Stroble v. California/Dissent Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

343 U.S. 181

Stroble  v.  California

 Argued: March 6, 1952. --- Decided: April 7, 1952

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, dissenting.

One of the petitioner's grounds for attacking his conviction is that the trial lacked fundamental fairness because the district attorney himself initiated the intrusion of the press into the process of the trial. Such misconduct, the petitioner contends, subverted the adjudicatory process by which guilt is determined in Anglo-Saxon countries so as to offend what the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects. The issue was raised after verdict, and the Supreme Court of California might have disposed of the claim by ruling that it had not been made at the stage of the proceeding required by State law. That court, however, chose not to do so. It permitted the petitioner to invoke the Due Process Clause and thereby tendered a federal constitutional issue, as this Court recognizes, for our disposition.

Notes