holding that a New Jersey statute imposing a duty to reimburse county for cost of transcript in case of an unsuccessful appeal only on indigent defendants who were imprisoned and not imposing the cost on defendants who received a suspended sentence, were placed on probation, or who were sentenced only to pay a fine, violated equal protection
How later courts described this case
- holding that a New Jersey statute imposing a duty to reimburse county for cost of transcript in case of an unsuccessful appeal only on indigent defendants who were imprisoned and not imposing the cost on defendants who received a suspended sentence, were placed on probation, or who were sentenced only to pay a fine, violated equal protection
- holding that state statute which re quired reimbursement of cost of criminal appeal transcript only by incarcerated persons violated the equal protection clause; the statute would burden many appeals that were not frivolous and allow many that were, so it did not serve the purpose of deterring frivolous appeals
- finding — in a case in which the defendant was free to file his ultimately unsuccessful appeal — that state law requiring only a certain class of unsuccessful appellants to repay the cost of obtaining a trial transcript violated the requirements of the equal protection clause
- holding that “the Equal Protection Clause does require that, in defining a class subject to legislation, the distinctions that are drawn have ‘some relevance to the purpose for which the classification is made’ ”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Harlan,
dissenting.
New Jersey recoups the cost of trial transcripts furnished to indigents out of prison allowances made to incarcerated prisoners, but does not seek reimbursement from parolees or convicted defendants not imprisoned. The Court holds this differentiation to violate the Equal Protection Clause. I am unable to agree. Under conventional equal-protection standards which disapprove only irrational and arbitrary classifications, the statute is plainly valid. See McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184, 190-191 ; McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 426 ; Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, 78-79 . Surely the State might reasonably choose to reimburse itself for such transcript costs out of prison allowances, but deem it not worth the added time and trouble, or even advisable, to attempt to extract such charges from a convict not in prison who must support himself on his own resources. Adhering to the traditional test of rationality, I would affirm the decision of the District Court. *
I find no substance to appellant’s main argument, which the Court lays aside, that to permit any such recoupment from an indigent is an unconstitutional deterrent to appeal. Nor do I think there is any force to the argument in n. 4 (ante, p. 308), not even suggested by appellant, which at best goes to the validity of the statutes governing compensation and not to the reimbursement statute being reviewed.