Court Opinion

ID: 9429356
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:26:30.362239+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:19.155228
License: Public Domain

Justice Marshall,
with whom Justice Brennan joins, dissenting.
I cannot subscribe to the Court’s conclusion that the procedure followed by the Court of Appeals in this case was “not inconsistent with our cases.” Ante, at 890. Nor can I accept the notion that it would be proper for a court of appeals to adopt special “summary procedures” for capital cases. Ante, at 894. On the merits, I would vacate petitioner’s death sentence.
I
I wholeheartedly agree that when a state prisoner has obtained a certificate of probable cause to appeal from the denial of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, he “must then be afforded an opportunity to address the merits, and the court of appeals is obligated to decide the merits of the appeal.” Ante, at 893. A prisoner who has made the showing necessary to obtain a certificate of probable cause has satisfied the only condition that Congress has placed on the right to appeal *907in habeas corpus cases.1 We have repeatedly held that once a certificate of probable cause has been granted, an appeal must be “duly considered”2 and “disposed of on the merits”3 by the court of appeals “in accord with its ordinary procedure.”4
I likewise agree that “[alpproving the execution of a defendant before his appeal is decided on the merits would clearly be improper,” and that “a court of appeals, where necessary to prevent the case from becoming moot by the petitioner’s execution, should grant a stay of execution pending disposition of [his] appeal.” Ante, at 889, 893-894. A prisoner’s right to appeal would be meaningless if the State were allowed to execute him before his appeal could be considered and decided. Although the question had not been decided by this Court until today, with the exception of the Fifth Circuit’s rulings in this case and in Brooks v. Estelle, 697 F. 2d 586, stay and cert, before judgment denied, 459 U. S. 1061 (1982),5 the Courts of Appeals have consistently held that a stay of execution must be granted unless it is clear that the *908prisoner’s appeal is entirely frivolous. See, e. g., Goode v. Wainwright, 670 F. 2d 941, 942 (CA11 1982); Shaw v. Martin, 613 F. 2d 487, 492 (CA4 1980) (Phillips, J.); United States ex rel. DeVita v. McCorkle, 214 F. 2d 823 (CA3 1954); Fouquette v. Bernard, 198 F. 2d 96, 97 (CA9 1952) (Denman, C. J.).6 This rule reflects a recognition of the simple fact that “[i]n the very nature of proceedings on a motion for stay of execution, the limited record coupled with the time constraints . . . preclude any fine-tuned inquiry into the actual merits.” Shaw v. Martin, supra, at 492.
Given the Court’s acceptance of these basic principles, I frankly do not understand how the Court can conclude that the Court of Appeals’ treatment of this case was “tolerable.” Ante, at 892. If, as the Court says, the Court of Appeals was “obligated to decide the merits of the appeal,” ante, at 893, it most definitely failed to discharge that obligation, for the court never ruled on petitioner’s appeal. It is simply false to say that “the Court of Appeals ruled on the merits of the appeal.” Ante, at 891. The record plainly shows that the Court of Appeals did no such thing. It neither dismissed the appeal as frivolous nor affirmed the judgment of the District Court. The Court of Appeals made one ruling and one ruling only: it refused to stay petitioner’s execution. Had this Court not granted a stay, petitioner would have been put to death without his appeal ever having been decided one way or the other.
The Court is flatly wrong in suggesting that any defect was merely technical because the Court of Appeals could have “verified] the obvious by expressly affirming the judgment *909of the District Court” at the same time it denied a stay. Ante, at 891. The Court of Appeals’ failure to decide petitioner’s appeal was no oversight. The court simply had no authority to decide the appeal on the basis of the papers before it. In response to a question on this very point at oral argument, respondent expressly conceded that the Court of Appeals was in no position to affirm the District Court’s judgment:
“QUESTION: Do you think [the Court of Appeals] could as well have concluded that the judgment of the District Court should be affirmed?
“MR. BECKER: No, sir . . . .” Tr. of Oral. Arg. 39.
Neither the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, nor the local rules of the Fifth Circuit, nor any decision of the Fifth Circuit, would have authorized an affirmance prior to the filing of briefs on the merits.7
Nor could the Court of Appeals have dismissed petitioner’s appeal as frivolous. Although Rule 20 of the local rules of the Fifth Circuit permits dismissal of a frivolous appeal, petitioner’s appeal was not subject to dismissal under this Rule for the simple reason — also conceded by the State at oral argument, Tr. of Oral Arg. 32 — that it was not frivolous.
The Court of Appeals did not, because it could not, decide petitioner’s appeal. What the court decided, and all that it decided, was that the likelihood of petitioner’s prevailing on the merits was insufficient to justify the delay that would result from staying his execution pending the disposition of his *910appeal.8 The question before us is whether this ruling was permissible, and it cannot be avoided by erroneously assuming that the Court of Appeals could have decided petitioner’s appeal at the same time it denied a stay.
