context. The district court specifically found no indication of a Fay deliberate bypass. No substantial suggestion to the contrary is advanced here. I would conclude therefore that this petitioner did not have a full and fair opportunity to litigate his fourth amendment claim in the state courts. Accordingly, I would reach the merits of that claim and affirm the judgment of the district court.
I. Stone Versus Fay
As the - majority correctly recognizes, Stone itself did not explain the contours of its mandated “opportunity” to litigate fourth amendment claims. See also Pulver v. Cunningham, 419 F.Supp. 1221 (S.D.N.Y.1976). Stone was fundamentally concerned with the costs of permitting federal relitigation of state court rulings on fourth amendment objections. See, e. g., Stone, supra, 428 U.S. at 491, 96 S.Ct. at 3050. At least one state tribunal had reached a determination on the merits of the fourth amendment claims raised by the applicants who were before the Court. As a result, the Court’s decision operated only to close a federal forum to individuals who had exercised their opportunity to litigate fourth amendment claims in a state forum. The Court was not faced with, and did not allude to, the problem of determining whether or when a state’s withdrawal of that opportunity because of a procedural error would forfeit the right to federal collateral relief.1 The degree to which a state statu*1220tory roadblock can halt a fourth amendment claimant en route to the federal habeas forum is rather the problem faced by this court today.
More specifically, we must determine when failure to comply with a state procedural rule will act as a binding forfeiture, rather than a remediable denial, of a prisoner’s “opportunity for full and fair litigation” of his fourth amendment claim in the state courts.' The majority implies that a defendant who fails to comply for whatever reasons, benevolent or nefarious, knowing or ignorant, tactical or inadvertent, has not been denied the requisite opportunity. That is, assuming no deliberate bypass, assuming no knowing waiver, a statute that requires a contemporaneity in objecting to the introduction of evidence is sufficient under the majority’s reading conclusively to satisfy the state’s obligation to provide that opportunity.
The difference in the fate of the habeas applicants rebuffed in Stone and that of O’Berry must be emphasized. The prisoners in Stone did receive state court attention to the merits of their federal claim. Because of O’Berry’s procedural error, the majority’s decision means that he will never be permitted to place the merits of his federal claim before any forum. Fay v. Noia provides the traditional standard for application of the radical sanction imposed by the majority today. The majority alludes to Fay only in passing. I would begin and end there.
In Fay, the prisoner had failed to take a timely direct appeal in state court. The state asserted that this default in the face of a legitimate procedural rule precluded the habeas court from inquiry into the prisoner’s coerced confession claim. The court’s rejection of this position was unequivocal:
the doctrine under which state procedural defaults are held to constitute an adequate and independent state law ground barring direct Supreme Court review is not to be extended to limit the power granted the federal courts under the federal habeas statute.
372 U.S. at 399, 83 S.Ct. at 827. The Court then defined very narrowly the circumstances in which the failure to raise a federal claim in state court would cut off consideration of that claim in federal habeas proceedings:
If a habeas applicant, after consultation with competent counsel or otherwise, understandingly and knowingly forewent the privilege of seeking to vindicate his federal claims in the state courts, whether for strategic, tactical, or any other reasons that can fairly be described as the deliberate by-passing of state procedures, then it is open to the federal court on habeas to deny him all relief if the state courts refused to entertain his federal claims on the merits — though of course only after the federal court has satisfied itself, by holding a hearing or by some other means, of the facts bearing upon the applicant’s default.
372 U.S. at 439, 83 S.Ct. at 849. According to the Supreme Court, the exigencies of federalism surely required no more. Id. at 433, 83 S.Ct. 822.
II. Deciphering Stone
Nothing in Stone or the majority opinion persuades me that the Court’s choice of the term “opportunity for full and fair litigation” effected a pro tanto overruling of *1221Fay’s deliberate by-pass standard.2 The majority goes further, without sufficient justification in my opinion, than Stone compels it to do. After Stone, criminal defendants remain entitled to have state courts exclude from their trials evidence seized in violation of the fourth amendment. The states remain bound to provide defendants an opportunity to have such claims determined on the merits. I would read Stone’s unelaborated choice of the term “opportunity”, consistently with Fay, to imply that noncompliance with state procedural rules will preclude consideration of a fourth amendment claim on the merits in federal habeas proceedings only if that noncompliance was the product of a deliberate, knowing decision of defendant and his counsel.
