Lopinson v. Pennsylvania/Dissent Black

by Hugo Black

United States Supreme Court

392 U.S. 647

Lopinson  v.  Pennsylvania

Mr. Justice BLACK, dissenting.

In all three of these cases the Court remands to the state courts on one single constitutional claim of petitioners without reaching other constitutional claims raised by them. The result is that after the state courts rule on the single remand issue this Court will undoubtedly be called on to pass on the other issues which the Court refuses to decide. At the very least this means postponement of a final decision in these cases a year or two years or three years, unless, that is, this Court should, on the second review, choose once more to decide the cases piecemeal. Piecemeal dispositions of criminal cases inevitably cause delays and hamper enforcement of the criminal laws and there is a lot of truth in the old adage that delay is a defendant's best lawyer. See Witherspoon v. State of Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776, where a murder sentence was reversed nine years after the murder. It is true that under Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837, a certain amount of delay is inevitable in criminal cases, but that is not true in these cases where the issues are squarely presented to us here and now.

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