The very principles stated by the Court in Part II-B of its opinion provide the answer to this question. Once a prisoner has obtained a certificate of probable cause to appeal, “the court of appeals is obligated to decide the merits of the appeal.” Ante, at 893. We have so held on no less than three separate occasions. See Garrison v. Patterson, 391 U. S. 464, 466 (1968) (per curiam); Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U. S. 234, 242 (1968); Nowakowski v. Maroney, 386 U. S. 542, 543 (1967) (per curiam). As the Court also recognizes, ante, at 893-894, a court of appeals cannot fulfill this obligation if it permits the State to execute the prisoner before his appeal is decided. “[I]f there is probable cause for the appeal it would be a mockery of federal justice to execute [the prisoner] pending its consideration.” Fouquette v. Bernard, supra, at 97.
The Court’s effort to reconcile the procedure followed by the Court of Appeals with these principles is based on an egregious misreading of Garrison v. Patterson. Ante, at 891. We explicitly stated in Garrison that “when a district court grants a certificate of probable cause the court of appeals must ‘proceed to a disposition of the appeal in accord with its ordinary procedure.’” 391 U. S., at 466, quoting Nowakowski v. Maroney, supra, at 543. In an attempt to avoid the obvious import of this statement, the Court quotes out of context a footnote in Garrison in which we stated that “[i]n an effort to determine whether the merits had been addressed” we had “solicited further submissions from the parties.” 391 U. S., at 466, n. 2. Even the most cursory examination of the opinion in Garrison shows why this footnote *911provides no support whatsoever for the Court’s conclusion that consideration of the merits in ruling on a stay makes an actual decision on the merits of an appeal unnecessary.
In Garrison, in contrast to this case, the Court of Appeals did decide the prisoner’s appeal. It issued an order in which it granted a certificate of probable cause and in the next sentence affirmed the District Court’s decision without explanation. Id., at 465. To determine whether this was merely a pro forma decision unaccompanied by any real consideration of the issues, we solicited further submissions from the parties “to determine whether the merits had been addressed ... at the unrecorded hearing” before the Court of Appeals. Id., at 466, n. 2. Since the responses we received did not demonstrate that the Court of Appeals had actually considered the merits, ibid., we reversed and remanded for further consideration of the appeal.
Garrison establishes that consideration of the merits is necessary to satisfy a court of appeals’ statutory obligation. It in no way suggests, however, that consideration of the merits can ever be a substitute for an actual ruling on the appeal. Garrison held that the Court of Appeals had failed to discharge its statutory obligation even though it did decide the prisoner’s appeal. This holding cannot be transformed into authority for the proposition that a court of appeals need not decide a prisoner’s appeal at all if it considers the merits of the appeal in ruling on an interlocutory motion.
The Court offers no justification for the procedure followed by the Court of Appeals because there is none. A State has no legitimate interest in executing a prisoner before he has obtained full review of his sentence. A stay of execution pending appeal causes no harm to the State apart from the minimal burden of providing a jail cell for the prisoner for the period of time necessary to decide his appeal. By contrast, a denial of a stay on the basis of a hasty finding that the prisoner is not likely to succeed on his appeal permits the State to execute him prior to full review of a concededly substantial *912constitutional challenge to his sentence. If the court’s hurried evaluation of the appeal proves erroneous, as is entirely possible when difficult legal issues are decided without adequate time for briefing and full consideration, the execution of the prisoner will make it impossible to undo the mistake.
Once a federal judge has decided, as the District Judge did here, that a prisoner under sentence of death has raised a substantial constitutional claim, it is a travesty of justice to permit the State to execute him before his appeal can be considered and decided. If a prisoner’s statutory right to appeal means anything, a State simply cannot be allowed to kill him and thereby moot his appeal.
I — I I — I HH
Not content with approving the precipitous procedure followed in this case, the Court also proceeds to suggest in Part II-B of its opinion that a court of appeals might properly adopt special “summary procedures” for “all or . . . selected cases in which a stay of a death sentence has been requested.” Ante, at 894.
It is important to bear in mind that the Court’s suggestion is directed at cases in which a certificate of probable cause to appeal has been granted and the court of appeals has concluded that the appeal is not frivolous.9 If the prisoner had been sentenced to any punishment other than death, his appeal would therefore have been considered and decided in *913accord with the court of appeals’ ordinary procedure. But since he has been sentenced to death, and since his scheduled date of execution is imminent, his appeal is to be decided under special truncated procedures. In short, an appeal that raises a substantial constitutional question is to be singled out for summary treatment solely because the State has announced its intention to execute the appellant before the ordinary appellate procedure has run its course.
