Burrell v. Cray
| Decision Date | 14 June 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 75-44,75-44 |
| Citation | 48 L.Ed.2d 788,426 U.S. 471,96 S.Ct. 2640 |
| Parties | Robert BURRELL et al., petitioners, v. Milton McCRAY et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted.
Had I been a Member of the Court when the petition for certiorari was presented, I would have voted to deny because the opinion of the United States Court of Ap- peals for the Fourth Circuit correctly states the applicable law. For the same reason, I voted to affirm after oral argument. Although I did not vote to dismiss the writ as improvidently granted, I do not dissent from that action for two reasons.
First, it is my understanding that at least one Member of the Court who voted to grant certiorari has now voted to dismiss the writ; accordingly, the action of the Court does not impair the integrity of the Rule of Four.
Second, just as the Court's broad control of its discretionary docket includes the power to dismiss the writ because circumstances disclosed by a careful study of the record were not fully apprehended at the time the writ was granted, The Monrosa v. Carbon Black, Inc., 359 U.S. 180, 183, 79 S.Ct. 710, 3 L.Ed.2d 723, so also, we should retain the power to take like action when for further study of the law discloses that there is no need for an opinion of this Court on the questions presented by the petition. Even though I agree with Mr. Justice BRENNAN that the questions in this case are important, I am nevertheless persuaded that the state of the law applicable to the facts disclosed by this record is sufficiently clear that the dismissal of the writ is a permissible exercise of the Court's discretionary power.
Mr. Justice WHITE dissents. He would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
Certiorari was granted in this case, 423 U.S. 923, 96 S.Ct. 264, 46 L.Ed.2d 249, to consider the questions:
'1. Whether the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit erred when it held that exhaustion of state administrative remedies was not required in an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
'2. Whether the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit erred when it reversed the judgments of the District Court in McCray v. Burrell, #74-1042, and McCray v. Smith, #74-1043, based on a finding that Respondent McCray's Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated under the circumstances of those cases and remanded for determinations on the merits.' Cert. 2-3.
Following the grant of the writ of certiorari, the parties fully briefed and orally argued these questions. The result of their efforts is today's one-line order dismissing the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. That order plainly flouts the settled principles that govern this Court's exercise of its unquestioned power to dismiss writs of certiorari as improvidently granted.
We have held that such dismissals are proper only when the more intensive consideration of the issues and the record in the case that attends full briefing and oral argument reveals that conditions originally thought to justify granting the writ of certiorari are not in fact present. '[C]ircumstances . . . 'not . . . fully apprehended at the time certiorari was granted." The Monrosa v. Carbon Black Export, Inc., 359 U.S. 180, 183, 79 S.Ct. 710, 3 L.Ed.2d 723 (1959), may reveal that an important issue is not in fact presented by the record, or not presented with sufficient clarity in the record, or compel the conclusion that 'the standards governing the exercise of our discretionary power of review upon writ of certiorari [such as] . . . 'special and important reasons' for granting the writ . . . as required by Supreme Court Rule 19,' are not...
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