02-1296 Hampton v. Wyant

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“What a state has to do is look to the appropriate body of decisional law. Faced with a claim that the police lacked probable cause to make an arrest, a state court could not respond that in Illinois it is proper to arrest without probable cause. Failure to apply applicable law would show that the accused lacked a full opportunity to prevail on direct appeal. A court that has made up its mind not to enforce the fourth amendment rarely says so directly, though it may leave clues in its treatment of the merits. It is impossible to see how the problem could be identified without paying some attention to how the state court dealt with the merits. But as we said in Turentine this must not be confused with a search for error. It takes an ‘egregious error’ (80 F.3d at 226) to imply that the state judges have closed their ears and minds to argument-and it is the latter circumstance, not the error itself, that would justify relief under Stone. Even an ‘egregious error’ thus is not enough to support a writ of habeas corpus (that’s what it means to say that the exclusionary rule does not apply on collateral attack); a blunder, no matter how obvious, matters only in conjunction with other circumstances that imply refusal by the state judiciary to take seriously its obligation to adjudicate claims under the fourth amendment. So was there any reason to suppose that in Hampton’s case the state’s judges had their minds closed and were insensible to arguments based on the facts or the Supreme Court’s decisions? Hampton concedes that he had (and used) an unfettered opportunity to develop the facts and present his legal arguments. He concedes that the state trial and appellate judges fairly summarized the facts. The district judge upbraided the state court for not citing Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47 (1979), a decision that in the district judge’s view demonstrates the search’s unconstitutionality, and it took the omission as a sign that the state judges had not been paying attention to Hampton’s argument or were wilfully blind to applicable law. Problem: Hampton had not cited Brown in his own appellate briefs. It is awfully hard to accuse any court of depriving a litigant of full and fair consideration, when its only sin is failing to find, through independent research, an opinion that neither side cited in the briefs! So too with the district judge’s conclusion that the state tribunal relied on the wrong section of LaFave’s treatise. None of the appellate briefs had cited LaFave’s work or the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure. That the judges did some research beyond the boundaries set by the briefs shows industry rather than the sort of indolence that might deprive the parties of a fair hearing.

Reversed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Gettleman, J., Easterbrook, J.