This is truly a perverse suggestion. If full briefing and argument are generally regarded as necessary to fair and careful review of a nonfrivolous appeal — and they are — there is absolutely no justification for providing fewer procedural protections solely because a man’s life is at stake. Given the irreversible nature of the death penalty, it would be hard to think of any class of cases for which summary procedures would be less appropriate than capital cases presenting a substantial constitutional issue.
The difference between capital cases and other cases is “the basis of differentiation in law in diverse ways,” Williams v. Georgia, 349 U. S. 375, 391 (1955) (footnote omitted), but until today it had never been suggested, so far as I know, that fewer safeguards are required where life is at stake than where only liberty or property is at stake. This Court has always insisted that the need for procedural safeguards is particularly great where life is at stake. Long before the Court established the right to counsel in all felony cases, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963), it recognized that right in capital cases, Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 71-72 (1932). Time and again the Court has condemned procedures in capital cases that might be completely acceptable in an ordinary case. See, e. g., Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U. S. 430 (1981); Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S. 625 (1980); Green v. Georgia, 442 U. S. 95 (1979) (per curiam); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978); Gardner v. Florida, 430 U. S. 349 (1977); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280 (1976). *914These decisions reflect an appreciation of the fundamental fact that
“the penalty of death is qualitatively different from a sentence of imprisonment, however long. Death, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two.” Id., at 305 (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) (footnote omitted).
Because of this basic difference between the death penalty and all other punishments, this Court has consistently recognized that there is “a corresponding difference in the need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case.” Ibid. See Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104, 117-118 (1982) (O’Connor, J., concurring); Beck v. Alabama, supra, at 637-638; Lockett v. Ohio, supra, at 604-605 (plurality opinion).
By suggesting that special summary procedures might be adopted solely for capital cases, the majority turns this established approach on its head. Given that its suggestion runs contrary to this Court’s repeated insistence on the particular need for reliability in capital cases, one would have expected some indication of why it might conceivably be appropriate to adopt such procedures. Instead, the suggestion is offered without explanation in a conclusory paragraph. In the entire majority opinion the only hint of a possible rationale is the Court’s cryptic quotation of the following statement in Lambert v. Barrett, 159 U. S. 660, 662 (1895):
“It is natural that counsel for the condemned in a capital case should lay hold of every ground which, in their judgment, might tend to the advantage of their client, but the administration of justice ought not to be interfered with on mere pretexts.” Quoted, ante, at 888.
If, as the quotation of this statement suggests, the Court’s approval of summary procedures rests on an assumption that appeals by prisoners under sentence of death are generally *915frivolous, the conclusive answer is that this assumption is contrary to both law and fact.
It is contrary to law because we are dealing here with cases in which the federal judge most familiar with the case has concluded that a substantial constitutional claim is presented and in which the court of appeals has agreed that the appeal is not frivolous. It is contrary to fact because experience shows that prisoners on death row have succeeded in an extraordinary number of their appeals. Of the 34 capital cases decided on the merits by Courts of Appeals since 1976 in which a prisoner appealed from the denial of habeas relief, the prisoner has prevailed in no fewer than 23 cases, or approximately 70% of the time.10 In the Fifth Circuit, of the 21 capital cases in which the prisoner was the appellant, the prisoner has prevailed in 15 cases.11 This record establishes beyond any doubt that a very large proportion of federal habeas corpus appeals by prisoners on death row are meritorious, even though they present claims that have been unsuccessful in the state courts, that this Court in its discretion has decided not to review on certiorari, and that a federal district judge has rejected.
In view of the irreversible nature of the death penalty and the extraordinary number of death sentences that have been found to suffer from some constitutional infirmity, it would be grossly improper for a court of appeals to establish special summary procedures for capital cases. The only consolation I can find in today’s decision is that the primary responsibility for selecting the appropriate procedures for these appeals lies, as the Court itself points out, ante, at 892, with the courts of appeals. Cf. In re Burwell, 350 U. S. 521, 522 (1956) (per curiam). Notwithstanding the profoundly disturbing attitude reflected in today’s opinion, I am hopeful that few circuit judges would ever support the adoption of *916procedures that would afford less consideration to an appeal in which a man’s life is at stake than to an appeal challenging an ordinary money judgment.
> HH
Adhering to my view that the death penalty is under all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, see Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 231 (1976) (Marshall, J., dissenting); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238, 358-369 (1972) (Marshall, J., concurring), I would vacate petitioner’s death sentence.

