author: Justice O’Connor Justice Brennan, Justice Marshall,

text:
    HEATH v. ALABAMA
    No. 84-5555.
    Argued October 9, 1985
    Decided December 3, 1985

      O’Connor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Burger, C. J., and White, Blackmun, Powell, Rehnquist, and Stevens, JJ., joined. Brennan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Marshall, J., joined, post, p. 94. Marshall, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Brennan, J., joined, post, p. 95.

      Ronald J. Allen argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner.

      William D. Little, Assistant Attorney General of Alabama, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was Charles A. Graddick, Attorney General.
   Justice O’Connor

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question before the Court is whether the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment bars Alabama from trying petitioner for the capital offense of murder during a kidnaping after Georgia has convicted him of murder based on the same homicide. In particular, this case presents the issue of the applicability of the dual sovereignty doctrine to successive prosecutions by two States.

I

In August 1981, petitioner, Larry Gene Heath, hired Charles Owens and Gregory Lumpkin to kill his wife, Rebecca Heath, who was then nine months pregnant, for a sum of $2,000. On the morning of August 31,1981, petitioner left the Heath residence in Russell County, Alabama, to meet with Owens and Lumpkin in Georgia, just over the Alabama border from the Heath home. Petitioner led them back to the Heath residence, gave them the keys to the Heaths’ car and house, and left the premises in his girlfriend’s truck. Owens and Lumpkin then kidnaped Rebecca Heath from her home. The Heath car, with Rebecca Heath’s body inside, was later found on the side of a road in Troup County, Georgia. The cause of death was a gunshot wound in the head. The estimated time of death and the distance from the Heath residence to the spot where Rebecca Heath’s body was found are consistent with the theory that the murder took place in Georgia, and respondent does not contend otherwise.

Georgia and Alabama authorities pursued dual investigations in which they cooperated to some extént. On September 4, 1981, petitioner was arrested by Georgia authorities. Petitioner waived his Miranda rights and gave a full confession admitting that he had arranged his wife’s kidnaping and murder. In November 1981, the grand jury of Troup County, Georgia, indicted petitioner for the offense of “malice” murder under Ga. Code Ann. § 16-5-1 (1984). Georgia then served petitioner with notice of its intention to seek the death penalty, citing as the aggravating circumstance the fact that the murder was “caused and directed” by petitioner. Record 742. See Ga. Code Ann. § 17-10-30(b)(6) (1982). On February 10, 1982, petitioner pleaded guilty to the Georgia murder charge in exchange for a sentence of life imprisonment, which he understood could involve his serving as few as seven years in prison. See Record 495.

On May 5, 1982, the grand jury of Russell County, Alabama, returned an indictment against petitioner for the capital offense of murder during a kidnaping. See Ala. Code § 13A-5-40(a)(l) (1982). Before trial on this indictment, petitioner entered pleas of autrefois convict and former jeopardy under the Alabama and United States Constitutions, arguing that his conviction and sentence in Georgia barred his prosecution in Alabama for the same conduct. Petitioner also entered a plea contesting the jurisdiction of the Alabama court on the ground that the crime had occurred in Georgia.

After a hearing, the trial court rejected petitioner’s double jeopardy claims. It assumed, arguendo, that the two prosecutions could not have been brought in succession by one State but held that double jeopardy did not bar successive prosecutions by two different States for the same act. See Record 776. The court postponed a ruling on petitioner’s plea to jurisdiction until the close of the State’s case in chief. See id., at 778.

At the close of the State’s case, petitioner argued that Alabama did not have jurisdiction under state law because there had been no evidence of kidnaping and all the evidence showed that Rebecca Heath was killed in Georgia. The State responded that a kidnaping had been proved, and that under Ala. Code § 15-2-3 (1982), if a crime commences in Alabama it may be punished in Alabama regardless of where the crime is consummated. The court rejected both petitioner’s jurisdictional plea and his renewed double jeopardy claims. See Record 590.

On January 12, 1983, the Alabama jury convicted petitioner of murder during a kidnaping in the first degree. After a sentencing hearing, the jury recommended the death penalty. Pursuant to Alabama law, a second sentencing hearing was held before the trial judge. The judge accepted the jury’s recommendation, finding that the sole aggravating factor, that the capital offense was “committed while the defendant was engaged in the commission of a kidnapping,” outweighed the sole mitigating factor, that the “defendant was convicted of the murder of Rebecca Heath in the Superior Court of Troup County, Georgia,. . . and received a sentence of life imprisonment in that court.” Id., at 718-720. See Ala. Code §§ 13A-5-49(4), 13A-5-50 (1982).

On appeal, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rejected petitioner’s pleas of autrefois convict and former jeopardy under the Alabama and United States Constitutions and affirmed his conviction. 455 So. 2d 898 (1983). Petitioner then filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Alabama Supreme Court, stating the sole issue to be “whether or not the prosecution in the State of Alabama constituted double jeopardy in violation of the 5th Amendment of the United States Constitution.” App. 92. The court granted his petition, and unanimously affirmed his conviction. Ex parte Heath, 455 So. 2d 905 (1984).

The Alabama Supreme Court noted that “[pjrosecutions under the laws of separate sovereigns do not improperly subject an accused twice to prosecutions for the same offense,” citing this Court’s cases applying the dual sovereignty doctrine. Id., at 906. The court acknowledged that this Court has not considered the applicability of the dual sovereignty doctrine to successive prosecutions by different States. It reasoned, however, that “[i]f, for double jeopardy purposes, Alabama is considered to be a sovereign entity vis-a-vis the federal government then surely it is a sovereign entity vis-a-vis the State of Georgia.” Ibid.

Petitioner sought a writ of certiorari from this Court, raising double jeopardy claims and claims based on Alabama’s exercise of jurisdiction. No due process objections were asserted. We granted certiorari limited to the question whether petitioner’s Alabama conviction was barred by this Court’s decision in Brown v. Ohio, 432 U. S. 161 (1977), and requested the parties to address the question of the applicability of the dual sovereignty doctrine to successive prosecutions by two States. 470 U. S. 1026 (1985). For the reasons explained below, we affirm the judgment of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Despite the fact that this Court did not grant certiorari on the constitutional objection to Alabama’s exercise of jurisdiction, petitioner has continued to argue in this Court his jurisdictional claim. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 11-22, 29-31; Brief for Petitioner 15. We decline to decide the issue because petitioner did not claim lack of jurisdiction in his petition to the Alabama Supreme Court and he raised the claim for the first time in his petition to this Court. Pet. for Cert. 4. Even if we were not jurisdictionally barred from considering claims not pressed or passed upon in the state court, as has sometimes been stated, see, e. g., State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co. v. Duel, 324 U. S. 154, 160 (1945); Crowell v. Randell, 10 Pet. 368, 392 (1836), the longstanding rule that this Court will not consider such claims creates, at the least, a weighty presumption against review. See, e. g., Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 218-222 (1983).

