Corrective Process: Appeals and Other Remedies
Corrective Process: Appeals and Other Remedies. — "An appeal from a judgment of conviction is not a matter of absolute right, independently of constitutional or statutory provisions allowing such appeal. A review by an appellate court of the final judgment in a criminal case, however grave the offense of which the accused is convicted, was not at common law and is not now a necessary element of due process of law. It is wholly within the discretion of the state to allow or not to allow such a review."1111 This holding has been reaffirmed1112 although the Court has also held that when a State does provide appellate process it may not so condition the privilege as to deny it irrationally to some persons, such as indigents.1113clubjuris
1111 McKane v. Durston, 153 U.S. 684, 687 (1894). See also Andrews v. Swartz, 156 U.S. 272, 275 (1895); Murphy v. Massachusetts, 177 U.S. 155, 158 (1900); Reetz v. Michigan, 188 U.S. 505, 508 (1903).
1112 Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 18 (1956); id. at 21 (Justice Frankfurter concurring), 27 (dissenting opinion); Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U.S. 600 (1974).
1113 The line of cases begins with Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956), in which it was deemed to violate both the due process and the equal protection clauses for a State to deny to indigent defendants free transcripts of the trial proceedings, which would enable them adequately to prosecute appeals from convictions. See analysis under "Poverty and Fundamental Interests: The Intersection of Due Process and Equal Protection—Generally" infra.
But it is not the case that a State is free to have no corrective process at all in which defendants may pursue remedies for federal constitutional violations. In Frank v. Mangum,1114 the Court asserted that a conviction obtained in a mob-dominated trial was contrary to due process: "if the State, supplying no corrective process, carries into execution a judgment of death or imprisonment based upon a verdict thus produced by mob domination, the State deprives the accused of his life or liberty without due process of law." Consequently, it has been stated numerous times that the absence of some form of corrective process when the convicted defendant alleges a federal constitutional violation contravenes the Fourteenth Amendment,1115 and it has been held that to burden this process, such as limiting the right to petition for habeas corpus, is to deny the convicted defendant his constitutional rights.1116
The mode by which federal constitutional rights are to be vindicated after conviction is for the government concerned to determine. "Wide discretion must be left to the States for the manner of adjudicating a claim that a conviction is unconstitutional. States are free to devise their own systems of review in criminal cases. A State may decide whether to have direct appeals in such cases, and if so under what circumstances. . . . In respecting the duty laid upon them . . . States have a wide choice of remedies. A State may provide that the protection of rights granted by the Federal Constitution be sought through the writ of habeas corpus or coram nobis. It may use each of these ancient writs in its common law scope, or it may put them to new uses; or it may afford remedy by a simple motion brought either in the court of original conviction or at a place of detention. . . . So long as the rights under the United States Constitution may be pursued, it is for a State and not for this Court to define the mode by which they may be vindicated."1117 If a State provides a mode of redress, a defendant must first exhaust that mode, and if unsuccessful may seek relief in federal court; if there is no adequate remedy in state court, the defendant may petition a federal court for relief through a writ of habeas corpus.1118clubjuris
1114 237 U.S. 309, 335 (1915).
1115 Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86, 90, 91 (1923); Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U.S. 103, 113 (1935); New York ex rel. Whitman v. Wilson, 318 U.S. 688, 690 (1943); Young v. Ragan, 337 U.S. 235, 238-39 (1949).
1116 Ex parte Hull, 312 U.S. 546 (1941); White v. Ragen, 324 U.S. 760 (1945).
1117 Carter v. Illinois, 329 U.S. 173, 175-76 (1946).
1118 Note that in Case v. Nebraska, 381 U.S. 336 (1965), the Court had taken for review a case which raised the issue whether a State could simply omit any corrective process for hearing and determining claims of federal constitutional violations, but it dismissed the case when the State in the interim enacted provisions for such process.
When appellate or other corrective process is made available, inasmuch as it is no less a part of the process of law under which a defendant is held in custody, it becomes subject to scrutiny for any alleged unconstitutional deprivation of life or liberty. At first, the Court seemed content to assume that when a state appellate process formally appeared to be sufficient to correct constitutional errors committed by the trial court, the conclusion by the appellate court that the trial court's sentence of execution should be affirmed was ample assurance that life would not be forfeited without due process of law.1119 But in Moore v. Dempsey,1120 while insisting that it was not departing from precedent, the Court directed a federal district court in which petitioners had sought a writ of habeas corpus to make an independent investigation of the facts alleged by the petitioners—mob domination of their trial—notwithstanding that the state appellate court had ruled against the legal sufficiency of these same allegations. Indubitably, Moore marked the abandonment of the Supreme Court's deference, founded upon considerations of comity, to decisions of state appellate tribunals on issues of constitutionality, and the proclamation of its intention no longer to treat as virtually conclusive pronouncements by the latter that proceedings in a trial court were fair, an abandonment soon made even clearer in Brown v. Mississippi1121 and now taken for granted.