Pennsylvania v. Finley

Chief Justice Rehnquist

delivered the opinion of the Court.

In 1975 respondent was convicted of second-degree murder by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. She was sentenced to life imprisonment. Her appointed trial attorney appealed the conviction to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. That court unanimously affirmed the conviction. 477 Pa. 211, 383 A. 2d 898 (1978). Having failed on direct appeal, respondent, proceeding pro se, sought relief from the trial court under the Pennsylvania Post Conviction Hearing Act. See 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 9541 et seq. (1982). She raised the same issues that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had rejected on the merits. The trial court denied relief, but the State Supreme Court reversed, holding that respondent was entitled, under state law, to appointed counsel in her postconviction proceedings. 497 Pa. 332, 440 A. 2d 1183 (1981). On remand, the trial court appointed counsel. Counsel reviewed the trial record and consulted with respondent. He concluded that there were no arguable bases for collateral relief. Accordingly, he advised the trial court in writing of his conclusion and requested permission to withdraw. The trial court conducted an independent review of the record and agreed that there were no issues even arguably meritorious. The court thus dismissed the petition for postconviction relief.

Respondent acquired new appointed counsel and pursued an appeal to the Superior Court. Over a dissent, that court concluded that the conduct of the counsel in the trial court’s postconviction proceedings violated respondent’s constitutional rights. 330 Pa. Super. 313, 479 A. 2d 568 (1984). The court held that “Pennsylvania law concerning procedures to be followed when a court-appointed attorney sees no basis for an appeal is derived from the seminal case of” Anders v. California, 386 U. S. 738 (1967). 330 Pa. Super., at 318, 479 A. 2d, at 570. In Anders, this Court held that when an attorney appointed to represent an indigent defendant on direct appeal finds a case wholly frivolous:

“[H]e should so advise the court and request permission to withdraw. That request must, however, be accompanied by a brief referring to anything in the record that might arguably support the appeal. A copy of counsel’s brief should be furnished the indigent and time allowed him to raise any points that he chooses; the court — not counsel — then proceeds, after a full examination of all the proceedings, to decide whether the case is wholly frivolous.” 386 U. S., at 744.

The Superior Court held that respondent’s postconviction counsel had failed to follow these procedures, and it therefore remanded the case to the Court of Common Pleas for further proceedings. We granted certiorari, 479 U. S. 812 (1986), and we now reverse.

We think that the court below improperly relied on the United States Constitution to extend the Anders procedures to postconviction proceedings. The holding in Anders was based on the underlying constitutional right to appointed counsel established in Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353 (1963). Relying on “that equality demanded by the Fourteenth Amendment,” id., at 358, the Douglas Court held that denial of counsel to indigents on first appeal as of right amounted to unconstitutional discrimination against the poor. In Anders, the Court held that in order to protect the “constitutional requirement of substantial equality and fair process” set out in Douglas, appointed appellate counsel must follow the procedures described above when a case appears to be frivolous. 386 U. S., at 744. Of course, Anders did not set down an independent constitutional command that all lawyers, in all proceedings, must follow these particular procedures. Rather, Anders established a prophylactic framework that is relevant when, and only when, a litigant has a previously established constitutional right to counsel.

We have never held that prisoners have a constitutional right to counsel when mounting collateral attacks upon their convictions, see Johnson v. Avery, 393 U. S. 483, 488 (1969), and we decline to so hold today. Our cases establish that the right to appointed counsel extends to the first appeal of right, and no further. Thus, we have rejected suggestions that we establish a right to counsel on discretionary appeals. Wainwright v. Torna, 455 U. S. 586 (1982); Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U. S. 600 (1974). We think that since a defendant has no federal constitutional right to counsel when pursuing a discretionary appeal on direct review of his conviction, a forti-ori, he has' no such right when attacking a conviction that has long since become final upon exhaustion of the appellate process. See Boyd v. Dutton, 405 U. S. 1, 7, n. 2 (1972) (Powell, J., dissenting).

In Ross v. Moffitt, supra, we analyzed the defendant’s claim to appointed counsel on discretionary review under two theories. We concluded that the fundamental fairness exacted by the Due Process Clause did not require appointment of counsel:

“[I]t is ordinarily the defendant, rather than the State, who initiates the appellate process, seeking not to fend off the efforts of the State’s prosecutor but rather to overturn a finding of guilt made by a judge or jury below. The defendant needs an attorney on appeal not as a shield to protect him against being ‘haled into court’ by the State and stripped of his presumption of innocence, but rather as a sword to upset the prior determination of guilt. This difference is significant for, while no one would agree that the State may simply dispense with the trial stage of proceedings without a criminal defendant’s consent, it is clear that the State need not provide any appeal at all. McKane v. Durston, 153 U. S. 684 (1894). The fact that an appeal has been provided does not automatically mean that a State then acts unfairly by refusing to provide counsel to indigent defendants at every stage of the way.” 417 U. S., at 610-611.