HH HH

Successive prosecutions are barred by the Fifth Amendment only if the two offenses for which the defendant is prosecuted are the “same” for double jeopardy purposes. Respondent does not contravene petitioner’s contention that the offenses of “murder during a kidnaping” and “malice murder,” as construed by the courts of Alabama and Georgia respectively, may be considered greater and lesser offenses and, thus, the “same” offense under Brown v. Ohio, supra, absent operation of the dual sovereignty principle. See id., at 169; Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U. S. 410 (1980). We therefore assume, arguendo, that, had these offenses arisen under the laws of one State and had petitioner been separately-prosecuted for both offenses in that State, the second conviction would have been barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause.

The sole remaining question upon which we granted certio-rari is whether the dual sovereignty doctrine permits successive prosecutions under the laws of different States which otherwise would be held to “subject [the defendant] for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy.” U. S. Const., Arndt. 5. Although we have not previously so held, we believe the answer to this query is inescapable. The dual sovereignty doctrine, as originally articulated and consistently applied by this Court, compels the conclusion that successive prosecutions by two States for the same conduct are not barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause.

The dual sovereignty doctrine is founded on the common-law conception of crime as an offense against the sovereignty of the government. When a defendant in a single act violates the “peace and dignity” of two sovereigns by breaking the laws of each, he has committed two distinct “offences.” United States v. Lanza, 260 U. S. 377, 382 (1922). As the Court explained in Moore v. Illinois, 14 How. 13, 19 (1852), “[a]n offence, in its legal signification, means the transgression of a law.” Consequently, when the same act transgresses the laws of two sovereigns, “it cannot be truly averred that the offender has been twice punished for the same offence; but only that by one act he has committed two offences, for each of which he is justly punishable.” Id., at 20.

In applying the dual sovereignty doctrine, then, the crucial determination is whether the two entities that seek successively to prosecute a defendant for the same course of conduct can be termed separate sovereigns. This determination turns on whether the two entities draw their authority to punish the offender from distinct sources of power. See, e. g., United States v. Wheeler, 435 U. S. 313, 320 (1978); Waller v. Florida, 397 U. S. 387, 393 (1970); Puerto Rico v. Shell Co., 302 U. S. 253, 264-265 (1937); Lanza, supra, at 382; Grafton v. United States, 206 U. S. 333, 354-355 (1907). Thus, the Court has uniformly held that the States are separate sovereigns with respect to the Federal Government because each State’s power to prosecute is derived from its own “inherent sovereignty,” not from the Federal Government. Wheeler, supra, at 320, n. 14. See Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187, 193-194 (1959) (collecting cases); Lanza, supra. As stated in Lanza, supra, at 382:

“Each government in determining what shall be an offense against its peace and dignity is exercising its own sovereignty, not that of the other.
“It follows that an act denounced as a crime by both national and state sovereignties is an offense against the peace and dignity of both and may be punished by each.”

See also Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U. S. 121 (1959); Westfall v. United States, 274 U. S. 256, 258 (1927) (Holmes, J.) (the proposition that the State and Federal Governments may punish the same conduct “is too plain to need more than statement”).

The States are no less sovereign with respect to each other than they are with respect to the Federal Government. Their powers to undertake criminal prosecutions derive from separate and independent sources of power and authority originally belonging to them before admission to the Union and preserved to them by the Tenth Amendment. See Lanza, supra, at 382. The States are equal to each other “in power, dignity and authority, each competent to exert that residuum of sovereignty not delegated to the United States by the Constitution itself.” Coyle v. Oklahoma, 221 U. S. 559, 567 (1911). See Skiriotes v. Florida, 313 U. S. 69, 77 (1941). Thus, “[e]ach has the power, inherent in any sovereign, independently to determine what shall be an offense against its authority and to punish such offenses, and in doing so each ‘is exercising its own sovereignty, not that of the other.’” Wheeler, supra, at 320 (quoting Lanza, supra, at 382).

The cases in which the Court has applied the dual sovereignty principle outside the realm of successive federal and state prosecutions illustrate the soundness of this analysis. United States v. Wheeler, supra, is particularly instructive because there the Court expressly refused to find that only the State and Federal Governments could be considered distinct sovereigns with respect to each other for double jeopardy purposes, stating that “so restrictive a view of [the dual sovereignty] concept. . . would require disregard of the very words of the Double Jeopardy Clause.” Id., at 330. Instead, the Wheeler Court reiterated the principle that the sovereignty of two prosecuting entities for these purposes is determined by “the ultimate source of the power under which the respective prosecutions were undertaken.” Id., at 320. On the basis of this reasoning, the Court held that the Navajo Tribe, whose power to prosecute its members for tribal offenses is derived from the Tribe’s “primeval sovereignty” rather than a delegation of federal authority, is an independent sovereign from the Federal Government for purposes of the dual sovereignty doctrine. Id., at 328.

In those instances where the Court has found the dual sovereignty doctrine inapplicable, it has done so because the two prosecuting entities did not derive their powers to prosecute from independent sources of authority. Thus, the Court has held that successive prosecutions by federal and territorial courts are barred because such courts are “creations emanating from the same sovereignty.” Puerto Rico, 302 U. S., at 264. See id., at 264-266. See also Grafton, supra (the Philippine Islands). Similarly, municipalities that derive their power to try a defendant from the same organic law that empowers the State to prosecute are not separate sovereigns with respect to the State. See, e. g., Waller, supra. These cases confirm that it is the presence of independent sovereign authority to prosecute, not the relation between States and the Federal Gov-eminent in our federalist system, that constitutes the basis for the dual sovereignty doctrine.

Petitioner argues that Nielsen v. Oregon, 212 U. S. 315 (1909), indicates, albeit in dicta, that where States have concurrent jurisdiction over a criminal offense, the first State to prosecute thereby bars prosecution by any other State. We find that Nielsen is limited to its unusual facts and has continuing relevance, if at all, only to questions of jurisdiction between two entities deriving their concurrent jurisdiction from a single source of authority. In Nielsen, the Court set aside a conviction obtained by the State of Oregon against a resident of the State of Washington for his operation of a purse net for fish in the Columbia River pursuant to a valid license to do so from the State of Washington. The Court noted:

“By the legislation of Congress the Columbia River is made the common boundary between Oregon and Washington, and to each of those States is given concurrent jurisdiction on the waters of that river.” Id., at 319. “[T]he grant of concurrent jurisdiction may bring up from time to time . . . some curious and difficult questions, so we properly confine ourselves to the precise question presented. ... It is enough to decide, as we do, that for an act done within the territorial limits of the State of Washington under authority and license from that State one cannot be prosecuted and punished by the State of Oregon.” Id., at 320-321.

It is obvious that the Nielsen Court did not attempt to decide or even to consider the double jeopardy effect of successive state prosecutions for offenses proscribed by both States; the case, therefore, has no bearing on the issue of the applicability of the dual sovereignty doctrine presented in this case.

Ill

Petitioner invites us to restrict the applicability of the dual sovereignty principle to cases in which two governmental entities, having concurrent jurisdiction and pursuing quite different interests, can demonstrate that allowing only one entity to exercise jurisdiction over the defendant will interfere with the unvindicated interests of the second entity and that multiple prosecutions therefore are necessary for the satisfaction of the legitimate interests of both entities. This balancing of interests approach, however, cannot be reconciled with the dual sovereignty principle. This Court has plainly and repeatedly stated that two identical offenses are not the “same offence” within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause if they are prosecuted by different sovereigns. See, e. g., United States v. Lanza, 260 U. S. 377 (1922) (same conduct, indistinguishable statutes, same “interests”). If the States are separate sovereigns, as they must be under the definition of sovereignty which the Court consistently has employed, the circumstances of the case are irrelevant.

