Meyer

In each of these cases, the appellant was convicted of larceny in the first degree, in the Circuit Court of the Third Judicial Circuit of Hawaii. Writs of error were issued and dismissed by the Supreme Court of the Territory. From the judgments dismissing the writs the present appeals have been taken.

The grounds for the Supreme Court’s action are fully set forth in its opinion, 37 Haw. 102 , from which we quote in extenso:

“Under the first writ there are nineteen assignments of error and under the second there are twenty-eight, two of the second being expressly abandoned in the briefs. There are thus a total of forty-five assignments submitted for consideration. Nevertheless appellant’s briefs, purportedly a presentation for review, contain no itemized statement whatsoever of the errors counted upon for reversal of the judgments below, although without amplification the briefs tersely state that appellant relies upon ‘each and every one’ of the forty-five assignments of error which cover seventy-one typewritten pages and are incorporated verbatim therein. From this state of the record there arises the question whether the appellant’s briefs reasonably and substantially comply…

(dissenting).

This is one of the clearest cases of violation of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment that has come before this court. Only by ignoring the essential facts, namely, the briefs filed in the two appeals, can any other conclusion be reached.

The briefs succinctly state justiciable questions of claimed error of most serious import in full compliance with rules of the Hawaiian cowt. Because elsewhere in the briefs, in presenting some of the other claims of error, there is a failure to comply with the rule, the Hawaiian court dismissed the appeals, thus refusing to consider those clearly and succinctly presented in proper form.

Appellant admits the failure of technical compliance with the rules as to these other matters but the justiciable questions which are briefed with complete compliance with the court’s rules protrude in the case like the sore thumb of conventional speech. An appellant’s right to due process on appeal should not be denied for such a technical failure in presenting claimed errors clearly distinct from those properly presented. Hence I dissent from establishing in this circuit such a denial of due process in the following language of this…