Coleman v. Alabama (399 U.S. 1)/Concurrence Black

Mr. Justice BLACK, concurring.

I wholeheartedly agree with the conclusion in Part II of the prevailing opinion that an accused has a constitutional right to the assistance of counsel at the preliminary hearing which Alabama grants criminal defendants. The purpose of the preliminary hearing in Alabama is to determine whether an offense has been committed and, if so, whether there is probable cause for charging the defendant with that offense. If the magistrate finds that there is probable cause for charging the defendant with the offense, the defendant must, under Alabama law, be either incarcerated or admitted to bail. In the absence of such a finding of probable cause, the defendant must be released from custody. Ala.Code, Tit. 15, §§ 139-140. The preliminary hearing is therefore a definite part or stage of a criminal prosecution in Alabama, and the plain language of the Sixth Amendment requires that '(i)n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right * *  * to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.' Moreover, every attorney with experience in representing criminal defendants in a State which has a preliminary hearing similar to Alabama's knows-sometimes from sad experience-that adequate representation requires that counsel be present at the preliminary hearing to protect the interests of his client. The practical importance of the preliminary hearing is discussed in the prevailing opinion, and the considerations outlined there seem to me more than sufficient to compel the conclusion that the preliminary hearing is a 'critical stage' of the proceedings during which the accused must be afforded the assistance of counsel if he is to have a meaningful defense at trial as guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

I fear that the prevailing opinion seems at times to proceed on the premise that the constitutional principle ultimately at stake here is not the defendant's right to counsel as guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments but rather a right to a 'fair trial' as conceived by judges. While that phrase is an appealing one, neither the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution contains it. The pragmatic, government-fearing authors of our Constitution and Bill of Rights did not, and I think wisely did not, use any such vague, indefinite, and elastic language. Instead, they provided the defendant with clear, emphatic guarantees: counsel for his defense, a speedy trial, trial by jury, confrontation with the witnesses against him, and other such unequivocal and definite rights. The explicit commands of the Constitution provide a full description of the kind of 'fair trial' the Constitution guarantees, and in my judgment that document leaves no room for judges either to add to or detract from these commands. I can have no part in unauthorized judicial toying with the carefully selected language of our Constitution, which I think is the wisest and best charter of government in existence. It declares a man charged with a crime shall be afforded a lawyer to defend him even though all the judges throughout the entire United States should declare, 'It is only when we think fairness requires it that an accused shall have the assistance of counsel for his defense.' For one, I still prefer to trust the liberty of the citizen to the plain language of the Constitution rather than to the sense of fairness of particular judges.

I also agree with the prevailing opinion in rejecting petitioners' claim that their in-court identification by the victim of the assault should have been suppressed. This claim relies mainly on Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967), in which the Court held that an incourt identification could be suppressed under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if it was tainted by an 'unnecessarily suggestive' pretrial lineup. I dissented in Stovall partly on the ground that the majority's new suppression rule was a classic example of this Court's using the Due Process Clause to write into law its own notions of fairness, decency, and fundamental justice, in total disregard of the language of the Constitution itself. But I also argued in Stovall that the right to counsel at a lineup, declared that same day in United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), should be held fully retroactive. Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S., at 303, 87 S.Ct., at 1973. Accordingly, I believe that petitioners in this pre-Wade case were entitled to court-appointed counsel at the time of the lineup in which they participated and that Alabama's failure to provide such counsel violated petitioners' rights under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. However, for the reasons stated in my separate opinion in United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 243, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 1940-1941, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), I believe the requirements of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments were satisfied when the Alabama prosecutors declined at trial to introduce the pretrial lineup identification into evidence. Accordingly, I concur in the conclusion in Part I of the prevailing opinion that the Alabama court did not err in permitting the courtroom identification of petitioners by the witness who had previously identified them at the lineup.

For the reasons here stated, I agree that petitioners' convictions must be vacated and the case remanded to the Alabama courts for consideration of whether the denial of counsel at the preliminary hearing was harmless error under the Court's decision in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967).

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS.

While I have joined Mr. Justice BRENNAN'S opinion, I add a word as to why I think that a strict construction of the Constitution requires the result reached.

The critical words are: 'In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right * *  * to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.' As Mr. Justice BLACK states, a preliminary hearing is 'a definite part or stage of a criminal prosecution in Alabama.' A 'criminal prosecution' certainly does not start only when the trial starts. If the commencement of the trial were the start of the 'criminal prosecution' in the constitutional sense, then indigents would likely go to trial without effective representation by counsel. Lawyers for the defense need time to prepare a defense. The prosecution needs time for investigations and procedures to make that investigation timely and telling. As a shorthand expression we have used the words 'critical stage' to describe whether the preliminary phase of a criminal trial was part of the 'criminal prosecution' as used in the Sixth Amendment. But it is the Sixth Amendment that controls, not our own ideas as to what an efficient criminal code should provide. It did not take nearly 200 years of doubt to decide whether Alabama's preliminary hearing is a part of the 'criminal prosecution' within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment. The question has never been reached prior to this case. We experience here the case-by-case approach that is the only one available under our 'case' or 'controversy' jurisdiction under Article III of the Constitution.

If we are to adhere to the mandate of the Constitution and not give it merely that meaning which appeals to the personal tastes of those who from time to time sit here, we should read its terms in light of the realities of what 'criminal prosecutions' truly mean.

I was impressed with the need for that kind of strict construction on experiences in my various Russian journeys. In that nation detention incommunicado is the common practice, and the period of permissible detention now extends for nine months. Where there is custodial interrogation, it is clear that the critical stage of the trial takes place long before the courtroom formalities commence. That is apparent to one who attends criminal trials in Russia. Those that I viewed never put in issue the question of guilt; guilt was an issue resolved in the inner precincts of a prison under questioning by the police. The courtroom trial concerned only the issue of punishment.

Custodial interrogation is in practice-here and in other nations-so critical that we would give 'criminal prosecutions' as used in the Sixth Amendment a strained and narrow meaning if we held that it did not include that phase. My brother Harlan in his dissent in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 513, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1648, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, called the Sixth Amendment cases cited by the majority of the Court the 'linchpins' of the ruling that an accused under custodial interrogation was entitled to the assistance of counsel. They were properly such, although the main emphasis in the Miranda opinion was on the use of custodial interrogation to exact incriminating statements against the commands of the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments. Like the preliminary hearing in the present case, custodial interrogation is obviously part of the 'criminal prosecution' that the Sixth Amendment honors-if strict construction is our guide.