Sigler v. Parker/Opinion of the Court

In 1956 respondent was found guilty in a Nebraska court of first-degree murder; he was sentenced to life imprisonment. After exhausting his post-conviction remedies under Nebraska law, respondent petitioned the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska for a writ of habeas corpus. After an evidentiary hearing, the District Court dismissed the petition. One of the issues presented to the District Court was the voluntariness of confessions used against respondent at his trial. Relying on the findings of the state court in a 1965 post-conviction proceeding, the District Court concluded that the confessions were voluntarily given and hence admissible. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, without reaching the other issues before it, reversed on the ground that respondent's confessions were involuntary. 413 F.2d 459 (1969). The court first found that the opinion of the Nebraska Supreme Court affirming respondent's conviction indicated that the trial judge had not found the confessions voluntary before admitting them into evidence. The court then found that this violation of the procedural rule of Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964), had tainted all subsequent findings of voluntariness in the Nebraska courts and in the District Court. Since it seemed 'unlikely that either party has any additional substantial evidence on the voluntariness issue,' 413 F.2d, at 463, the Court of Appeals chose to evaluate the confessions itself rather than to remand the case to allow the State to make an untainted determination on the voluntariness question. After examining the record of the trial and the post-conviction proceedings, the court held that the confessions could on no view of the evidence be deemed voluntary. On the basis of this determination, the court directed that the writ of habeas corpus should be granted unless within a reasonable time respondent was given a new trial from which the confessions were excluded.

We agree with the Court of Appeals that the record of proceedings in the trial court and the opinion of the Nebraska Supreme Court affirming respondent's conviction do not justify a conclusion that the trial judge made his own determination of voluntariness as required by Jackson v. Denno, supra. See Sims v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 538, 87 S.Ct. 639, 17 L.Ed.2d 593 (1967). In addition, we accept the Court of Appeals' determination that all subsequent findings of voluntariness were made at least in part in reliance on the first, procedurally defective, determination of the admissibility of the confessions. However, as indicated in our opinion in Jackson v. Denno, supra, 378 U.S., at 391-396, 84 S.Ct., at 1788-1791, the appropriate remedy when a federal court finds a Jackson v. Denno error in a prior state proceeding is to allow the State a reasonable time to make an error-free determination on the voluntariness of the confession at issue. Hence it was error for the Court of Appeals to pass judgment on the voluntariness of respondent's confessions without first permitting a Nebraska court to make such an evaluation uninfluenced by the apparent finding of voluntariness at the 1956 trial.

The writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Mr. Justice BLACK, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins, dissenting.