MR. JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner brutally murdered a woman near New Orleans, and then fled the State. He had been seen with his victim, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. In the course of his flight petitioner came to Tucson, Arizona, where he decided to surrender. He flagged down a police car and, after an interruption by the police to warn him that he need not speak, that his speech might be used against him, and that he had a right to contact an attorney, was taken to the station house where he poured out a confession. His confession was introduced in its entirety in the subsequent trial for murder in which petitioner was convicted and sentenced to death.
Although certiorari was granted to consider this question, the fact emerged in oral argument that the sole federal question argued here had never been raised, preserved, or passed upon in the state courts below. It was very early established that the Court will not decide federal constitutional issues raised here for the first time on review of state court decisions. In Crowell v. Randell, 10 Pet. 368 (1836), Justice Story reviewed the earlier cases commencing with Owings v. Norwood's Lessee, 5 Cranch 344 (1809), and came to the conclusion that the Judiciary Act of 1789, c. 20, § 25, 1 Stat. 85, vested this Court with no jurisdiction unless a federal question was raised and decided in the state court below. "If both of these do not appear on the record, the appellate jurisdiction fails." 10 Pet. 368, 391. The Court has consistently refused to decide federal constitutional issues raised here for the first time on review of state court decisions both before the Crowell opinion, Miller v. Nicholls, 4 Wheat. 311, 315 (1819), and since, e. g., Safeway Stores, Inc. v. Oklahoma Retail Grocers Assn., Inc., 360 U.S. 334, 342, n. 7 (1959); State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co. v. Duel, 324 U.S. 154, 160-163 (1945); McGoldrick v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 309 U.S. 430, 434-435 (1940); Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 362-363 (1927); Dewey v. Des Moines, 173 U.S. 193, 197-201 (1899); Murdock v. City of Memphis, 20 Wall. 590 (1875).
In view of the petitioner's admitted failure to raise the issue he presents here in any way below, the failure of the state court to pass on this issue, the desirability of giving the State the first opportunity to apply its statute on an adequate record, and the fact that a federal habeas remedy may remain if no state procedure for raising the issue is available to petitioner, the writ is dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK, MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, and MR. JUSTICE FORTAS concur in the dismissal of the writ, believing it to have been improvidently granted.
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