Court Opinion

ID: 9422612
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:03:34.412015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:37.925597
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Goldberg,
with whom Mr. Justice Stewart joins,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent because the majority ignores what to me is the key to.disposition of this matter. The Illinois Supreme Court decided this case under a misapprehension as to a crucial point of federal constitutional law, but for which it might have resolved the ultimate question in favor of, rather than against, the petitioner.
The Illinois court concluded that the decision of this Court in Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12, operated prospec*425tively, and not retroactively, in the sense that it invali- ' dated only “existing financial barriers” to appeal. Given its view of Griffin, it was unnecessary for the state court to consider whether the petitioner, who concededly- could _ not obtain a transcript at the time of his original convie-j tion in 1941 because of his indigency, was at that time deprived of his constitutional rights. . Enabled by this erroneous interpretation of Griffin to put aside this basic constitutional issue,.' the Illinois Supreme .Court held only that its present rule, as applied to deny the petitioner a transcript now on his delayed appeal, was not unconstitutional.because that denial was based solely upon the present unavailability of th'e transcript, and not upon anything related to the petitioner’s indigency. The majority of this Court seems today to approve at least that holding of the state court, though on grounds different from those relied upon below.
The State Supreme Court was in error in its belief that the principles of Griffin have no application to denials of transcripts which occurred before Griffin was decided. Griffin was a constitutional decision vindicating basic Fourteenth Amendment rights arid is no more to be restricted in scope or application in time than other constitutional judgments. This, it seems to me, is the clear import of this Court’s decision in Eskridge v. Washington, 357 U. S. 214.*
*426Of course, we do not know how the Illinois court would have resolved the petitioner’s claim that he is entitléd either to a transcript or a new trial if it had viewed Griffin as having retroactive effect and'as controlling with respect to the constitutional deprivation which may have occurred inT941. Illinois has shown a broad and commendable latitude in implementing the principles enunciated in Griffin, and I would not presume to predict what its courts might do under a proper reading of that case. Because Illinois has not passed upon what is perhaps the controlling issue in the case, and because we ought not to anticipate and resolve difficult constitutional questions unless necessary, I would vacate and remand the case to the Supreme Court of Illinois to permit it to decide the question which it treated as foreclosed only because it believed Griffin’s application not to be fully retroactive.

The Illinois court said simply that Eskridge “did not held that the failure to furnish defendant with a free transcript in 1935 denied him a right guaranteed-by the fourteenth amendment, but held that the failure in 1956 to furnish him with a free transcript which was still available denied him of such a right.” 25 Ill. 2d 169, 173, 182 N. E. 2d 719, 720-721. Eskridge was thus read to mean merely “that such financial barriers could no longer be imposed by the State even though the indigent defendant was sentenced prior to the time the restrictions were invalidated.” Ibid. The issue in Eskridge, however, as presented on review of a 1956 state habeas corpus proceeding, was whether the petitioner there had been deprived of a *426constitutional right when first convicted in 1935 because he was then denied a transcript with which to prosecute an appeal as an indigent; this Court decided that issue in favor of Eskridge.