Petitioner, then, is asking the Court to discard its sovereignty analysis and to substitute in its stead his difficult and uncertain balancing of interests approach. The Court has refused a similar request on at least one previous occasion, see Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187 (1959); id., at 196 (Brennan, J., separate opinion), and rightfully so. The Court’s express rationale for the dual sovereignty doctrine is not simply a fiction that can be disregarded in difficult cases. It finds weighty support in the historical understanding and political realities of the States’ role in the federal system and in the words of the Double Jeopardy Clause itself, “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” U. S. Const., Arndt. 5 (emphasis added). See Wheeler, 435 U. S., at 330.

It is axiomatic that “[i]n America, the powers of sovereignty are divided between the government of the Union, and those of the States. They are each sovereign, with respect to the objects committed to it, and neither sovereign with respect to the objects committed to the other.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 410 (1819). It is as well established that the States, “as political communities, [are] distinct and sovereign, and consequently foreign to each other.” Bank of United States v. Daniel, 12 Pet. 32, 54 (1838). See also Skiriotes v. Florida, 313 U. S., at 77; Coyle v. Oklahoma, 221 U. S., at 567. The Constitution leaves in the possession of each State “certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power.” The Federalist No. 9, p. 55 (J. Cooke ed. 1961). Foremost among the prerogatives of sovereignty is the power to create and enforce a criminal code. See, e. g., Alfred L. Snapp & Son, Inc. v. Puerto Rico ex rel. Barez, 458 U. S. 592, 601 (1982); McCulloch, supra, at 418. To deny a State its power to enforce its criminal laws because another State has won the race to the courthouse “would be a shocking and untoward deprivation of the historic right and obligation of the States to maintain peace and order within their confines.” Bartkus, 359 U. S., at 137.

Such a deprivation of a State’s sovereign powers cannot be justified by the assertion that under “interest analysis” the State’s legitimate penal interests will be satisfied through a prosecution conducted by another State. A State’s interest in vindicating its sovereign authority through enforcement of its laws by definition can never be satisfied by another State’s enforcement of its own laws. Just as the Federal Government has the right to decide that a state prosecution has not vindicated a violation of the “peace and dignity” of the Federal Government, a State must be entitled to decide that a prosecution by another State has not satisfied its legitimate sovereign interest. In recognition of this fact, the Court consistently has endorsed the principle that a single act constitutes an “offence” against each sovereign whose laws are violated by that act. The Court has always understood the words of the Double Jeopardy Clause to reflect this fundamental principle, and we see no reason why we should reconsider that understanding today.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Alabama is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Justice Brennan,

with whom Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.

I concur wholeheartedly in Justice Marshall’s dissent. I write separately only to clarify my views on the role that “different interests” should play in determining whether two prosecutions are “for the same offence” within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause.

In Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187 (1959), in addition to arguing that the dual sovereignty doctrine permitted successive state and federal prosecutions, the Federal Government also urged that the federal prosecution was not barred because the two prosecutions were not “for the same offense.” The Government’s theory was that, because the federal and state statutes involved had divergent specific purposes — the federal law to protect communications and the state law to protect private property — and thus promoted different “interests,” the prosecutions were really for different offenses.

I rejected this argument in a separate opinion. Id., at 196-201. My concern was that “this reasoning would apply equally if each of two successive federal prosecutions based on the same acts was brought under a different federal statute, and each statute was designed to protect a different federal interest.” Id., at 197 (emphasis in original). That result I found clearly barred by the Fifth Amendment.

I adhere to the position I took in Abbate, that the different purposes or interests served by specific statutes cannot justify an exception to our established double jeopardy law. However, I read Justice Marshall’s dissent to use “interest” analysis in another context. He employs it to demonstrate the qualitative difference in the general nature of federal and state interests and the qualitative similarity in the nature of States’ interest. Justice Marshall’s use of this interest analysis furthers, rather than undermines, the purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause. Based on this understanding, I join Justice Marshall’s dissent.

Justice Marshall,

with whom Justice Brennan joins, dissenting.

Seizing upon the suggestion in past cases that every “independent” sovereign government may prosecute violations of its laws even when the defendant has already been tried for the same crime in another jurisdiction, the Court today gives short shrift to the policies underlying those precedents. The “dual sovereignty” doctrine, heretofore used to permit federal and state prosecutions for the same offense, was born of the need to accommodate complementary state and federal concerns within our system of concurrent territorial jurisdictions. It cannot justify successive prosecutions by different States. Moreover, even were the dual sovereignty doctrine to support successive state prosecutions as a general matter, it simply could not legitimate the collusion between Georgia and Alabama in this case to ensure that petitioner is executed for his crime.

i — i

On August 31, 1981, the body of Rebecca Heath was discovered in an abandoned car in Troup County, Georgia. Because the deceased was a resident of Russell County, Alabama, members of the Russell County Sheriff’s Department immediately joined Troup County authorities in investigating the causes and agents of her death. Tr. 359. This cooperative effort proved fruitful. On September 4, petitioner Larry Heath, the deceased’s husband, was arrested and brought to the Georgia State Patrol barracks in Troup County, where he confessed to having hired other men to murder his wife. Shortly thereafter, petitioner was indicted by the grand jury of Troup County for malice murder. The prosecution’s notice to petitioner that it was seeking the death penalty triggered the beginning of the Unified Appeals Procedure that Georgia requires in capital cases. But while these pretrial proceedings were still in progress, petitioner seized the prosecution’s offer of a life sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. Upon entry of his plea in February 1982, petitioner was sentenced in Troup County Superior Court to life imprisonment. His stay in the custody of Georgia authorities proved short, however. Three months later, a Russell County, Alabama, grand jury indicted him for the capital offense of murdering Rebecca Heath during the course of a kidnaping in the first degree.

The murder of Rebecca Heath must have been quite noteworthy in Russell County, Alabama. By petitioner’s count, of the 82 prospective jurors questioned before trial during voir dire, all but 7 stated that they were aware that petitioner had pleaded guilty to the same crime in Georgia. Id., at 294. The voir dire responses of almost all of the remaining 75 veniremen can only be characterized as remarkable. When asked whether they could put aside their knowledge of the prior guilty plea in order to give petitioner a fair trial in Alabama, the vast majority answered in the affirmative. See, e. g., id., at 110,112-113,134, 254. These answers satisfied the trial judge, who denied petitioner’s challenges for cause except as to those jurors who explicitly admitted that the Georgia proceedings would probably affect their assessment of petitioner’s guilt.

With such a well-informed jury, the outcome of the trial was surely a foregone conclusion. Defense counsel could do little but attempt to elicit information from prosecution witnesses tending to show that the crime was committed exclusively in Georgia. The court having rejected petitioner’s constitutional and jurisdictional claims, the defense was left to spend most of its summation arguing that Rebecca Heath may not actually have been kidnaped from Alabama before she was murdered and that petitioner was already being punished for ordering that murder. Petitioner was convicted and, after sentencing hearings, was condemned to die. The conviction and sentence were upheld by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, 455 So. 2d 898 (1983), and the Alabama Supreme Court. Ex parte Heath, 455 So. 2d 905 (1984).