We also concluded that the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment does not require the appointment of an attorney for an indigent appellant just because an affluent defendant may retain one. “The duty of the State under our cases is not to duplicate the legal arsenal that may be privately retained by a criminal defendant in a continuing effort to reverse his conviction, but only to assure the indigent defendant an adequate opportunity to present his claims fairly in the context of the State’s appellate process.” Id., at 616.

These considerations apply with even more force to post-conviction review. First, we reject respondent’s argument that the Anders procedures should be applied to a state-created right to counsel on postconviction review just because they are applied to the right to counsel on first appeal that this Court established in Douglas. Respondent apparently believes that a “right to counsel” can have only one meaning, no matter what the source of that right.. But the fact that the defendant has been afforded assistance of counsel in some form does not end the inquiry for federal constitutional purposes. Rather, it is the source of that right to a lawyer’s assistance, combined with the nature of the proceedings, that controls the constitutional question. In this case, respondent’s access to a lawyer is the result of the State’s decision, not the command of the United States Constitution.

We think that the analysis that we followed in Ross forecloses respondent’s constitutional claim. The procedures followed by respondent’s habeas counsel fully comported with fundamental fairness. Postconviction relief is even further removed from the criminal trial than is discretionary direct review. It is not part of the criminal proceeding itself, and it is in fact considered to be civil in nature. See Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 423-424 (1963). It is a collateral attack that normally occurs only after the defendant has failed to secure relief through direct review of his conviction. States have no obligation to provide this avenue of relief, cf. United States v. MacCollom, 426 U. S. 317, 323 (1976) (plurality opinion), and when they do, the fundamental fairness mandated by the Due Process Clause does not require that the State supply a lawyer as well.

Nor was the equal protection guarantee of “meaningful access” violated in this case. By the time respondent presented her application for postconviction relief, she had been represented at trial and in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. In Ross, we concluded that the defendant’s access to the trial record and the appellate briefs and opinions provided'sufficient tools for the pro se litigant to gain meaningful access to courts that possess a discretionary power of review. 417 U. S., at 614-615. We think that the same conclusion necessarily obtains with respect to postconviction review. Since respondent has no underlying constitutional right to appointed counsel in state postconviction proceedings, she has no constitutional right to insist on the Anders procedures which were designed solely to protect that underlying constitutional right.

Respondent relies on Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U. S. 387, 401 (1985), for the proposition that even though the State need not grant a prisoner access to counsel on postconviction review, once it has done so, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that counsel’s actions comport with the procedures enumerated in Anders. In Evitts, the Court held that a State cannot penalize a criminal defendant by dismissing his first appeal as of right when his appointed counsel has failed to follow mandatory appellate rules. In so ruling, the Court rejected the State’s argument that since it need not provide an appeal in the first place, see McKane v. Durston, 153 U. S. 684 (1894), it could cut off a defendant’s appeal without running afoul of the Due Process Clause. Noting that “[t]he right to appeal would be unique among state actions if it could be withdrawn without consideration of applicable due process norms,” 469 U. S., at 400-401, the Court reasoned that “when a State opts to act in a field where its action has significant discretionary elements, it must nonetheless act in accord with the dictates of the Constitution — and, in particular, in accord with the Due Process Clause,” id., at 401. Respondent argues that by allowing counsel to represent her without complying with Anders, the Court of Common Pleas improperly deprived her of her state-law right to “effective” assistance.

We think that Evitts provides respondent no comfort. Initially, the substantive holding of Evitts — that the State may not cut off a right to appeal because of a lawyer’s ineffectiveness — depends on a constitutional right to appointed counsel that does not exist in state habeas proceedings. More important, however, is the fact that unlike the prisoner in Evitts, who was actually deprived of a state-created right to appeal, respondent here has suffered no deprivation, assuming for the moment that the Due Process Clause is relevant. Cf. Wainright v. Torna, 455 U. S., at 588, n. 4 (per curiam); Polk County v. Dodson, 454 U. S. 312 (1981). The Court of Common Pleas found that respondent’s right to counsel under Pennsylvania law was satisfied by the conduct of her appointed counsel, combined with the court’s independent review of the record. The Superior Court did not disagree with this state-law holding. Rather, it ruled that Anders required even more assistance, as a matter of federal constitutional law. We have rejected that conclusion, and therefore the State’s obligations, as a matter of both federal and state law, have been fulfilled. Since respondent has received exactly that which she is entitled to receive under state law — an independent review of the record by competent counsel — she cannot claim any deprivation without due process.

At bottom, the decision below rests on a premise that we are unwilling to accept — that when a State chooses to offer help to those seeking relief from convictions, the Federal Constitution dictates the exact form such assistance must assume. On the contrary, in this area States have substantial discretion to develop and implement programs to aid prisoners seeking to secure postconviction review. In Pennsylvania, the State has made a valid choice to give prisoners the assistance of counsel without requiring the full panoply of procedural protections that the Constitution requires be given to defendants who are in a fundamentally different position — at trial and on first appeal as of right. In this context, the Constitution does not put the State to the difficult choice between affording no counsel whatsoever or following the strict procedural guidelines annunciated in Anders. The judgment of the Superior Court is reversed, and the cause is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.