Note 851 — AMENDMENT 14 (continued 4)

Ibid. 740.—The majority also observed that "trial court's facetiousness casts a somewhat somber reflection on the fairness of the proceeding * * *"

Although Chief Justice Vinson and Justices Reed and Burton dissented without an opinion in Townsend v. Burke, four Justices, Black, Douglas, and Murphy speaking through Justice Rutledge filed a vigorous dissent in Gryger v. Burke, 334 U.S. 728, 733, 736 (1948). Justice Rutledge declared his inability to "square * * * [this] decision in this case with that made in Townsend v. Burke. I find it difficult to comprehend that the [trial] court's misreading or misinformation concerning the facts of [the] record [Townsend v. Burke] vital to the proper exercise of the sentencing function is prejudicial * * *, but its misreading or misconception of the controlling statute, [Gryger v. Burke] in a matter so vital as imposing mandatory sentence or exercising discretion concerning it, has no such effect. Perhaps the difference serves only to illustrate how capricious are the results when the right to counsel is made to depend not upon the mandate of the Constitution, but upon the vagaries of whether judges, * * * will regard this incident or that in the course of particular criminal proceedings as prejudicial."