First, the Court in Stone admittedly reemphasized its position that the exclusionary rule “is not a personal constitutional right . . . Instead, ‘the rule is a judicially created remedy designed to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its deterrent effect.’ ” Stone, supra, 428 U.S. at 486, 96 S.Ct. at 3048. See also United States v. Peltier, 422 U.S. 531, 95 S.Ct. 2313, 45 L.Ed.2d 374 (1975); United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974). Whatever the precise significance of this unexplained limbo between remedies that are a “necessary incident” of a constitutional guarantee of individual liberty and those imposed under the Court’s supervisory powers, see Monaghan, The Supreme Court 1974 Term, Fore-ward: Constitutional Common Law, 89 Harv.L.Rev. 1 (1975), Stone nevertheless made quite plain that defendants are still entitled to have state courts exclude evidence seized in violation of the fourth amendment, a requirement that must ultimately be derived from the Constitution. The fact that in some sense the exclusionary rule is not a “personal constitutional right” simply does not begin to explain in what circumstances federal habeas proceedings will remain unavailable when the state courts, in enforcing a procedural rule, refuse to consider the “remedy” Stone leaves intact. The fourth amendment’s clothing may be ragged, its raiment thin, but that in itself does not determine that the protection of this tatterdemalian is to be forever denied a defendant who, without any knowing waiver or tactical decision not to object, is convicted through the use of unconstitutionally seized evidence.
Moreover, the Stone discussion of the high costs of the limited deterrence provided by enforcement of fourth amendment claims on collateral attack does not readily apply to the situation in which the state courts have made no determination on the merits. Stone concluded that, costs notwithstanding, the deterrence rationale supported continued enforcement of the exclusionary rule at trial and on direct appeal. One is entitled to assume the sincerity of that conclusion. The exclusionary rule has been stoned, but it is not dead. The authoritative view remains that it is worth the social costs for law enforcement officers to know that someone will measure their behavior against the fourth amendment. Stone clearly determined that where the state has passed on a fourth amendment claim, the additional deterrent effect of collateral review is not worth the price. It remains consistent with the Court’s deterrence analysis, however, for the federal courts to consider claims where the states have not.
In the first place, the majority’s approach might result in a dilution of deterrent effect beyond the level left intact in Stone. Given the oppressive case loads on public defender offices and the frequently lax standard of representation enforced by federal courts in the name of the sixth amendment, a rule precluding habeas review whenever a state defendant had not raised a fourth amendment objection in the state courts could operate as a significant inducement to officers to leave the fourth amendment behind.
*1222Second, an officer admittedly may not be significantly moved by a grant of the writ based on his behavior several years earlier. Such a simplistic view overlooks another aspect of the exclusionary rule’s deterrent effect:
[t]he exclusionary rule is not aimed at special deterrence since it does not impose any direct punishment on a law enforcement official who has broken the rule . . The exclusionary rule is aimed at affecting the wider audience of law enforcement officials and society at large. It is meant to discourage violations by individuals who have never experienced any sanction for them.
As a visible expression of social disapproval for the violation of these guarantees, the exclusionary rule makes the guarantees of the fourth amendment credible. Its example teaches the importance attached to observing them.
Oaks, Studying the Exclusionary Rule in Search and Seizure, 37 U.Chi.L.Rev. 665, 709-11 (1974). Determination of fourth amendment claims in federal habeas proceedings on occasions when state courts have made no determination effectuates the Stone conclusion that this society shall maintain that “visible expression” and provide at least one level of enforcement of the exclusionary rule. More simply, the fourth amendment stone is still to be turned once; it makes little difference in terms of the costs and benefits that may be tied to the exclusionary rule itself whether the federal or state courts do the turning.
The majority today has added no stronger reasons for applying Stone to those who have not knowingly waived their rights to assert fourth amendment claims in state court. The majority’s discussion of Henry v. Mississippi, 379 U.S. 443, 85 S.Ct. 564, 13 L.Ed.2d 408 (1965), unfortunately serves only to signify the degree to which it has missed the importance of Fay. Henry was a direct appeal in which the Court applied the independent state procedural ground doctrine. The Court specifically noted that a dismissal on that ground would not preclude habeas relief unless the petitioner had deliberately bypassed the state courts. The majority today determines that Stone has diluted Fay’s deliberate bypass standard in the fourth amendment context. An unhappy irony is that it does so in part on the basis of the direct appeal taken by Mr. Henry, who, despite his failure to tender a fourth amendment claim in compliance with a state contemporaneous objection rule, ultimately was released pursuant to a grant of the Great Writ when a federal district court in this circuit determined that his procedural default had not constituted a knowing waiver. See Henry v. Williams, 299 F.Supp. 36 (N.D.Miss.1969).
The majority points out that its rule is consistent with the fact that Stone requires only an opportunity for litigation, rather than litigation itself. Application of the Fay test is equally consistent with Stone. Neither standard suggests that Stone applies only when a state court actually reached the merits of the fourth amendment claim.
