Also known as: procedural laws · adjective law · remedial law
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
The rules that prescribe the steps for having a right or duty judicially enforced, as opposed to the law that defines the specific rights or duties themselves. These rules govern the manner in which claims are presented, evidence is offered, and judgments are obtained without altering the underlying entitlements.
Patricia Patel, a Colorado ranch owner, sued a Texas energy company in federal court in Colorado after fracking fluids contaminated her property. She invoked diversity jurisdiction and asserted state-law nuisance claims. The court applied Colorado rules on pleading and discovery while determining liability under Colorado substantive standards.
Portia Price moved to suppress evidence seized by state officers during a search of her home. The federal district court conducted a suppression hearing under federal procedural standards even though the seizure occurred under state authority.
The petitioners, Elkins and Clark, were indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon for intercepting and divulging telephone communications and conspiracy to do so under 47 U.S.C. §§ 501, 605 and 18 U.S.C. § 371. State law enforcement officers received information that Clark possessed obscene motion pictures and sound recordings. They procured a search warrant based on an affidavit reciting that "upon information and belief" Clark possessed such materials. The officers searched his home, found no obscene pictures, but seized wiretap paraphernalia and a recording machine. The state officers placed the seized articles in a local bank safe-deposit box. The Multnomah County District Court and later the Circuit Court for Multnomah County held the search warrant invalid and ordered suppression of the evidence. The state grand jury indictment was dismissed. Federal officers then obtained the articles from the bank box pursuant to a federal search warrant. Before trial in federal court the petitioners moved to suppress the tape and wire recordings and recording machine. The district judge assumed without deciding that the articles had been obtained as the result of an unreasonable search and seizure. He denied the motion because there was no evidence that any agent of the United States had any knowledge or information or suspicion that the search was being contemplated or was made by the state officers until they read about it in the newspaper. The articles were admitted in evidence at trial and the petitioners were convicted. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the convictions. That court held it unnecessary to determine whether the original state search and seizure had been lawful because there had been no participation by federal officers. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether evidence obtained by state officers in an unreasonable search and seizure without federal involvement is admissible in a federal criminal trial over timely objection.
View casePhuong Pham, charged with capital murder, requested court-appointed psychiatric assistance to prepare an insanity defense. The trial court applied state procedural mechanisms for funding expert services after determining that the request implicated federal due-process requirements.
Late in 1979, Glen Burton Ake was arrested and charged with murdering a couple and wounding their two children. He was arraigned in the District Court for Canadian County, Oklahoma, in February 1980. His behavior at arraignment and in other prearraignment incidents at the jail was so bizarre that the trial judge, sua sponte, ordered him to be examined by a psychiatrist for the purpose of advising with the Court as to his impressions of whether the Defendant may need an extended period of mental observation. The examining psychiatrist reported that at times Ake appeared to be frankly delusional and claimed to be the sword of vengeance of the Lord. He diagnosed Ake as a probable paranoid schizophrenic and recommended a prolonged psychiatric evaluation to determine whether Ake was competent to stand trial. In March 1980, Ake was committed to a state hospital to be examined with respect to his present sanity. On April 10, the chief forensic psychiatrist informed the court that Ake was not competent to stand trial. The court held a competency hearing at which a psychiatrist testified that Ake was a psychotic with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia chronic with exacerbation, that he was dangerous, and that he required a maximum security facility. The court found Ake to be a mentally ill person in need of care and treatment and incompetent to stand trial, and ordered him committed to the state mental hospital. Six weeks later, the chief forensic psychiatrist informed the court that Ake had become competent to stand trial while receiving 200 milligrams of Thorazine three times daily. At a pretrial conference in June, Ake's attorney informed the court that his client would raise an insanity defense. Counsel requested that a psychiatrist examine Ake with respect to his mental condition at the time of the offense or that the court provide funds for such an examination. The trial judge denied the motion. Ake was tried for two counts of murder in the first degree and two counts of shooting with intent to kill. At the guilt phase, defense counsel called the psychiatrists who had examined Ake at the state hospital, but none testified about his mental state at the time of the offense. The jury rejected the insanity defense and returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. At the sentencing proceeding, the prosecutor relied on the testimony of the state psychiatrists that Ake was dangerous to society. Ake had no expert witness to rebut this testimony or to introduce evidence in mitigation. The jury sentenced Ake to death on each of the two murder counts and to 500 years' imprisonment on each of the two counts of shooting with intent to kill. On appeal, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the convictions and sentences. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View casePhoebe Park sought to call a co-defendant as a witness at her robbery trial. The state court applied its procedural rules on witness competency and issued a subpoena after the defendant demonstrated that exclusion would violate her right to present a defense.
In August 1964 Jackie Washington, an 18-year-old youth from Dallas, Texas, had been dating Jean Carter until her mother forbade further contact; Carter then began dating another young man who later became the deceased. On the night of August 29, 1964, Washington and several other boys drove around Dallas searching for a gun, eventually obtaining a shotgun from Charles Fuller along with shells from another source. The group went to Carter's home where some boys threw bricks; Washington and Fuller remained in front with the shotgun. The deceased and Carter's mother came onto the porch, a shot was fired, and the deceased was fatally wounded. Washington and Fuller then ran back to the waiting car. Washington was tried in Dallas County for murder with malice. He testified in his own defense that Fuller, who was intoxicated, had taken the gun from him, that he had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Fuller to leave, and that he had run back to the car before the shot was fired. In support of this account Washington offered the testimony of Fuller, who had already been convicted of the same murder and sentenced to fifty years in prison and who was then confined in the Dallas County jail. Fuller would have testified that Washington pulled at him, tried to persuade him to leave, and ran before Fuller fired the fatal shot. At the time of trial two Texas statutes provided that persons charged or convicted as principals, accomplices, or accessories in the same crime could not testify for one another, although they remained free to testify for the State. On the basis of these statutes the trial judge sustained the State's objection and refused to allow Fuller to testify. Washington's conviction followed and was affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 400 S. W. 2d 756. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View casePenelope Price was arrested after a shooting and asked about the location of her weapon before receiving warnings. Officers followed emergency procedural steps to locate the gun, and the court later assessed admissibility under the public-safety exception.
On September 11, 1980, at approximately 12:30 a.m., Officer Frank Kraft and Officer Sal Scarring were on road patrol in Queens, New York, when a young woman approached their car and reported that she had just been raped by a black male approximately six feet tall wearing a black jacket with the name "Big Ben" printed in yellow letters on the back. The woman told the officers that the man had just entered an A & P supermarket located nearby and that he was carrying a gun. This prompted the officers to drive her to the supermarket where Officer Kraft entered the store while Officer Scarring radioed for assistance. Officer Kraft quickly spotted respondent Quarles, who matched the description, approaching a checkout counter. Upon seeing the officer, Quarles turned and ran toward the rear of the store, leading Officer Kraft to pursue him with a drawn gun until he ordered Quarles to stop and put his hands over his head after losing sight of him briefly around a corner. Although more than three other officers had arrived by that time, Officer Kraft was the first to reach Quarles. He frisked him to discover an empty shoulder holster, and after handcuffing him asked where the gun was, to which Quarles nodded toward some empty cartons and responded that the gun was over there. Officer Kraft thereafter retrieved a loaded .38-caliber revolver from one of the cartons, formally placed respondent under arrest, and read him his Miranda rights from a printed card. After this, respondent indicated he would answer questions without an attorney and stated that he owned the gun and had purchased it in Miami, Florida. In the subsequent prosecution for criminal possession of a weapon, the trial judge excluded the statement and the gun because Miranda warnings had not been given before the question about the gun's location. The judge also excluded the later statements as tainted by the violation. The Appellate Division affirmed without opinion, and the New York Court of Appeals affirmed by a 4-3 vote.
View caseProcedural law supplies the methods and steps for enforcing rights in court. Substantive law creates and defines those rights and duties. The distinction determines which rules a federal court must borrow from state law in diversity cases.
Once registered, the forum state applies its own procedural rules and defenses to any modification request. The original issuing state's procedures do not control the manner of litigation in the new forum.
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The tribunal must file the petition and notify the petitioner of the filing. It may not reject the petition at the threshold for incompleteness under its own view of procedural requirements.
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A responding tribunal may place liens on the obligor's property and order execution, provided the relief is consistent with the forum state's procedural law governing enforcement remedies.
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…it could hardly be argued that a State would not violate the clause if it made all defense testimony inadmissible as a matter of procedural law. It is difficult to see how the Constitution is any less violated by arbitrary rules that prevent whole categories of defense witnesses from testifying on the basis of a priori categories…