Like lots of people, I feel that the Supreme Court docket’s ruling in Robinson v. California (1962) is a multitude. It is a due course of determination introduced as an Eighth Modification ruling. With that stated, I disagree with my colleague Josh Blackman’s view that the case is entitled to no precedential weight as a result of it turned out that Robinson had died in 1961, earlier than the Court docket took the case. Josh writes:
Jurisdiction might be raised at any time, even after loss of life. The Court docket lacked jurisdiction to resolve Robinson v. California as a result of there was no precise case or controversy. The state was prosecuting a lifeless physique. Robinson offers new that means to habeas corpus. That call is entitled to no precedential weight. I feel the California Legal professional Normal may, in idea a minimum of, petition to vacate Robinson on these grounds. That most likely will not occur. However subsequent time Robinson comes up, the federal government ought to flag the problem.
It appears value noting that this situation was raised earlier than the Supreme Court docket in 1962. After the Supreme Court docket’s ruling, the California Legal professional Normal filed a motion to vacate the judgment or rehear the case that alerted the Court docket to Robinson’s loss of life.
In line with California’s petition, dated July 20, 1962, not one of the counsel for the events had recognized that Robinson was lifeless. (This isn’t completely unusual in felony instances involving low-level costs; appellate counsel can have a tough time staying in contact with shoppers who will not be being detained and who do not have a set deal with.) California’s movement states that the very fact of Robinson’s loss of life was solely revealed by reporters who have been trying into the case after the Supreme Court docket dominated:
It ought to be famous, nevertheless, that the very fact of the appellant’s loss of life was unknown to both counsel for appellee or counsel for Amicus Curiae till the general public press introduced the matter to the eye of counsel for Amicus Curiae on June 25, 1962, subsequent to the issuance of this court docket’s opinion on that date.
The Supreme Court docket nonetheless denied California’s movement on November 13, 1962. Justice Clark, joined by Justices Harlan and Stewart, objected to that denial:
In my opinion this motion by the Court docket is however a meaningless gesture completely ineffective within the disposition of the case—the appellant being lifeless—and, as I learn our instances, is opposite to the overall coverage this Court docket has all the time adopted within the issuance of its mandates. Beneath our selections this attraction abated as moot upon the loss of life of the appellant, Menken v. Metropolis of Atlanta, 131 U.S. 405, 9 S.Ct. 794, 33 L.Ed. 221 (1889), and the judgment ought to have been vacated and the case remanded to the state court docket for such proceedings as could be applicable underneath state regulation.
That is true although the opinion and judgment of June 25 had been handed down previous to the discover of appellant’s * loss of life. See Stewart v. Southern R. Co., 315 U.S. 784, 62 S.Ct. 801, 86 L.Ed. 1190 (1942), vacating the prior judgment in the identical case, 315 U.S. 283, 62 S.Ct. 616, 86 L.Ed. 849. Furthermore, there isn’t a query of prices concerned right here as there was in Wetzel v. Ohio, 83 S.Ct. 111. I might subsequently grant the petition for rehearing and vacate the judgment as moot.
Whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the Court docket’s denial of California’s movement, it appears to me that this situation was settled for Supreme Court docket functions 62 years in the past. The Supreme Court docket is definitely free to recast Robinson as a due course of case sometime—which I personally assume they need to, as that is what Robinson actually is. However the movement to account for Robinson’s premature loss of life was litigated a very long time in the past, again when Elvis Presley had a Prime 10 hit with “Return to Sender.”
