Picard v. Connor/Dissent Douglas

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting.

With all respect, I think that in this case we carry the rule of exhaustion of state remedies too far. Connor's name was added to the indictment after it was returned by the state grand jury, he being substituted for 'John Doe.' He raised in his brief before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts his claim that such a substitution denied him that quantum of due process required by the Fourteenth Amendment 'in that he was put to trial without having been indicted by a Grand Jury.' He did not refer to the Equal Protection Clause which is also a part of the Fourteenth Amendment. But that is a nicety irrelevant to the maintenance of healthy state-federal relations on which the Court makes the present decision turn. The concept of due process is broad and expansive, and 'the concepts of equal protection and due process, both stemming from our American ideal of fairness, are not mutually exclusive.' Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 499, 74 S.Ct. 693, 694, 98 L.Ed. 884. We have thus held that the denial of equal protection, viz., invidious discrimination, may be 'so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process.' Ibid. As Mr. Justice Brennan said in Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 388, 91 S.Ct. 780, 791, 28 L.Ed.2d 113 (concurring opinion), 'The question that the Court treats exclusively as one of due process inevitably implicates considerations of both due process and equal protection.' That is likewise true here.

Moreover, a due process point is plainly raised where an accused claims that no grand jury found 'probable cause' to indict him, that its only finding concerned someone unknown at the time.

If Connor had complained of a coerced confession or of perjured testimony, and the facts on which he relied were developed in the state court, the constitutional questions would surely have been sufficiently raised without reference to the precise constitutional provisions involved. The situation here is no different.

The judges to whom that issue of law is tendered are learned men who we must assume are knowledgeable as to the meaning of due process. A law student who tendered a brief that left due process at large would certainly not be worthy of an 'A.' But the nicety of analysis which we associate with scholarship has no functional role to play in this area of exhaustion of state remedies. When we go to that extreme, we make a trap out of the exhaustion doctrine which promises to exhaust the litigant and his resources, not the remedies.

I fear that our reluctance to backstop the Court of Appeals in the present case is symptomatic of this Court's trend to sidestep all possible controversies so as it hopes, to let them disappear. Of course we should remit a litigant to his state tribunal if facts have emerged which were not known at the time of the trial or if intervening decisions have outdated the earlier state decision. No such situation exists here. The facts are simple and uncontested: Connor's name was substituted for John Doe after the indictment was returned. The point of law is clear now and will be no clearer on the remand. Its vulnerability tested by due process was as obvious when the case was before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts as it now is. I think the Court of Appeals acted responsibly in ruling on it. We should decide the merits here and now. Endless repetitive procedures are encouraged by today's ruling on exhaustion of remedies. I would bring this litigation to an end today by applying the exhaustion-of-remedy rule to terminate rather than multiply procedures that now engulf the state-federal regime.