 Title 28 U. S. C. § 2253 provides that “[i]n a habeas corpus proceeding before a circuit or district judge, the final order shall be subject to review, on appeal, by the court of appeals for the circuit where the proceeding is had,” if the petitioner obtains a certificate of probable cause from “the justice or judge who rendered the order or a circuit justice or judge.”

 Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U. S. 234, 242 (1968).

 Garrison v. Patterson, 391 U. S. 464, 466 (1968) (per curiam).

 Nowakowski v. Maroney, 386 U. S. 542, 543 (1967) (per curiam). See generally Blackmun, Allowance of In Forma Pauperis Appeals in § 2255 and Habeas Corpus Cases, 43 F. R. D. 343 (1967).

 While the Fifth Circuit followed a procedure in Brooks v. Estelle similar to that employed here, this Court’s denial of Brooks’ application for a stay and petition for certiorari before judgment does not constitute a precedent approving this procedure. Denials of certiorari never have precedential value, see, e. g., Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 497 (1953); Sunal v. Large, 332 U. S. 174, 181 (1947); House v. Mayo, 324 U. S. 42, 48 (1945), and the denial of a stay can have no precedential value either since the Court’s order did not discuss the standard that courts of appeals should apply in passing on an application for a stay pending appeal.

 Until its recent rulings the Fifth Circuit also followed this approach. See United States ex rel. Goins v. Sigler, 250 F. 2d 128, 129 (1957).
It has long been the rule that a death sentence imposed by a federal court will be stayed as a matter of course if the defendant takes an appeal. See Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 38(a)(1) (“A sentence of death shall be stayed if an appeal is taken”).

 See Tr. of Oral Arg. 41:
“QUESTION: [W]hy would you suggest it would be wrong for the Court of Appeals just to affirm?
“MR. BECKER: If that was their routine policy, I think they could.
“QUESTION: But it wasn’t, was it?
“MR. BECKER: No, sir, it wasn’t_”
In the memorandum respondent filed in the Court of Appeals opposing a stay, there was no suggestion that the court was in a position to decide the appeal.

 In reaching this conclusion, the Court of Appeals relied on cases involving stays in ordinary civil litigation in which the denial of a stay will not result in the execution of one of the litigants before his appeal can be decided.

 I agree with the Court that an appeal may be dismissed as frivolous only if it “is squarely foreclosed by statute, rule, or authoritative court decision, or is lacking any factual basis in the record.” Ante, at 894. I would add that in view of the frequent changes in recent years in the law governing capital cases, see, e. g., Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U. S. 480 (1981) (distinguishing Stroud v. United States, 251 U. S. 15 (1919)); Gardner v. Florida, 430 U. S. 349 (1977) (distinguishing Williams v. New York, 337 U. S. 241 (1949)), the fact that an appeal challenges a holding of this Court does not make it frivolous if a plausible argument can be made that the decision in question has been called into question by later developments.

 See Brief for NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., as Amicus Curiae le-6e.

 Seeid,., at le-4e.