Finally, Stone's unexceptionable vote of confidence in state court enforcement of fourth amendment rights does diminish any concern that those tribunals will employ procedural rules to avoid disfavored constitutional claims. Nonetheless that observation may apply equally to the universe of constitutional claims outside the fourth amendment. Stone explicitly purports to limit itself to the latter and can provide no authority for diluting the Fay waiver standard outside the fourth amendment context. As long as Fay itself validly applies to those remaining claims, regardless of shifting perceptions of the quality of state courts, those perceptions provide no authority for diluting Fay in the fourth amendment context alone.
III. Fay Today
Placing such reliance on Fay, I am obligated to consider another stone recently thrown in its path. In Francis v. Henderson, 425 U.S. 536, 96 S.Ct. 1708, 48 L.Ed.2d 149 (1976), the court held that a state defendant who failed to make a timely pre*1223trial objection to the composition of the grand jury could not raise that objection in federal habeas proceedings absent a showing of cause for the failure and actual prejudice. Dissenting, Justice Brennan candidly commented that the decision could be read to stop short of overruling Fay across the board only if the decision meant that the consequences of the failure timely to object in accordance with state law varied with the constitutional right implicated in the objection. I join Justice Brennan in assuming that the Supreme Court will squarely come to grips with Fay if it feels the decision has proved unsound. But see Shapiro, Justice Rehnquist, A Preliminary View, 90 Harv.L.Rev. 293, 352-54 & nn. 310, 312 (1976). Accordingly, I view Francis as sui generis, resting on particular problems raised by objections to the process of initiating prosecutions. As the Court in Francis emphasized, the state has a very strong interest in enforcing a requirement that objections to grand jury composition be made prior to trial. If it fails to enforce such a requirement, a defendant likely has only an indictment from a new grand jury to gain by pretrial objection. The strong temptation would be to save the objection to obtain a reversal in the event acquittal was not forthcoming. Such an incentive structure generally does not exist with regard to fourth amendment suppression motions. A successful motion will frequently impair, if not destroy, the prosecution’s ability to proceed. Absent the strong state interest in a procedural rule as evidenced in Francis, I see no reason to depart from Fay’s determination that the “exigencies of federalism” do not realistically require a narrower opening to the writ’s relief than that comprehended in the “knowing waiver” or “deliberate bypass” standard.3
CONCLUSION
Under Stone criminal defendants are entitled to have state courts deny admission to unconstitutionally seized evidence. Federal habeas proceedings stand open to assure defendants an opportunity to exercise that entitlement. As long as both of these premises remain valid, I would measure the forfeiture of that assurance by the standard employed generally to measure the forfeiture of federal collateral attack on the basis of past noncompliance with state procedural rules — the “deliberate bypass” or “knowing waiver” of Fay v. Noia. The majority erects from the Supreme Court stepping stone a fourth amendment overpass bypassing Fay itself almost without mention of that opinion. Perhaps it too closely followed the example of that Court. If I may respectfully suggest as much, I would join Justice Brennan in distress at decisions
where the Court also exposes its hostility towards and makes substantial inroads into the precedential force of Fay without directly confronting its underlying premises, its continuing validity, or the possibility of distinguishing the failure to raise different constitutional rights in a timely manner in the state courts.
If the Court believes that Fay is no longer good law, and if the Court has the “institutional duty” to develop and expli*1224cate the law in a reasoned and consistent manner, then it has the duty to face squarely our prior cases interpreting the federal habeas statutes and honestly state the reasons, if any, for its altered perceptions of federal habeas jurisdiction.
Francis v. Henderson, supra, 425 U.S. at 546-547, 96 S.Ct. at 1714 (Brennan, J., dissenting). Until the Supreme Court does so in large letters, I shall continue to pay homage at the shrine of Fay.
This petitioner’s failure to object did not transgress the standard set in that landmark case. Thus I would conclude that the merits of his fourth amendment claim were properly before the district court under Stone. Because I would affirm that court’s judgment on the merits, I respectfully dissent.

. Stone offered no explanation of the significance of the term “opportunity for a full and fair litigation” beyond a citation to Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d *1220770 (1963). See Stone, supra, 428 U.S. at 494, n.36, 96 S.Ct. at 3052, n.36. I agree with the majority that the citation does not mean federal habeas will always be available when the state courts fail to make a determination on the merits in accordance with Townsend criteria. The citation suggests rather that when a determination on the merits is made, it must meet Townsend criteria. The use of the term “opportunity”, however, suggests that a determination on the merits will not always be a prerequisite to application of Stone. The question before us is when a litigant will be deemed to have had the opportunity to make his claim and forfeited it. Townsend does not directly relate to this question; citation of that case, however, suggests if anything a presumption against forfeiture.

. One commentator has already recognized that application of Stone to state prisoners like O’Berry, who failed to raise a fourth amendment claim in state court but cannot be said to have deliberately bypassed state procedures, would be inconsistent with Fay. See The Supreme Court, 1975 Term, 90 Harv.L.Rev. 56, 218, n.45.