Cite as: 528 U. S. 259 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
more likely to rule against the indigent than if the court had simply received an Anders brief.
In Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U. S. 551 (1987), we explained that the Anders procedure is not "an independent constitutional command," but rather is just "a prophylactic framework" that we established to vindicate the constitutional right to appellate counsel announced in Douglas. 481 U. S., at 555. We did not say that our Anders procedure was the only prophylactic framework that could adequately vindicate this right; instead, by making clear that the Constitution itself does not compel the Anders procedure, we suggested otherwise. Similarly, in Penson v. Ohio, 488 U. S. 75 (1988), we described Anders as simply erecting "safeguards." 488 U. S., at 80.
It is true that in Penson we used some language suggesting that Anders is mandatory upon the States, see 488 U. S., at 80-82, but that language was not necessary to the decision we reached. We had no reason in Penson to determine whether the Anders procedure was mandatory, because the procedure at issue clearly failed under Douglas, see infra, at 280. Further, counsel's action in Penson was closely analogous to the action of counsel that we found invalid in Anders, see Penson, supra, at 77-78, so there was no need to rely on the Anders procedure, as opposed to just the Anders holding, to find counsel's action improper. See 488 U. S., at 77 ("The question presented by this case is remarkably similar [to the one presented in Anders] and therefore requires a similar answer").
Finally, any view of the procedure we described in the last section of Anders that converted it from a suggestion into a straitjacket would contravene our established practice, rooted in federalism, of allowing the States wide discretion, subject to the minimum requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment, to experiment with solutions to difficult problems of policy. In Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12 (1956), which we invoked as the foundational case for our holding
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