SIGLER, WARDEN v. PARKER
No. 743.
Decided January 26, 1970
Clarence A. H. Meyer, Attorney General of Nebraska, and Ralph H. Qillan, Assistant Attorney General, for petitioner.
Richard J. Bruckner for respondent.
Per Curiam.
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 volun-tariness 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 (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 (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, at 391-396, 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.
After a hearing in 1965 under the Nebraska Post Conviction Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. §§29-3001 to 29-3004 (Cum. Supp. 1967), the state trial court found that the record and exhibits indicated that the confessions were voluntary. The Court of Appeals may have deemed this conclusion unsatisfactory because the state court’s finding on the voluntariness question was followed immediately by a reference to the original determination, at trial and on appeal from the conviction, as to the admissibility of the confessions. The Court of Appeals’ view is supported by the fact that the Nebraska Supreme Court relied heavily on the apparent finding of voluntariness at the original trial and on appeal in affirming the trial court’s denial of collateral relief. State v. Parker, 180 Neb. 707, 144 N. W. 2d 525 (1966).
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine whether the decision of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed was itself liberal or conservative. In the context of issues pertaining to criminal procedure, civil rights, First Amendment, due process, privacy, and attorneys, consider liberal to be pro-person accused or convicted of crime, or denied a jury trial, pro-civil liberties or civil rights claimant, especially those exercising less protected civil rights (e.g., homosexuality), pro-child or juvenile, pro-indigent pro-Indian, pro-affirmative action, pro-neutrality in establishment clause cases, pro-female in abortion, pro-underdog, anti-slavery, incorporation of foreign territories anti-government in the context of due process, except for takings clause cases where a pro-government, anti-owner vote is considered liberal except in criminal forfeiture cases or those where the taking is pro-business violation of due process by exercising jurisdiction over nonresident, pro-attorney or governmental official in non-liability cases, pro-accountability and/or anti-corruption in campaign spending pro-privacy vis-a-vis the 1st Amendment where the privacy invaded is that of mental incompetents, pro-disclosure in Freedom of Information Act issues except for employment and student records. In the context of issues pertaining to unions and economic activity, consider liberal to be pro-union except in union antitrust where liberal = pro-competition, pro-government, anti-business anti-employer, pro-competition, pro-injured person, pro-indigent, pro-small business vis-a-vis large business pro-state/anti-business in state tax cases, pro-debtor, pro-bankrupt, pro-Indian, pro-environmental protection, pro-economic underdog pro-consumer, pro-accountability in governmental corruption, pro-original grantee, purchaser, or occupant in state and territorial land claims anti-union member or employee vis-a-vis union, anti-union in union antitrust, anti-union in union or closed shop, pro-trial in arbitration. In the context of issues pertaining to judicial power, consider liberal to be pro-exercise of judicial power, pro-judicial "activism", pro-judicial review of administrative action. In the context of issues pertaining to federalism, consider liberal to be pro-federal power, pro-executive power in executive/congressional disputes, anti-state. In the context of issues pertaining to federal taxation, consider liberal to be pro-United States and conservative pro-taxpayer. In miscellaneous, consider conservative the incorporation of foreign territories and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states or judcial authority vis-a-vis state or federal legislative authority, and consider liberal legislative veto. The lower court's decision direction is unspecifiable if the manner in which the Supreme Court took jurisdiction is original or certification; or if the direction of the Supreme Court's decision is unspecifiable and the main issue pertains to private law or interstate relations