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- SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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- No. 91-7358
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- TODD A. BRECHT, PETITIONER v. GORDON A. ____
- ABRAHAMSON, SUPERINTENDENT, DODGE
- CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
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- ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED
- STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH
- CIRCUIT
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- [April 21, 1993]
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- JUSTICE STEVENS, concurring.
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- The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the deprivation of liberty "without due
- process of law"; that guarantee is the source of the federal right to challenge
- state criminal convictions that result from fundamentally unfair trial
- proceedings. Neither the term "due process," nor the concept of fundamental
- unfairness itself, is susceptible of precise and categorical definition, and no
- single test can guarantee that a judge will grant or deny habeas relief when
- faced with a similar set of facts. Every allegation of due process denied
- depends on the specific process provided, and it is familiar learning that all
- "claims of constitutional error are not fungible." Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. ____ _____
- 509, 543 (1982) (STEVENS, J., dissenting). As the Court correctly notes,
- constitutional due process violations vary dramatically in significance;
- harmless trial errors are at one end of a broad spectrum, and what the Court has
- characterized as "structural" defects - those that make a trial fundamentally
- unfair even if they do not affect the outcome of the proceeding - are at "the
- other end of the spectrum," ante, at 8. Although Members of the Court have ____
- disagreed about the seriousness of the due process violation identified in Doyle _____
- v. Ohio, 426 U. S. 610 (1976), in this case we unanimously agree that a ____
- constitutional 91-7358 - CONCUR
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- 2 BRECHT v. ABRAHAMSON ____
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- violation occurred; moreover, we also all agree that some version of harmless-
- error analysis is appropriate.
- We disagree, however, about whether the same form of harmless-error analysis
- should apply in a collateral attack as on a direct appeal, and, if not, what the
- collateral attack standard should be for an error of this kind. The answer to
- the first question follows from our long history of distinguishing between
- collateral and direct review, see, e.g., Sunal v. Large, 332 U. S. 174, 178 ____ _ _____ _____
- (1947), and confining collateral relief to cases that involve fundamental
- defects or omissions inconsistent with the rudimentary demands of fair
- procedure. See, e.g., United States v. Timmreck, 441 U. S. 780, 783 (1979), ___________________ _ ________
- and cases cited therein. The Court answers the second question by endorsing
- Justice Rutledge's thoughtful opinion for the Court in Kotteakos v. United _________ ______
- States, 328 U. S. 750 (1946). Ante, at 1, 17. Because that standard accords______ ____
- with the statutory rule for reviewing other trial errors that affect substantial
- rights; places the burden on prosecutors to explain why those errors were
- harmless; requires a habeas court to review the entire record de novo in __ ____
- determining whether the error influenced the jury's deliberations; and leaves
- considerable latitude for the exercise of judgment by federal courts, I am
- convinced that our answer is correct. I write separately only to emphasize that
- the standard is appropriately demanding.
- As the Court notes, ante, at 10, n. 7, the Kotteakos standard is grounded in ____ _________
- the 1919 federal harmless-error statute. Congress had responded to the
- widespread concern that federal appellate courts had become "impregnable
- citadels of technicality," Kotteakos, 328 U. S., at 759, by issuing a general _________
- command to treat error as harmless unless it "is of such a character that its
- natural effect is to prejudice a litigant's substantial rights." Id., at ___
- 760-761. Kotteakos plainly stated that unless an error is merely "technical," _________
- the burden of sustaining a verdict by demonstrating that the error was harmless
- rests on the 91-7358 - CONCUR
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- BRECHT v. ABRAHAMSON 3 ____
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- prosecution. (Ftnote. 1) A constitutional violation, of course, would never (Ftnote. 1)
- fall in the "technical" category.
- Of particular importance, the statutory command requires the reviewing court
- to evaluate the error in the context of the entire trial record. As the Court
- explained: "In the final analysis judgment in each case must be influenced by
- conviction resulting from examination of the proceedings in their entirety,
- tempered but not governed in any rigid sense of stare decisis by what has been _____________
- done in similar situations." Id., at 762. ___
- To apply the Kotteakos standard properly, the reviewing court must, therefore, _________
- make a de novo examination of the trial record. The Court faithfully engages in _______
- such de novo review today, see ante, at 17-18, just as the plurality did in the _______ ____
- dispositive portion of its analysis in Wright v. West, 505 U. S. ___, ___-___ ______ ____
- (1992) (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 17-18). The Kotteakos requirement _________
- of de novo review of errors that prejudice substantial rights - as all _______
- constitutional errors surely do - is thus entirely consistent with the Court's
- longstanding commitment to the de novo standard of review of mixed questions of _______
- law and fact in habeas corpus proceedings. See Wright v. West, 505 U. S., at ______ ____
- ___-___ (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2-7).
