Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365 (1986),Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365 (1986) was a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that clarified the relationship of the right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to other constitutional rights in criminal procedure. In this case, evidence against the defendant was probably seized illegally, violating the Fourth Amendment, but he lost the chance to argue that point due to his lawyer's ineffectiveness. The prosecution argued that the defendant's attempt to make a Sixth Amendment argument via a habeas corpus petition was really a way to sneak his procedurally defaulted Fourth Amendment claim in through the back door. The Court unanimously disagreed, and held that the Fourth Amendment issue and the Sixth Amendment issue represented different constitutional values, and had different requirements for prevailing in court, and therefore were to be treated separately by rules of procedure. Therefore, the habeas corpus petition could go forward. In its opinion, the Court also gave guidance on how to apply its decisions in Stone v. Powell and Strickland v. Washington.
On the substance of the defendant's habeas corpus petition, the Court affirmed the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which had said that half of Strickland's requirements were satisfied, and the other half would need to be reviewed by a trial court.
Legal context In 1976, the Supreme Court decided Stone v. Powell, holding that state prisoners who claimed the exclusionary rule had been violated in their cases, but already had "full and fair" hearings on the issue in state court, could not have the issue re-heard via habeas corpus petitions in federal court. Part of the Court's reasoning had been that the exclusionary rule was not a personal right, but a general way to deter infringement of the Fourth Amendment right "to be secure...against unreasonable searches and seizures". That meant it had less weight than individual trial rights when weighed against the social costs of redundant litigation that "often frees the guilty" and "may well have the..effect of generating disrespect for the law and administration of justice".
Over the next few years, there was disagreement among courts and legal scholars as to how far this ruling should apply, particularly when a defense attorney had incompetently failed to make a Fourth Amendment claim. Some felt that habeas corpus petitions should still be available, as the Sixth Amendment (incompetence) issue was separate from the Fourth Amendment issue, but others reasoned that the Fourth Amendment issue was the root cause in both scenarios, and therefore habeas corpus petitions should be barred.
Procedural history in lower courts
Trial In 1978, Neil Morrison was indicted for raping a child, namely a 15-year-old girl who had worked for him.Morrison v. Kimmelman, 579 F. Supp. 796 (D. NJ 1984) During the six-day trial in 1979, the prosecution's evidence included testimony from the victim, the victim's mother, the detective who had handled the investigation, and laboratory technicians who had examined physical evidence recovered by the detective. That physical evidence included a bedsheet from Morrison's bed, from which the technicians had recovered incriminating hair, blood, and semen samples. When the bedsheet was introduced on the second day of trial, the defendant's lawyer objected on the grounds it had been seized without a warrant (violating the Fourth Amendment). However, New Jersey criminal procedure required that such objections be made via pre-trial motions to suppress. After the judge pointed this out, it became clear that the defense attorney had made no pre-trial investigation whatsoever. The attorney had assumed (incorrectly) that the prosecution was required to explain its case against his client without being asked. He also had believed that the victim would not press charges and there would be no trial. The judge explained that the victim's wishes no longer mattered once an indictment had been returned.
The defense attorney did put on a case, which included aggressively cross-examining the prosecution witnesses, and calling some of Morrison's friends as witnesses to establish a different version of events. Still, Morrison was convicted, and was sentenced to eight to ten years. He was also convicted on other counts, but the Appellate Court would later decide that they were redundant with the rape charge, and would merge the sentences.
Appeals After his trial, Morrison replaced his attorney and appealed to the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court. Other than arguing that the separate charges should be merged (something the Appellate Division would grant), he made two arguments related to the contested evidence: 1) that his previous lawyer's failure to make an objection at the proper time was ineffective assistance of counsel, violating the Sixth Amendment, and 2) that the trial court had erred by not hearing his lawyer's objection (about the bedsheet and related testimony) during the trial, violating the Fourth Amendment. In a 1981 ruling, the Appellate division rejected both claims. To the first argument, it said that Morrison had failed to establish his lawyer's failures were significant enough to undermine the fairness of the trial. The second argument, it said, was "clearly without merit."State v. Morrison, A-4157-78 (NJ App.Div., Mar. 18, 1981). Morrison appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court on both issues, but it declined to hear his case.State v. Morrison, 87 N.J. 368 (1981)
In 1982, Morrison made a petition for postconviction relief to the Law Division of the New Jersey Superior Court. However, because his claims were the same ones that had been raised on direct appeal, his petition was denied.
