Court Opinion

ID: 9469478
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:41:36.299632+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:24.517056
License: Public Domain

LEVAL, District Judge,
Sitting by Designation, concurring:
I concur, but add a few words on the significance of petitioner’s failure to object at trial. As Judge Pierce notes, see supra note 5, the failure to object at trial should not be treated as a procedural bar to our consideration of the merits if it was not so treated by State appellate court. We should indeed not guard a state procedural rule more vigilantly than the state does. See Washington v. Harris, 650 F.2d 447, 452 (2d Cir. 1981).
This proposition means only that the door to the federal court will not be closed. It does not mean that the failure to object disappears from consideration. Upon the federal court’s examination of the question whether the state conviction violated petitioner’s constitutional rights, the failure to object remains a factor to be accorded whatever significance and weight it deserves.
A failure to object contemporaneously can be significant in a number of ways, apart from triggering a state law procedural bar. It is a part of the context of the alleged error. It can serve as a practical indication of the small importance of the incident, as appraised by trial counsel. It may result from a conscious choice by counsel to preserve the benefit of the error for appeal or collateral attack, rather than have it cured by bringing it to the trial judge’s attention. It can raise questions of fairness to the People. In the practical context of a trial, furthermore, it can even occur through a prior understanding between counsel and the trial judge that is not reflected on the record. (For example, counsel for defendants who do not testify often ask the trial judge to omit the standard draw-no-inference charge.)
*718A state appellate court’s consideration of the merits does not necessarily imply a finding that the failure to object should carry no adverse consequence for the defendant. By hypothesis, the cases we consider on habeas are those in which the state appellate court has ruled against the defendant. In this case, it can be confidently inferred from the opinion of the Appellate Division that its reason for reaching the merits was the importance of giving guidance to the lower courts on a question rendered controversial by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Sandstrom. There was no appraisal nor even mention in the majority opinion of the failure to object. Since the court ruled against petitioner on the merits, reference to his failure to object was unnecessary. The fact that the ruling was made on the merits carries no logical inference that the court rejected procedural considerations or found them to be without significance.
When the federal court considers the issue on habeas and rejects the state court’s analysis of the constitutional issue, it must then give whatever consideration is appropriate to the procedural context in determining whether the error committed calls for granting the writ and vacating the conviction. It would be anomalous if a federal appeals court considering functionally identical trial records, one on appeal from the district court and one on habeas from the state court, would affirm the federal conviction on a harmless finding, but vacate the state conviction over which federal review power is far more limited.
Because the charge in this case contained errors far more potent than the erroneous, but relatively bland, Sandstrom transgression, and because the faulty language bore directly on petitioner’s intent — the central issue in the case, petitioner’s failure to object does not alter the conclusion that he is entitled to a new trial.