Cranor v. Gonzales

Decision Date22 August 1955
Docket NumberNo. 14245.,14245.
Citation226 F.2d 83
PartiesJohn R. CRANOR, Superintendent of the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla, Washington, Appellant, v. Albert GONZALES, Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

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Don Eastvold, Atty. Gen., Cyrus A. Dimmick, Asst. Atty. Gen., State of Washington, for appellant.

R. Max Etter, Ellsworth I. Connelly, Spokane, Wash., for appellee.

Before HEALY and POPE, Circuit Judges, and HAMLIN, District Judge.

POPE, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from an order granting the petition of appellee Gonzales for a writ of habeas corpus against appellant, Superintendent of the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla, Washington.

On April 28, 1950, Gonzales was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment by the Superior Court of King County, Washington, pursuant to his conviction upon the verdict of a jury of the crime of murder in the first degree which he was charged to have committed on January 7, preceding. In the court below, Gonzales alleged, and the court found that at the trial of Gonzales in the State court, at which he was represented by counsel, there was introduced and received in evidence against him a certain written confession; that this confession was obtained from Gonzales by certain Seattle police officers who, during a period of questioning which extended from about the hour of 1:30 A.M. on January 7 until about 2 A.M. the following day, struck him, pushed him against the walls of the room where he was confined, threatened to kick him in the face, and otherwise abused him; that during this period of some 24 hours of constant questioning, Gonzales was denied permission to call a lawyer or communicate with friends or the Philippine Consul (Gonzales was a Filipino) and finally, in fear of further abuse, physical assault and mistreatment, he signed the statement which was received as a confession, which statement was signed as the result of fear for the safety of his person and his life, and was induced by the police brutality thus employed.

At the trial in the State court, objection to the admission of the statement in question was made on the ground that it was coerced. Pursuant to the established procedure in the State of Washington, evidence was received at the trial as to the circumstances under which the confession was made and the written document was admitted in evidence but submitted to the jury with instructions to consider the confession only if found to have been voluntary.1 There was substantial evidence other than the confession upon which the jury could have based its verdict of guilty. (Actually two statements were signed by Gonzales, but only one amounted to a confession; hence his statement is referred to in the singular.)

Following his conviction Gonzales gave notice of appeal to the Supreme Court of Washington but the appeal was not perfected and was dismissed without consideration of its merits. Subsequently he petitioned the Supreme Court of the State for a writ of habeas corpus. This was denied without opinion, and thereafter Gonzales' application to the Supreme Court of the United States for certiorari was denied. Gonzales then filed the petition which we now consider, claiming that his conviction was procured through the use of a coerced confession in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Upon the trial court's finding that Gonzales' claim of coercion was supported by the evidence and that the alleged beating did in fact occur and caused the confession, the court concluded that he was being illegally detained in that his conviction had been procured through denial of his constitutional rights. The court held that he had exhausted his remedies in the courts of the State of Washington and ordered the writ to issue and Gonzales released from confinement unless he be granted a new trial within 60 days after the court's judgment became final.

The principal contention made by appellant here is that the court below had no right to try the question of fact as to whether or not Gonzales' confession was coerced in view of the fact that this issue had been fully tried in the Washington court by procedures which met all of the standards approved by the Supreme Court in Stein v. People of State of New York, 346 U.S. 156, 73 S.Ct. 1077, 97 L.Ed. 1522. The argument is that what the court below has done is to review de novo a factual question which was properly submitted to the State trial court and there disposed of in a manner consistent with due process; that if the State court has honestly applied the pertinent doctrines relating to the coerced confession to the best of its ability, the accused has been accorded his constitutional rights and the federal district court is without power, jurisdiction or authority to determine the issue decided in the State court to the contrary. Further, that if the United States Supreme Court in Stein v. People of State of New York, supra, was without power to set aside the verdict or judgment in that case, a fortiori the federal district court had no power to grant the writ of habeas corpus as it did by the order here appealed from.

