Wade v. Wilson/Dissent Black

by Hugo Black

United States Supreme Court

396 U.S. 282

Wade  v.  Wilson

 Argued: Nov. 12, 1969. --- Decided: Jan 13, 1970

Mr. Justice BLACK, dissenting.

Petitioner and one Joe Pollard were convicted of murder in 1960 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Pollard received a trial transcript and when he refused to turn it over to petitioner for his use in preparing an appeal, the State Attorney General's Office loaned a copy to petitioner's appellate counsel. The California District Court of Appeal affirmed in 1961. People v. Pollard, 194 Cal.App.2d 830, 15 Cal.Rptr. 214. Five years later, in 1966, petitioner tried in the state courts to obtain a trial transcript. Failing there, he filed a petition in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in 1967 asking to be released because of the State's refusal to provide him a copy of the transcript. The United States District Court held petitioner was entitled to a copy of the trial record but the United States Court of Appeals reversed, holding that since petitioner did not allege any trial error which might warrant post-conviction relief he was 'not entitled to demand a transcript merely to enable him to comb the record in the hope of discovering some flaw.' 390 F.2d 632, 634 (1968).

This Court today says the petitioner thus raises a constitutional question of first impression 'whether there are circumstances in which the Constitution requires that a State furnish an indigent state prisoner free of cost a trial transcript to aid him to prepare a petition for collateral relief.' Ante, at 286. It may be conceivable that the Constitution would under certain special circumstances impose this duty on the State when it has such a record in its possession, but I cannot agree that anything shown in this record presents those special circumstances.

It is now over nine years since this case was tried. At petitioner's request a trial record was made available for him to take an appeal; eight years ago he took that appeal and lost. There certainly is no constitutional requirement that a State must continue to supply convicted defendants trial records to enable them to raise the same old challenges to their convictions again and again and again. There is not a word or a suggestion in the whole record in this case that demonstrates or even intimates that any new events have occurred since petitioner's 1961 appeal which could under any possible circumstances justify even a shadowy argument that petitioner was not guilty of the murder he was convicted of having committed. Although more than eight years have passed since that appeal, I would join in granting relief to this petitioner if he had shown or even given any reason to believe, that new circumstances now indicate he was wrongfully convicted of a crime of which he was not guilty. See Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963); cf. Kaufman v. United States, 394 U.S. 217, 231, 89 S.Ct. 1068, 1076, 22 L.Ed.2d 227 (1969) (Black J., dissenting); Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 301, 89 S.Ct. 1082, 1091, 22 L.Ed.2d 281 (1969) (Black J., dissenting). But we have no such case here. Petitioner has not raised any claims which indicate in the slightest that he has been convicted of a crime of which he is innocent. At the most he has asserted a desire to review the record to find some technical legal point which he can argue to a court as a basis for release from confinement. He has already had one chance to make such arguments on direct appeal, and he lost that battle. I do not think he needs a transcript to know whether he was convicted erroneously or whether some new circumstances have arisen that now show a fatal constitutional error in the prior proceedings. In any event he has not yet based his request for a transcript on any indication of such a need. In such circumstances I see no reason whatsoever for the State to have to obtain a copy for him. This case is but another of the multitudinous instances in which courts are asked interminably to hash and rehash points that have already been determined after full deliberation and review. One considered appeal is enough, in the absence of factors which show a possibility that a substantial injustice has been inflicted on the defendant.

Nothing in this petitioner's application for certiorari or his briefs and arguments gave any indication that he might be entitled to post-conviction relief, and there is thus no reason why this Court should even have reviewed his case. I would dismiss this writ as being improvidently granted.

Notes