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- 1) "It is also important to note that the purpose of the bill in its final 1)
- form was stated authoritatively to be `to cast upon the party seeking a new
- trial the burden of showing that any technical errors that he may complain of
- have affected his substantial rights, otherwise they are to be disregarded.'
- H. R. Rep. No. 913, 65th Cong., 3d Sess., 1. But that this burden does not
- extend to all errors appears from the statement which follows immediately. `The
- proposed legislation affects only technical errors. If the error is of such a
- character that its natural effect is to prejudice a litigant's substantial
- rights, the burden of sustaining a verdict will, notwithstanding this
- legislation rest upon the one who claims under it.' Ibid.; Bruno v. United ______ _____ ______
- States, [308 U. S. 287, 294 (1939)]; Weiler v. United States, 323 U. S. 606, 611______ ______ _____________
- [(1945)]." Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U. S. 750, 760-761 (1946). _________ _____________ 91-7358 - CONCUR
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- 4 BRECHT v. ABRAHAMSON ____
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- The purpose of reviewing the entire record is, of course, to consider all the
- ways that error can infect the course of a trial. Although THE CHIEF JUSTICE
- properly quotes the phrase applied to the errors in Kotteakos (" `substantial _________
- and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict' "), ante, ____
- at 1, 6, 16, 18, we would misread Kotteakos itself if we endorsed only a single- _________
- minded focus on how the error may (or may not) have affected the jury's verdict.
- The habeas court cannot ask only whether it thinks the petitioner would have
- been convicted even if the constitutional error had not taken
- place. (Ftnote. 2) Kotteakos is full of warnings to avoid that result. It (Ftnote. 2) _________
- requires a reviewing court to decide that "the error did not influence the
- jury," id., at 764, and that "the judgment was not substantially swayed by the ___
- error," id., at 765. In a passage that should be kept in mind by all courts ____
- that review trial transcripts, Justice Rutledge wrote that the question is not ___
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- "were they [the jurors] right in their judgment, re-gardless of the error or
- its effect upon the verdict. It is rather what effect the error had or
- reasonably may be taken to have had upon the jury's decision. The crucial
- thing is the impact of the thing done wrong on the minds of other men, not on
- one's own, in the total setting.
- "This must take account of what the error meant to them, not singled out
- and standing alone, but in relation to all else that happened. And one must
- judge others' reactions not by his own, but with allowance for how others
- might react and not be regarded generally as acting without reason. This is
- the important difference, but one easy to ignore when the sense of guilt
- comes strongly from the record."
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- ____________________
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- 2) "The inquiry cannot be merely whether there was enough to support the 2)
- result, apart from the phase affected by the error." Id., at 765. ___ 91-7358 - CONCUR
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- BRECHT v. ABRAHAMSON 5 ____
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- Id., at 764 (citations omitted). ___
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- The Kotteakos standard that will now apply on collateral review is less _________
- stringent than the Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 (1967), standard applied _______ __________
- on direct review. Given the critical importance of the faculty of judgment in
- administering either standard, however, that difference is less significant than
- it might seem - a point well illustrated by the differing opinions expressed by
- THE CHIEF JUSTICE and by JUSTICE KENNEDY in Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U. S. _______ __________
- ___, ___, ___ (1991). While THE CHIEF JUSTICE considered the admission of the
- defendant's confession harmless error under Chapman, see 499 U. S., at ___ _______
- (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 10-11), JUSTICE KENNEDY's cogent analysis
- demonstrated that the error could not reasonably have been viewed as harmless
- under a standard even more relaxed than the one we announce today. See id., at ___
- ___ (opinion concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 1-2). In the end, the way we
- phrase the governing standard is far less important than the quality of the
- judgment with which it is applied.
- Although our adoption of Kotteakos does impose a new standard in this context, _________
- it is a standard that will always require "the discrimination . . . of judgment
- transcending confinement by formula or precise rule. United States v. Socony- _____________ _______
- Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U. S. 150, 240 [(1940)]." (Ftnote. 3) 328 U. S., at 761. (Ftnote. 3)______________
- In my own judgment, for the reasons explained by THE CHIEF JUSTICE, the Doyle _____
- error that took place in respondent's trial did not have a substantial and
- injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's
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- 3) Justice Rutledge continued: "That faculty cannot ever be wholly 3)
- imprisoned in words, much less upon such a criterion as what are only technical,
- what substantial rights; and what really affects the latter hurtfully.
- Judgment, the play of impression and conviction along with intelligence, varies
- with judges and also with circumstance. What may be technical for one is
- substantial for another; what minor and unimportant in one setting crucial in
- another." Id., at 761. ___ 91-7358 - CONCUR
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- 6 BRECHT v. ABRAHAMSON ____
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- verdict. Accordingly, I concur in the Court's opinion and judgment.