For reasons appearing presently we approach this case as one of first impression. In some respects it most nearly resembles Leyra v. Denno, 347 U.S. 556, 74 S.Ct. 716, 98 L.Ed. 948. In that case at petitioner's second trial for murder, certain confessions were used against him; the issue as to the voluntariness of these confessions was submitted to the jury and petitioner was convicted; after denial of certiorari by the United States Supreme Court, Leyra v. People of State of New York, 345 U.S. 918, 73 S.Ct. 730, 97 L.Ed. 1351, petitioner filed his habeas corpus proceeding in the United States district court charging that the confessions used against him had been coerced, depriving him of due process of law. Upon consideration the district court denied the petition. 113 F.Supp. 556. The court of appeals affirmed, 2 Cir., 208 F.2d 605, but the Supreme Court reversed, 347 U.S. 556, 74 S.Ct. 716, 98 L.Ed. 948, holding that in view of the fact that the confessions used at the trial at which petitioner was convicted so closely followed an earlier confession given to a psychiatrist, which the New York Court of Appeals had held at an earlier trial was obtained by "mental coercion", People v. Leyra, 302 N.Y. 353, 98 N.E.2d 553, these subsequent confessions thus used must be held to have been extracted by means not consistent with due process of law. Here the judgment of the Supreme Court amounted in substance to a determination that the federal district court upon the hearing of petitioner's application for the writ, should have reached a like conclusion, — a conclusion manifestly at variance with that reached by the jury in the State court trial.

Now if the vital issue in Leyra v. Denno, supra, both in the New York State court and in the federal district court was a question of fact, namely, whether the confessions used against the petitioner were voluntary or involuntary, and if it be assumed, as we think we must here, that such issue was adequately and properly submitted to the determination of the jury in the trial in the State court, then that case would appear to lend some weight to the suggestion that it was appropriate for the district court again to try the same issue and to make findings and arrive at a conclusion different from that implicit in the verdict of the State jury. We think, however, that we may not rely upon Leyra v. Denno to that extent in view of the fact that here the type of coercion found by the court places this case in a different category from that one.

We have here in mind the distinction drawn by Mr. Justice Frankfurter in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 506-507, 73 S.Ct. 397, 446, 97 L.Ed. 469, between cases in which the issue turns upon "basic facts" and those where the issue turns upon "interpretation of the legal significance of such facts", that is to say, the distinction between the cases falling in what he designates as the fourth and fifth categories which are there listed.

In this case the coercion which the trial court found existed consisted of striking and beating, and threats of further striking and beating, of Gonzales. Thus the issue upon which the whole question of denial of constitutional right depends, to use the words of the Court, "turns on basic facts"; and this is a case in which it appears "that the facts (in the sense of a recital of external events and the credibility of their narrators) have been tried and adjudicated against the applicant." 344 U.S. at page 506, 73 S.Ct at page 446. This was not a case in which the issue turned upon the question whether or not a mere interrogation was carried on for such length of time and under such circumstances as to require a conclusion or interpretation that the facts disclosed a mental or psychological coercion.

The distinction here referred to is noted by Mr. Justice Jackson in his opinion for the Court in Stein v. People of State of New York, supra, 346 U.S. at pages 182 to 184, 73 S.Ct. at page 1091. Physical violence or threat of it automatically invalidates confessions and in such cases "there is no need to weigh or measure its effects on the will of the individual victim." On the other hand, where psychological coercion is claimed, since interrogation of a suspect is not as such unlawful and is not inherently coercive, whether interrogation has been so prolonged and unremitting and accompanied by other circumstances such as deprivation of refreshment, rest or relief as to accomplish extortion of an involuntary confession, depends "upon a weighing of the circumstances of pressure against the power of resistance of the person confessing." 346 U.S. at page 185, 73 S.Ct. at page 1093.

The findings of the trial court which are here reviewed, although they recite that the interrogation of Gonzales continued for...

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