I — I HH

Had the Georgia authorities suddenly become dissatisfied with the life sentence petitioner received in their courts and reindicted petitioner in order to seek the death penalty once again, that indictment would without question be barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as applied to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, Benton v. Maryland, 395 U. S. 784 (1969). Whether the second indictment repeated the charge of malice murder or instead charged murder in the course of a kidnaping, it would surely, under any reasonable constitutional standard, offend the bar to successive prosecutions for the same offense. See Brown v. Ohio, 432 U. S. 161, 166 (1977); id., at 170 (Brennan, J., concurring).

The only difference between this case and such a hypothetical volte-face by Georgia is that here Alabama, not Georgia, was offended by the notion that petitioner might not forfeit his life in punishment for his crime. The only reason the Court gives for permitting Alabama to go forward is that Georgia and Alabama are separate sovereigns.

A

The dual sovereignty theory posits that where the same act offends the laws of two sovereigns, “it cannot be truly averred that the offender has been twice punished for the same offence; but only that by one act he has committed two offences, for each of which he is justly punishable.” Moore v. Illinois, 14 How. 13, 20 (1852). Therefore, “prosecutions under the laws of separate sovereigns do not, in the language of the Fifth Amendment, ‘subject [the defendant] for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy.’ ” United States v. Wheeler, 435 U. S. 313, 317 (1978). Mindful of the admonitions of Justice Black, we should recognize this exegesis of the Clause as, at best, a useful fiction and, at worst, a dangerous one. See Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U. S. 121, 158 (1959) (Black, J., dissenting). No evidence has ever been adduced to indicate that the Framers intended the word “offence” to have so restrictive a meaning.

This strained reading of the Double Jeopardy Clause has survived and indeed flourished in this Court’s cases not because of any inherent plausibility, but because it provides reassuring interpretivist support for a rule that accommodates the unique nature of our federal system. Before this rule is extended to cover a new class of cases, the reasons for its creation should therefore be made clear.

Under the constitutional scheme, the Federal Government has been given the exclusive power to vindicate certain of our Nation’s sovereign interests, leaving the States to exercise complementary authority over matters of more local concern. The respective spheres of the Federal Government and the States may overlap at times, and even where they do not, different interests may be implicated by a single act. See, e. g., Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187 (1959) (conspiracy to dynamite telephone company facilities entails both destruction of property and disruption of federal communications network). Yet were a prosecution by a State, however zealously pursued, allowed to preclude further prosecution by the Federal Government for the same crime, an entire range of national interests could be frustrated. The importance of those federal interests has thus quite properly been permitted to trump a defendant’s interest in avoiding successive prosecutions or multiple punishments for the same crime. See Screws v. United States, 325 U. S. 91, 108-110, and n. 10 (1945) (plurality opinion). Conversely, because “the States under our federal system have the principal responsibility for defining and prosecuting crimes,” Abbate v. United States, swpra, at 195, it would be inappropriate — in the absence of a specific congressional intent to pre-empt state action pursuant to the Supremacy Clause — to allow a federal prosecution to preclude state authorities from vindicating “the historic right and obligation of the States to maintain peace and order within their confines,” Bartkus v. Illinois, supra, at 137.

The complementary nature of the sovereignty exercised by the Federal Government and the States places upon a defendant burdens commensurate with concomitant privileges. Past cases have recognized that the special ordeal suffered by a defendant prosecuted by both federal and state authorities is the price of living in a federal system, the cost of dual citizenship. Every citizen, the Court has noted, “owes allegiance to the two departments, so to speak, and within their respective spheres must pay the penalties which each exacts for disobedience to its laws. In return, he can demand protection from each within its own jurisdiction. ” United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 551 (1876). See Moore v. Illinois, supra, at 20 (“Every citizen . . . may be said to owe allegiance to two sovereigns, and may be liable to punishment for an infraction of the laws of either”).

B

Because all but one of the cases upholding the dual sovereignty doctrine have involved the unique relationship between the Federal Government and the States, the question whether a similar rule should exempt successive prosecutions by two different States from the command of the Double Jeopardy Clause is one for which this Court’s precedents provide all too little illumination. Only once before has the Court explicitly considered competing state prosecutorial interests. In that case, it observed that where an act is prohibited by the laws of two States with concurrent jurisdiction over the locus of the offense

“the one first acquiring jurisdiction of the person may prosecute the offense, and its judgment is a finality in both States, so that one convicted or acquitted in the courts of the one State cannot be prosecuted for the same offense in the courts of the other.” Nielsen v. Oregon, 212 U. S. 315, 320 (1909).

Where two States seek to prosecute the same defendant for the same crime in two separate proceedings, the justifications found in the federal-state context for an exemption from double jeopardy constraints simply do not hold. Although the two States may have opted for different policies within their assigned territorial jurisdictions, the sovereign concerns with whose vindication each State has been charged are identical. Thus, in contrast to the federal-state context, barring the second prosecution would still permit one government to act upon the broad range of sovereign concerns that have been reserved to the States by the Constitution. The compelling need in the federal-state context to subordinate double jeopardy concerns is thus considerably diminished in cases involving successive prosecutions by different States. Moreover, from the defendant’s perspective, the burden of successive prosecutions cannot be justified as the quid pro quo of dual citizenship.

To be sure, a refusal to extend the dual sovereignty rule to state-state prosecutions would preclude the State that has lost the “race to the courthouse” from vindicating legitimate policies distinct from those underlying its sister State’s prosecution. But as yet, I am not persuaded that a State’s desire to further a particular policy should be permitted to deprive a defendant of his constitutionally protected right not to be brought to bar more than once to answer essentially the same charges.

Ill

Having expressed my doubts as to the Court’s ill-considered resolution of the dual sovereignty question in this case, I must confess that my quarrel with the Court’s disposition of this case is based less upon how this question was resolved than upon the fact that it was considered at all. Although, in granting Heath’s petition for certiorari, this Court ordered the parties to focus upon the dual sovereignty issue, I believe the Court errs in refusing to consider the fundamental unfairness of the process by which petitioner stands condemned to die.

Even where the power of two sovereigns to pursue separate prosecutions for the same crime has been undisputed, this Court has barred both governments from combining to do together what each could not constitutionally do on its own. See Murphy v. Waterfront Comm’n, 378 U. S. 52 (1964); Elkins v. United States, 364 U. S. 206 (1960). And just as the Constitution bars one sovereign from facilitating another’s prosecution by delivering testimony coerced under promise of immunity or evidence illegally seized, I believe that it prohibits two sovereigns from combining forces to ensure that a defendant receives only the trappings of criminal process as he is sped along to execution.

While no one can doubt the propriety of two States cooperating to bring a criminal to justice, the cooperation between Georgia and Alabama in this case went far beyond their initial joint investigation. Georgia’s efforts to secure petitioner’s execution did not end with its acceptance of his guilty plea. Its law enforcement officials went on to play leading roles as prosecution witnesses in the Alabama trial. Indeed, had the Alabama trial judge not restricted the State to one assisting officer at the prosecution’s table during trial, a Georgia officer would have shared the honors with an Alabama officer. Tr. 298. Although the record does not reveal the precise nature of the assurances made by Georgia authorities that induced petitioner to plead guilty in the first proceeding against him, I cannot believe he would have done so had he been aware that the officials whose forbearance he bought in Georgia with his plea would merely continue their efforts to secure his death in another jurisdiction. Cf. Santobello v. New York, 404 U. S. 257, 262 (1971).

Even before the Fourteenth Amendment was held to incorporate the protections of the Double Jeopardy Clause, four Members of this Court registered their outrage at “an instance of the prosecution being allowed to harass the accused with repeated trials and convictions on the same evidence, until it achieve[d] its desired result of a capital verdict.” Ciucci v. Illinois, 356 U. S. 571, 573 (1958). Such “relentless prosecutions,” they asserted, constituted “an unseemly and oppressive use of a criminal trial that violates the concept of due process contained in the Fourteenth Amendment, whatever its ultimate scope is taken to be.” Id., at 575. The only differences between the facts in Ciucci and those in this case are that here the relentless effort was a cooperative one between two States and that petitioner sought to avoid trial by pleading guilty. Whether viewed as a violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause or simply as an affront to the due process guarantee of fundamental fairness, Alabama’s prosecution of petitioner cannot survive constitutional scrutiny. I therefore must dissent.

       The indictment read as follows:
      “[The grand jurors] in the name and on behalf of the citizens of Georgia, charge and accuse LARRY GENE HEATH [et ah] with the offense of MURDER (26-1101); for that the said LARRY GENE HEATH [et ah] on the date of August 31, 1981, in the county aforesaid, did then and there unlawfully and with malice aforethought cause the death of Rebecca McGuire Heath, a human being, by shooting her with a gun, a deadly weapon.” Record 740.

       The indictment stated:
      “Larry Gene Heath did intentionally cause the death of Rebecca Heath, by shooting her with a gun, and Larry Gene Heath caused said death during Larry Gene Heath’s abduction of, or attempt to abduct, Rebecca Heath with intent to inflict physical injury upon her, in violation of § 13A-5-40(a)(l) of the Code of Alabama 1975, as amended, against the peace and dignity of the State of Alabama.” Id., at 728.

       I illustrated how radical and pernicious a revision in existing double jeopardy jurisprudence the Government’s theory might work by referring to In re Nielsen, 131 U. S. 176 (1889). Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S., at 201. In Nielsen, the defendant, a Mormon with more than one wife, had been convicted of violating two separate congressional statutes that applied to the Territory of Utah in two successive prosecutions. In the first prosecution he was tried for and convicted of cohabiting with more than one woman, in the second he was tried for and convicted of adultery. The Court correctly held that the second prosecution had unconstitutionally placed the defendant twice in jeopardy for the same offense. Under the rule the Government proposed in Abbate, however, the mere difference between the interests in prohibiting multiple sexual partners and in proscribing extramarital sexual relationships would have permitted successive prosecutions.

       It is curious to note how reluctant the Court has always been to ascertain the intent of the Framers in this area. The furthest the Court has ever progressed on such an inquiry was to note: “It has not been deemed relevant to discussion of our problem to consider dubious English precedents concerning the effect of foreign criminal judgments on the ability of English courts to try charges arising out of the same conduct. . . .” Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U. S., at 128, n. 9. But see id., at 156 (Black, J., dissenting); M. Friedland, Double Jeopardy 360-364 (1969).

        United States v. Wheeler, 435 U. S. 313 (1978), where the Court upheld successive prosecutions by Federal Government and Navajo tribal authorities, merely recognizes an analogous relationship between two governments with complementary concerns. While the Court noted that “Congress has plenary authority to legislate for the Indian tribes in all matters, including their form of government,” id., at 319, Congress has in fact wisely refrained from interfering in this sensitive area. The relationship between federal and tribal authorities is thus in this respect analogous to that between the Federal Government and the States.

       To be sure, Murphy, which bars a State from compelling a witness to give testimony that might be used against him in a federal prosecution, and Elkins, which bars the introduction in a federal prosecution of evidence illegally seized by state officers, do not necessarily undermine the basis of the rule allowing successive state and federal prosecutions. It is one thing to bar a sovereign from using certain evidence and quite another to bar it from prosecuting altogether. But these eases can be read to suggest that despite the independent sovereign status of the Federal and State Governments, courts should not be blind to the impact of combined federal-state law enforcement on an accused’s constitutional rights. See Note, Double Prosecution by State and Federal Governments: Another Exercise in Federalism, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 1538, 1547 (1967). Justice Harlan’s belief that Murphy “abolished the ‘two sovereignties’ rule,” Stevens v. Marks, 383 U. S. 234, 250 (1966) (Harlan, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part), was thus well founded.


source: Caselaw Access Project

author: Justice O’Connor Justice Rehnquist,

license: Public Domain

text:
    MILLER v. FENTON, SUPERINTENDENT, RAHWAY STATE PRISON, et al.
    No. 84-5786.
    Argued October 16, 1985
    Decided December 3, 1985

      O’ConnOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Burgee, C. J., and BREnnan, White, Marshall, Blackmun, Powell, and Stevens, JJ., joined. Rehnquist, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 118.

      Paul Martin Klein argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Thomas S. Smith and Claudia Van Wyk.

      Anne C. Paskow, Deputy Attorney General of New Jersey, argued the cause for respondents. With her on the brief were Irwin I. Kimmelman, Attorney General, and Allan J. Nodes and Debra L. Stone, Deputy Attorneys General.

        Charles S. Sims filed a brief for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. as amici curiae urging reversal.

   Justice O’Connor

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Under 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d), state-court findings of fact “shall be presumed to be correct” in a federal habeas corpus proceeding unless one of eight enumerated exceptions applies. The question presented is whether the voluntariness of a confession is an issue of fact entitled to the § 2254(d) presumption.

I

On the morning of August 13, 1973, a stranger approached the rural New Jersey home of 17-year-old Deborah Margolin and told her that a heifer was loose at the foot of her driveway. She set out alone to investigate and never returned. Later that day, her mutilated body was found in a nearby stream.

The victim’s brothers were able to provide a description of the stranger’s car and clothing. Based on this information, officers of the New Jersey State Police tentatively identified petitioner and, later that evening, found him at his place of employment. Petitioner responded to the officers’ preliminary inquiries and agreed to return to the police barracks for further questioning. Approximately two hours later, Detective Charles Boyce led petitioner to an interrogation room and informed him of his Mimnda rights. Petitioner inquired about the scope of his privilege to remain silent and then executed a written waiver, the validity of which is not at issue.

A 58 minute long interrogation session ensued. During the course of the interview, Detective Boyce told petitioner that Ms. Margolin had just died. That statement, which Boyce knew to be untrue, supported another officer’s earlier, and equally false, suggestion that the victim was still alive and could identify her attacker. App. 16-17; Record 109 and 305. Detective Boyce also told petitioner that he had been identified at the Margolin home earlier in the day. In fact, Ms. Margolin’s brothers had only provided a general description of the stranger’s car and clothing. Finally, Detective Boyce indicated that blood stains had been found on petitioner’s front stoop. No such evidence was introduced at trial, and respondents do not now contend that it ever in fact existed.

Throughout the interview, Detective Boyce presented himself as sympathetic to petitioner’s plight. On several occasions, he stated that he did not consider petitioner to be a criminal because the perpetrator of the deed had a “mental problem” and needed medical help rather than punishment. App. 19. Eventually, petitioner fully confessed to the crime. After doing so, he lapsed into what Detective Boyce described as a “state of shock.” Record 84-85. Repeated efforts to rouse him from his stupor failed, and the police summoned an ambulance to transport him to the hospital.

The trial court rejected petitioner’s motion to suppress the confession, and the jury found petitioner guilty of murder in the first degree. The Superior Court Appellate Division reversed, finding as a matter of law that the confession was the result of “intense and mind bending psychological compulsion” and therefore was impermissible under the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. App. 53. Over three dissents, the Supreme Court of New Jersey reversed again. State v. Miller, 76 N. J. 392, 388 A. 2d 218 (1978). After examining the “totality of all the surrounding circumstances,” including petitioner’s educational level, age, and awareness of his Miranda rights, the court found that the interrogation “did not exceed proper bounds,” and that the resulting confession, being voluntary, had been properly admitted into evidence. Id., at 402-405, 388 A. 2d, at 223-224.

Petitioner then sought a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. That court dismissed the application without an evidentiary hearing. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed. 741 F. 2d 1456 (1984). Relying on Circuit precedent, the court held that the voluntariness of a confession is a “factual issue” within the meaning of 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). Accordingly, federal review of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s determination that petitioner’s confession was voluntary was “limited to whether the state court applied the proper legal test, and whether [its] factual conclusions . . . [were] supported on the record as a whole.” 741 F. 2d, at 1462. Under this standard, the court concluded, the District Court’s denial of the petition for habeas relief was proper.

Because the Courts of Appeals have reached differing conclusions on whether state-court voluntariness determinations are entitled to the § 2254(d) presumption of correctness, and because of the issue’s importance to the administration of criminal justice, we granted certiorari. 471 U. S. 1003 (1985). Compare Brantley v. McKaskle, 122 F. 2d 187, 188 (CA5 1984) “([V]oluntariness of a confession is a mixed question of law and fact”), with Alexander v. Smith, 582 F. 2d 212, 217 (CA2) (state-court voluntariness determination entitled to § 2254(d) presumption), cert. denied, 439 U. S. 990 (1978). We now reverse and remand.

I — i HH

This Court has long held that certain interrogation techniques, either in isolation or as applied to the unique characteristics of a particular suspect, are so offensive to a civilized system of justice that they must be condemned under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278 (1936), was the wellspring of this notion, now deeply embedded in our criminal law. Faced with statements extracted by beatings and other forms of physical and psychological torture, the Court held that confessions procured by means “revolting to the sense of justice” could not be used to secure a conviction. Id., at 286. On numerous subsequent occasions the Court has set aside convictions secured through the admission of an improperly obtained confession. See, e. g., Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385 (1978); Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503 (1963); Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143 (1944); Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227, 235-238 (1940). Although these decisions framed the legal inquiry in a variety of different ways, usually through the “convenient shorthand” of asking whether the confession was “involuntary,” Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S. 199, 207 (1960), the Court’s analysis has consistently been animated by the view that “ours is an accu-satorial and not an inquisitorial system,” Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, 541 (1961), and that, accordingly, tactics for eliciting inculpatory statements must fall within the broad constitutional boundaries imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of fundamental fairness. Indeed, even after holding that the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination applies in the context of custodial interrogations, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 478 (1966), and is binding on the States, Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, 6 (1964), the Court has continued to measure confessions against the requirements of due process. See, e. g., Mincey v. Arizona, supra, at 402; Beecher v. Alabama, 389 U. S. 35, 38 (1967) (per curiam).

Without exception, the Court’s confession cases hold that the ultimate issue of “voluntariness” is a legal question requiring independent federal determination. See, e. g., Haynes v. Washington, supra, at 515-516; Ashcraft v. Tennessee, supra, at 147-148. As recently as 1978, the Court reaffirmed that it was “not bound by” a state-court volun-tariness finding and reiterated its historic “duty to make an independent evaluation of the record.” Mincey v. Arizona, supra, at 398. That duty, as Mincey makes explicit, is not limited to instances in which the claim is that the police conduct was “inherently coercive.” Ashcraft v. Tennessee, supra, at 154. It applies equally when the interrogation techniques were improper only because, in the particular circumstances of the case, the confession is unlikely to have been the product of a free and rational will. See Mincey v. Arizona, supra, at 401. Because the ultimate issue in both categories of cases is the same — whether the State has obtained the confession in a manner that comports with due process — the decisions leave no doubt that our independent obligation to decide the constitutional question is identical.

Mincey, Ashcraft, and many of the early decisions applying the independent-determination rule in confession cases came to the Court on direct appeal from state-court judgments. The rule, however, is no less firmly established in cases coming to the federal system on application for a writ of habeas corpus. Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U. S. 737 (1966), resolved the issue with unmistakable clarity. There, the State had admitted into evidence a confession elicited from an impoverished, mentally deficient suspect who had been held incommunicado for 16 days with barely adequate nourishment. Expressly relying on the direct-appeal cases, the Court stated unequivocally that state-court determinations concerning the ultimate question of the voluntariness of a confession are not binding in a federal habeas corpus proceeding. Id., at 741-742.

Davis was decided four months before 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d) was signed into law. Act of Nov. 2, 1966, Pub. L. 89-711, 80 Stat. 1105. Respondent contends that, whatever may have been the ease prior to 1966, the enactment of § 2254(d) in that year fundamentally altered the nature of federal habeas review of state voluntariness findings. That suggestion finds no support in this Court’s decisions. See, e. g., Boulden v. Holman, 394 U. S. 478, 480 (1969) (finding confession voluntary after making “an independent study of the entire record”); Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U. S. 731, 739 (1969) (examining “totality of the circumstances” to assess admissibility of confession). More importantly, the history of § 2254(d) undermines any argument that Congress intended that the ultimate question of the admissibility of a confession be treated a “factual issue” within the meaning of that provision. The 1966 amendment was an almost verbatim codification of the standards delineated in Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293 (1963), for determining when a district court must hold an evidentiary hearing before acting on a ha-beas petition. When a hearing is not obligatory, Townsend held, the federal court “ordinarily should . . . accept the facts as found” in the state proceeding. Id., at 318. Congress elevated that exhortation into a mandatory presumption of correctness. But there is absolutely no indication that it intended to alter Townsend’s understanding that the “ultimate constitutional question” of the admissibility of a confession was a “mixed questio[n] of fact and law” subject to plenary federal review. Id., at 309, and n. 6.

In short, an unbroken line of cases, coming to this Court both on direct appeal and on review of applications to lower federal courts for a writ of habeas corpus, forecloses the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the “voluntariness” of a confession merits something less than independent federal consideration. To be sure, subsidiary factual questions, such as whether a drug has the properties of a truth serum, id., at 306, or whether in fact the police engaged in the intimidation tactics alleged by the defendant, LaVallee v. Delle Rose, 410 U. S. 690, 693-695 (1973) (per curiam), are entitled to the § 2254(d) presumption. And the federal habeas court, should, of course, give great weight to the considered conclusions of a coequal state judiciary. Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 605 (1961) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). But, as we now reaffirm, the ultimate question whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the challenged confession was obtained in a manner compatible with the requirements of the Constitution is a matter for independent federal determination.

h-H HH

The Court of Appeals recognized that treating the volun-tariness of a confession as an issue of fact was difficult to square with “fifty years of caselaw” in this Court. 741F. 2d, at 1462. It believed, however, that this substantial body of contrary precedent was not controlling in light of our more recent decisions addressing the scope of the § 2254(d) presumption of correctness. See Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U. S. 412, 429 (1985) (trial court’s determination that a prospective juror in a capital case was properly excluded for cause entitled to presumption); Patton v. Yount, 467 U. S. 1025 (1984) (impartiality of an individual juror); Rushen v. Spain, 464 U. S. 114 (1983) (per curiam) (effect of ex parte communication on impartiality of individual juror); Maggio v. Fulford, 462 U. S. 111 (1983) (per curiam) (competency to stand trial); Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U. S. 422, 431-437 (1983) (determination that defendant received and understood sufficient notice of charges against him to render guilty plea voluntary). We acknowledge that the Court has not charted an entirely clear course in this area. We reject, however, the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that these case-specific holdings tacitly overturned the longstanding rule that the voluntariness of a confession is a matter for independent federal determination.

In the § 2254(d) context, as elsewhere, the appropriate methodology for distinguishing questions of fact from questions of law has been, to say the least, elusive. See Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U. S. 485 (1984); Baumgartner v. United States, 322 U. S. 665, 671 (1944). A few principles, however, are by now well established. For example, that an issue involves an inquiry into state of mind is not at all inconsistent with treating it as a question of fact. See, e. g., Maggio v. Fulford, supra. Equally clearly, an issue does not lose its factual character merely because its resolution is dispositive of the ultimate constitutional question. See Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 443 U. S. 526, 534 (1979) (finding of intent to discriminate subject to “clearly erroneous” standard of review). But beyond these elemental propositions, negative in form, the Court has yet to arrive at “a rule or principle that will unerringly distinguish a factual finding from a legal conclusion.” Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U. S. 273, 288 (1982).

Perhaps much of the difficulty in this area stems from the practical truth that the decision to label an issue a “question of law,” a “question of fact,” or a “mixed question of law and fact” is sometimes as much a matter of allocation as it is of analysis. See Monaghan, Constitutional Fact Review, 85 Colum. L. Rev. 229, 237 (1985). At least in those instances in which Congress has not spoken and in which the issue falls somewhere between a pristine legal standard and a simple historical fact, the fact/law distinction at times has turned on a determination that, as a matter of the sound administration of justice, one judicial actor is better positioned than another to decide the issue in question. Where, for example, as with proof of actual malice in First Amendment libel cases, the relevant legal principle can be given meaning only through its application to the particular circumstances of a case, the Court has been reluctant to give the trier of fact’s conclusions presumptive force and, in so doing, strip a federal appellate court of its primary function as an expositor of law. See Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U. S., at 503. Similarly, on rare occasions in years past the Court has justified independent federal or appellate review as a means of compensating for “perceived shortcomings of the trier of fact by way of bias or some other factor. ...” Id., at 518 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). See, e. g., Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S., at 516; Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 52 (1949) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). Cf. Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587 (1935).

In contrast, other considerations often suggest the appropriateness of resolving close questions concerning the status of an issue as one of “law” or “fact” in favor of extending deference to the trial court. When, for example, the issue involves the credibility of witnesses and therefore turns largely on an evaluation of demeanor, there are compelling and familiar justifications for leaving the process of applying law to fact to the trial court and according its determinations presumptive weight. Patton v. Yount, supra, and Wainwright v. Witt, supra, are illustrative. There the Court stressed that the state trial judge is in a position to assess juror bias that is far superior to that of federal judges reviewing an application for a writ of habeas corpus. Principally for that reason, the decisions held, juror bias merits treatment as a “factual issue” within the meaning of § 2254(d) notwithstanding the intimate connection between such determinations and the constitutional guarantee of an impartial jury.

For several reasons we think that it would be inappropriate to abandon the Court’s longstanding position that the ultimate question of the admissibility of a confession merits treatment as a legal inquiry requiring plenary federal review. We note at the outset that we do not write on a clean slate. “Very weighty considerations underlie the principle that courts should not lightly overrule past decisions.” Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U. S. 375, 403 (1970). Thus, even assuming that contemporary considerations supported respondent’s construction of the statute, nearly a half century of unwavering precedent weighs heavily against any suggestion that we now discard the settled rule in this area. Moreover, as previously noted, Congress patterned § 2254(d) after Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293 (1963), a case that clearly assumed that the voluntariness of a confession was an issue for independent federal determination. Thus, not only are stare decisis concerns compelling, but, unlike in Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U. S. 422 (1983), Rushen v. Spain, 464 U. S. 114 (1983), or any of our other recent § 2254(d) cases, in the confession context we have the benefit of some congressional guidance in resolving whether the disputed issue falls outside of the scope of the § 2254(d) presumption. Although the history of that provision is not without its ambiguities, it is certainly clear enough to tip the scales in favor of treating the voluntariness of a confession as beyond the reach of § 2254(d).

In addition to considerations of stare decisis and congressional intent, the nature of the inquiry itself lends support to the conclusion that “voluntariness” is a legal question meriting independent consideration in a federal habeas corpus proceeding. Although sometimes framed as an issue of “psychological fact,” Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S., at 603, the dispositive question of the voluntariness of a confession has always had a uniquely legal dimension. It is telling that in confession cases coming from the States, this Court has consistently looked to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to test admissibility. See, e. g., Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S., at 402. The locus of the right is significant because it reflects the Court’s consistently held view that the admissibility of a confession turns as much on whether the techniques for extracting the statements, as applied to this suspect, are compatible with a system that presumes innocence and assures that a conviction will not be secured by inquisitorial means as on whether the defendant’s will was in fact overborne. See, e. g., Gallegos v. Colorado, 370 U. S. 49, 51 (1962) (suggesting that “a compound of two influences” requires that some confessions be condemned); Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, at 605 (describing voluntariness as an “amphibian”). This hybrid quality of the volun-tariness inquiry, subsuming, as it does, a “complex of values,” Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S., at 207, itself militates against treating the question as one of simple historical fact.

