George Smith, Warden v. Lee Robbins (528 U.S. 259)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 19, 2000 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 528 U.S. 259 · 120 S. Ct. 746
- Decided
- January 19, 2000
- Term
- October Term 1999
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Thomas
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court. Not infrequently, an attorney appointed to represent an indigent defendant on appeal concludes that an appeal would be frivolous and requests that the appellate court allow him to withdraw or that the court dispose of the case without the filing of merits briefs. In Anders v. California, 386 U. S. 738 (1967), we held that, in order to protect indigent defendants’ constitutional right to appellate counsel, courts must safeguard against the risk of granting such requests in cases where the appeal is not actually frivolous. We found inadequate California’s procedure — which permitted appellate counsel to withdraw upon filing a conelusory letter stating that the appeal had “no merit” and permitted the appellate court to affirm the conviction upon reaching the same conclusion following a review of the record. We went on to set forth an acceptable procedure. California has since adopted a new procedure, which departs in some respects from the one that we delineated in Anders. The question is whether that departure is fatal. We hold that it is not. The procedure we sketched in Anders is a prophylactic one; the States are free to adopt different procedures, so long as those procedures adequately safeguard a defendant’s right to appellate counsel. I A Under California’s new procedure, established in People v. Wende, 25 Cal. 3d 436,…
Excerpt of a 52,321-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.