United States v. Harpole

• Decision Date: 20 November 1957
• Docket Number: No. 16481.,16481.
• Citation: 249 F.2d 417
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Robert Lee GOLDSBY, Appellant, v. William HARPOLE, Superintendent of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman, Mississippi, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

249 F.2d 417 (1957)

UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Robert Lee GOLDSBY, Appellant, v. William HARPOLE, Superintendent of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman, Mississippi, Appellee.

No. 16481.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

November 20, 1957.

George N. Leighton, Chicago, Ill., Moore, Ming & Leighton, Chicago, Ill., for appellant.

Joe T. Patterson, Atty. Gen. of Miss., John H. Price, Jr., J. R. Griffin, Asst. Attys. Gen., Ross R. Barnett, Jackson, Miss., Barnett, Jones & Montgomery, Jackson, Miss., for appellee.

Before RIVES, JONES and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge.

In his application for writ of habeas corpus to the court below, appellant Goldsby alleged that his conviction for murder and sentence of death imposed by the courts of Mississippi, Goldsby v. State, Miss., 78 So.2d 762; certiorari denied 350 U.S. 925, 76 S.Ct. 216, 100 L. Ed. 809; Goldsby v. State, Miss., 86 So. 2d 27; certiorari denied 352 U.S. 944, 77 S.Ct. 266, 1 L.Ed.2d 239, constitute a deprivation of his liberty without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution because of the systematic exclusion of members of his, the Negro race, from the lists from which grand and petit juries are selected in Carroll County, Mississippi and therefore from the grand jury which indicted him and the petit jury before which he was tried.¹

The District Court dismissed the application without requiring any response from the State of Mississippi, apparently on the thesis that it failed to state any basis for the requested relief since it was asserted that the record of the criminal proceedings at no time during the trial of appellant for murder showed that the constitutional question was raised. We feel that the petition was too summarily dismissed and that the appellant is entitled to a hearing upon his allegations, Chessman v. Teets, 350 U.S. 3, 76 S.Ct. 34, 100 L.Ed. 4.

That Federal habeas corpus is available to prisoners in custody under the final judgments of the courts of the several states to test the constitutionality of their deprivation of liberty has long been established by statute, 28 U.S. C.A. § 2241, and is not open to question. It is equally well settled that the systematic exclusion of members of the race of an accused from the juries by which he is indicted and tried is a denial of the constitutional guarantees which must be afforded to one accused of crime and brought to trial in a state court. Patton v. State, 332 U.S. 463, 68 S.Ct. 184, 92 L.Ed. 76; Hill v. State of Texas, 316 U.S. 400, 62 S.Ct. 1159, 86 L.Ed. 1559; Smith v. State of Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84; Norris v. State of Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 55 S.Ct. 579, 79 L.Ed. 1074; Bush v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 107 U.S. 110, 1 S.Ct. 625, 27 L.Ed. 354.

Having alleged a prima facie case of a denial of due process, Goldsby was entitled to a hearing and an inquiry into the truth of his allegations² "unless it appears from the application that * * * he is not entitled thereto." 28 U.S.C.A. § 2243. The ancient writ of habeas corpus is an extraordinary process which, as such, requires some particularity of pleading beyond that normally necessary in other civil cases,³ but in the interests of justice and to provide the vindication of fundamental rights, the purpose for which the writ is designed, the pleadings of a prisoner should not be scrutinized for compliance with technical niceties, Rice v. Olson, 324 U.S. 786, 65 S.Ct. 989, 89 L.Ed. 1367; Hawk v. Olson, 326 U.S. 271, 66 S.Ct. 116, 90 L.Ed. 61, and may be amended even if insufficient in substance, Holiday v. Johnston, 313 U.S. 342, 61 S.Ct. 1015, 85 L.Ed. 1392; 28 U.S.C.A. § 2242; F.R.Civ.P. 15.

Whether, on the hearing, the record will bear out that the constitutional issue has adequately been preserved, Adams v. United States, 317 U.S. 269, 63 S.Ct. 236, 87 L.Ed. 268, the application⁴ with which we are here concerned alleged more than the mere fact that Negroes were systematically excluded from the jury lists. And in the present posture of this case, when no response has been made to the application for habeas corpus which was dismissed for failure to state grounds for relief, this court may take as true all facts well pleaded in determining whether the dismissal was proper. Hawk v. Olson, 326 U.S. 271, 66 S.Ct. 116, 90 L.Ed. 61; Lisenba v. People of State of California, 314 U.S. 219, 237, 62 S.Ct. 280, 86 L.Ed. 166; White v. Ragen, 324 U.S. 760, 65 S.Ct. 978, 89 L.Ed. 1348; Williams v. Kaiser, 323 U.S. 471, 65 S.Ct. 363, 89 L.Ed. 398; House v. Mayo, 324 U.S. 42, 65 S.Ct. 517, 89 L.Ed. 739.

This makes the allegations of Paragraph 14 of the application of extreme importance. In Paragraph 14 Goldsby avers that "Because of petitioner's ignorance and the circumstances of his arrest and incarceration, and as a consequence of the customs, mores and usages of the State of Mississippi, Petitioner was not able to challenge⁵ the competency and qualifications of the Grand Jury that was sworn and impaneled * * *." This allegation, considered in conjunction with those facts (see note 4, supra) averred which sufficiently set forth the speed in which the indictment was returned and appellant put on trial, at least permit a pleader's inference for proof that petitioner, an ignorant layman, had not had an adequate opportunity for counselling with his various counsel sufficient to enable him intelligently and deliberately to understand and approve the available or recommended courses of action, including the availability and desirability of urging defensive constitutional objections to the composition of the grand and petit juries. Whether, under the circumstances briefly but sufficiently set forth, this was an adequate preservation of the constitutional issue, and, if not, whether it was sufficient to excuse the defect are matters to be determined upon the hearing.

We therefore hold that this dismissal was erroneous and that the application should be determined upon a hearing. It is, of course, incumbent upon the applicant to carry the burden in a collateral attack upon a judgment, Williams v. Kaiser, supra; Walker v. Johnson, 312 U.S. 275, 61 S.Ct. 574, 85 L.Ed. 830; Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461, but he is entitled to an opportunity to shoulder it. Hawk v. Olson, supra. But we think it important to point out — especially in the delicacy which unavoidably inheres as the Federal judiciary exercises its constitutional duty of determining whether state court criminal proceedings have offended Federal constitutional guarantees — that nothing said or unsaid, expressed or implied is an intimation, one way or the other,...