Habeas corpus petition
District court In 1983, Morrison filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court, again arguing that his lawyer had provided ineffective assistance of counsel, and that the use of the bedsheet as evidence violated the Fourth Amendment. During oral argument, counsel for the state "admitted that on the record before the Court there was no apparent justification for the search and seizure." However, the district court observed that the 1976 Supreme Court case Stone v. Powell banned federal courts from considering claims that "evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure was introduced at trial" in habeas corpus petitions, as long as state courts had already allowed full litigation of the issue.
On the other hand, the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel was still viable. The district court relied on Third Circuit precedent (namely U.S. v. Baynes,United States v. Baynes, 687 F.2d 659 (3d Cir.1982) Moore v. U.S.,Moore v. United States, 432 F.2d 730 (3d Cir.1970) and U.S. v. SwinehartUnited States v. Swinehart, 617 F.2d 336 (3d Cir.1980)) which measured effective assistance by "the customary skill and knowledge which normally prevails at the time and place," and also required plaintiffs to show they were "prejudiced", i.e. that it was not "harmless error beyond a reasonable doubt." Calling the attorney's mistakes "unmitigated negligence," and stating that "[t]he evidence in this case was not overwhelming," the district court ruled in Morrison's favor, granting a writ of habeas corpus (i.e. the state would have to release Morrison or hold a new trial).
Third Circuit Court of Appeals The state appealed. Just a few months after the district court made its ruling (February 1984), the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Strickland v. Washington (May 1984), in which it reconciled competing standards for "ineffective assistance of counsel" that various federal circuits had established. This meant the Third Circuit Court of Appeals had to decide whether Morrison's Sixth Amendment claim held up under the new standard. In addition, the state of New Jersey argued that not only did Stone v. Powell block Morrison's Fourth Amendment claim (as the district court had held), but it should also block the Sixth Amendment claim, insofar as the defense attorney's error involved a Fourth Amendment issue.Morrison v. Kimmelman, 752 F. 2d 918 (3rd Cir. 1985)
Regarding Stone v. Powell, the Court noted that other Circuits had come to different conclusions about how it applied to ineffective assistance of counsel claims. The Second Circuit had blocked a Sixth Amendment claim,LiPuma v. Commissioner, 560 F.2d 84 (2d Cir.1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 861 (1978) but the Fourth Circuit had gone the other way,Sallie v. State of North Carolina, 587 F.2d 636 (4th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 441 U.S. 911 (1979) and district courts in other circuits similarly had differing opinions. Deciding not to apply Stone v. Powell to block Morrison's Sixth Amendment claim, the Court said:
To review the Sixth Amendment claim itself, the new standard from Strickland v. Washington had two requirements: a lawyer's work would be deemed "ineffective" if 1) "counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness," and 2) "but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different."Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) The Court spent only two sentences determining that the first requirement was met. The second requirement, however, was a "mixed question of law and fact," and it was the point where the relevant legal standard had been changed the most by Strickland. Rather than review the question themselves, the Court chose to remand it to the district court. After all, the district court's ruling was only invalid because the law had changed.
The state petitioned for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was granted.Kimmelman v. Morrison, 474 U. S. 815 (1985)
Decision of the Supreme Court
Majority opinion The Supreme Court voted 9–0 to affirm the decision of the Third Circuit; the only differences of opinion were about how to apply Stone v. Powell to future cases. The majority opinion was written by Justice Brennan and joined by five others. Brennan wrote that Fourth Amendment issues around evidence from illegal searches and seizures—which were the subject of Stone v. Powell—were fundamentally distinct from Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel issues. This meant they had to be treated differently, even when they intersected, and it would be unjust to extend Stone to Sixth Amendment litigation.
Fourth Amendment versus Sixth Amendment issues First, there were two distinct constitutional issues at work:
Second, the reasoning behind Stone v. Powell could not be extended to ineffective-assistance claims. Stone had given state governments a break from re-litigation of the exclusionary rule (which prevented illegally-seized evidence from being used in court), in the context of habeas corpus petitions in federal court, as long as the issue(s) had been properly litigated already in state courts.Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976) The exclusionary rule was not itself a constitutional rule, but a judge-made rule that served to protect Fourth Amendment rights. That meant courts were free to reign in the exclusionary rule if it became too much of a burden. There were other exceptions to the exclusionary rule, such as grand jury hearings, and impeaching defendants who chose to testify on their own behalf.
In contrast, the right to assistance of counsel was an explicit constitutional right, and perhaps the most important right during a trial: