Fay v. Noia

Fay v. Noia
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 7–8, 1963 Decided March 18, 1963
Full case name	Edward M. Fay, Warden, et al., Petitioners, v. Charles Noia.
Citations	372 U.S. 391 (more) 83 S. Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	300 F.2d 345 (CA2 1962)
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Arthur Goldberg
Case opinions
Majority	Brennan, joined by Warren, Black, Douglas, White, Goldberg
Dissent	Clark
Dissent	Harlan, joined by Clark, Stewart
Overruled by
Coleman v. Thompson (1991)
This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings
Darr v. Burford (1950) (in part)

Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391 (1963), was a 1963 United States Supreme Court case concerning habeas corpus. In a majority opinion authored by Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., the Court held that state prisoners were entitled to access to habeas relief in federal court, even if they did not pursue a remedy in state court that was not available to them at the time. Furthermore, the majority in Fay set out the "deliberate bypass" standard, whereby federal habeas courts could not deny petitions brought by state prisoners unless that prisoner had "deliberately bypassed the orderly procedure of state courts" for the adjudication of constitutional claims.

Fay reaffirmed Brown v. Allen and in a footnote rejected Paul Bator's influential historical thesis which says Brown represented a sharp departure from the precedent at that time:

The argument has recently been advanced that the Moore decision did not in fact discredit the position advanced by the Court in Frank v. Mangum (that habeas would lie only if the state courts had failed to afford petitioner corrective process), and that this position was first upset in Brown v. Allen. Bator, Finality in Criminal Law and Federal Habeas Corpus for State Prisoners, 76 Harv. L. Rev. 441, 488-500 (1963).

The argument would seem untenable in light of certain factors: (1) The opinion of the Court in Moore, written by Mr. Justice Holmes, is a virtual paraphrase of his dissenting opinion in Frank. (2) The thesis of the Frank majority finds no support in other decisions of the Court...(3) None of the opinions in Brown v. Allen even remotely suggests that the Court was changing the existing law in allowing coerced confessions and racial discrimination in jury selection to be challenged on habeas notwithstanding state court review of the merits of these constitutional claims.

Fay is recognized as one of three highly influential 1963 cases in a "trilogy" of Supreme Court habeas jurisprudence, the other two being Townsend v. Sain and Sanders v. United States. The Court's decision in Fay overturned its prior decision in the 1950 case Darr v. Burford "to the extent that it required a state prisoner to seek certiorari in this Court before seeking federal habeas corpus relief." The Supreme Court later partially overruled Fay in its 1977 decision in Wainwright v. Sykes, and fully overruled Fay in its 1991 decision in Coleman v. Thompson.

External links

Text of Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391 (1963) is available from: Cornell Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress Oyez (oral argument audio)