Putting to one side whether “voluntariness” is analytically more akin to a fact or a legal conclusion, the practical considerations that have led us to find other issues within the scope of the § 2254(d) presumption are absent in the confession context. First, unlike the impartiality of a given juror, Patton v. Yount, 467 U. S., at 1036, or competency to stand trial, Maggio v. Fulford, 462 U. S., at 117, assessments of credibility and demeanor are not crucial to the proper resolution of the ultimate issue of “voluntariness.” Of course, subsidiary-questions, such as the length and circumstances of the interrogation, the defendant’s prior experience with the legal process, and familiarity with the Miranda warnings, often require the resolution of conflicting testimony of police and defendant. The law is therefore clear that state-court findings on such matters are conclusive on the habeas court if fairly supported in the record and if the other circumstances enumerated in § 2254(d) are inapplicable. But once such underlying factual issues have been resolved, and the moment comes for determining whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the confession was obtained in a manner consistent with the Constitution, the state-court judge is not in an appreciably better position than the federal habeas court to make that determination.

Second, the allocution of a guilty plea, Marshall v. Lonberger, supra, the adjudication of competency to stand trial, Maggio v. Fulford, supra, and the determination of juror bias, Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U. S. 412 (1985), take place in open court on a full record. In marked contrast, the critical events surrounding the taking of a confession almost invariably occur in a secret and inherently more coercive environment. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S., at 458. These circumstances, standing alone, cannot be dispositive of the question whether a particular issue falls within the reach of § 2254(d). However, together with the inevitable and understandable reluctance to exclude an otherwise reliable admission of guilt, Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368, 381 (1964), they elevate the risk that erroneous resolution of the voluntariness question might inadvertently frustrate the protection of the federal right. See Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S., at 516; Ward v. Texas, 316 U. S. 547 (1942). We reiterate our confidence that state judges, no less than their federal counterparts, -will properly discharge their duty to protect the constitutional rights of criminal defendants. We note only that in the confession context, independent federal review has traditionally played an important parallel role in protecting the rights at stake when the prosecution secures a conviction through the defendant’s own admissions.

r-H <1

After defending at length its conclusion that the voluntariness of a confession was entitled to the § 2254(d) presumption, and after carefully analyzing the petitioner’s confession under that standard, the Court of Appeals suggested in a brief footnote that it “would reach the same result” even were it to give the issue plenary consideration. 741 F. 2d, at 1467, n. 21. Inasmuch as it is not clear from this language that the court did in fact independently evaluate the admissibility of the confession, and because, in any event, we think that the case warrants fuller analysis under the appropriate standard, we reverse the decision below and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice Rehnquist,

dissenting.

The Court decides that the voluntariness of a confession is not an issue of fact presumed to be correct under 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). I think it is difficult to sensibly distinguish the determination that a particular confession was voluntary from the determinations which we have held to be entitled to a presumption of correctness under § 2254(d). See Sumner v. Mata, 449 U. S. 539 (1981); Sumner v. Mata, 455 U. S. 591 (1982) (per curiam); Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U. S. 422, 431-437 (1983); Maggio v. Fulford, 462 U. S. 111 (1983) (per curiam); Rushen v. Spain, 464 U. S. 114 (1983) (per curiam); Patton v. Yount, 467 U. S. 1025, 1036-1038 (1984); and Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U. S. 412, 426-430 (1985). While the Court relies principally on stare decisis for the result it reaches today, almost all the cases upon which it relies entailed direct review by this Court of state-court decisions rather than federal habeas review. But even if that difference were deemed immaterial, it seems to me that stare deci-sis is not a sufficient reason for excluding a finding as to the voluntariness of a confession from the presumption embodied in § 2254(d). All of the recent cases cited evince a more reasoned approach to this issue than the interesting but somewhat mystical exegesis in cases such as Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 603-605 (1961) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.).

I also disagree with the Court’s decision to remand this case to the Court of Appeals for a second run at the voluntariness issue. I think the majority of that court made it clear that it had evaluated the admissibility of the confession under the correct standard as defined by this Court today. It is unfortunate that petitioner’s challenge to his conviction for a murder which occurred 12 years ago should be the subject of additional and unnecessary litigation and delay.

I respectfully dissent.

       In pertinent part, 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d) provides:
      “In any proceeding instituted in a Federal Court by an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court, a determination after a hearing on the merits of a factual issue, made by a State court of competent jurisdiction . . . shall be presumed to be correct, unless . . .
      “(8) . . . the Federal court. . . concludes that such factual determination is not supported by the record as a whole.”

       The following exchange is representative of the tone of the interrogation.
      “Boyce: ‘Frank, look, you want help, don’t you, Frank?’
      “Miller: ‘Yes, uh huh, yes, but yet I’m, I’m not going to admit to something that, that I wasn’t involved in.’
      “Boyce: “We don’t want you to, all I want you to do is talk to me, that’s all. I’m not talking about admitting to anything Frank. I want you to talk to me. I want you to tell me what you think. I want you to tell me how you think about this, what you think about this?’
      “Miller: ‘What I think about it?’
      “Boyce: ‘Yeah.’
      “Miller: T think whoever did it really needs help.’
      “Boyce: ‘And that’s what I think and that’s what I know. They don’t, they don’t need punishment, right? Like you said, they need help.’
      “Miller: ‘Right.’
      “Boyce: ‘Now, don’t you think it’s better if someone knows that he or she has a mental problem to come forward with it and say, look, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve done these acts, I’m responsible for this, but I want to be helped, I couldn’t help myself, I had no control of myself and if I’m examined properly you’ll find out that’s the case.’
      “ ‘Okay. [LJisten Frank, [i]f I promise to, you know, do all I can with the psychiatrist and everything, and we get the proper help for you . . . will you talk to me about it.’
      “Miller: T can’t talk to you about something I’m not. . .’
      “Boyce: ‘Alright, listen Frank, alright, honest. I know, I know what’s going on inside you, Frank. I want to help you, you know, between us right now. . . . You’ve got to talk to me about it. This is the only way we’ll be able to work it out. I mean, you know, listen, I want to help you, because you are in my mind, you are not responsible. You are not responsible, Frank. Frank, what’s the matter?’
      “Miller: T feel bad.’” App. 17-22.

       The Court of Appeals relied on an earlier decision of that court holding that the “voluntariness” of a waiver of Miranda rights was entitled to the § 2254(d) presumption. Patterson v. Cuyler, 729 F. 2d 925, 930 (1984). The present case presents no occasion for us to address the question whether federal habeas courts must accord the statutory presumption of correctness to state-court findings concerning the validity of a waiver.

       The voluntariness rubric has been variously condemned as “useless,” Paulson, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Third Degree, 6 Stan. L. Rev. 411, 430 (1954); “perplexing,” Grano, Voluntariness, Free Will, and the Law of Confessions, 65 Va. L. Rev. 859, 863 (1979); and “legal ‘doubletalk,’ ” A. Beisel, Control Over Illegal Enforcement of the Criminal Law: Role of the Supreme Court 48 (1955). See generally Y. Kamisar, Police Interrogation and Confessions 1-25 (1980).


author: Per Curiam.

text:
    LAKE COAL CO., INC. v. ROBERTS & SCHAEFER CO.
    No. 84-1240.
    Argued October 15, 1985
    Decided December 3, 1985

      Ronald, G. Polly argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs was Gene Smallwood, Jr.

      C. Kilmer Combs argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent.
   Per Curiam.

The motion of the parties requesting the Court to decide the questions presented in the petition for writ of certiorari despite complete settlement of the underlying causes of action is denied. See DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U. S. 312 (1974).

The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky with instructions to dismiss the cause as moot.