Lee v. Wiman

• Decision Date: 23 June 1960
• Docket Number: No. 18212.,18212.
• Citation: 280 F.2d 257
• Parties: Huey R. LEE, Jr., Appellant, v. Martin J. WIMAN, Warden, etc., and A. Frank Lee, as Commissioner of the Board of Corrections of the State of Alabama, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

280 F.2d 257 (1960)

Huey R. LEE, Jr., Appellant, v. Martin J. WIMAN, Warden, etc., and A. Frank Lee, as Commissioner of the Board of Corrections of the State of Alabama, Appellees.

No. 18212.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

June 23, 1960.

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Ralph L. Kaskell, Jr., New Orleans, La., for appellant.

George D. Mentz, Asst. Atty. Gen. of Alabama, MacDonald Gallion, Atty. Gen. of Alabama, for appellees.

Before RIVES, Chief Judge, and JONES and WISDOM, Circuit Judges.

RIVES, Chief Judge.

This appeal is from an order refusing to entertain, or denying without a hearing, an application for habeas corpus seeking the discharge of a prisoner from state custody. The applicant is confined under sentence of life imprisonment imposed when he was convicted of murder in the first degree.

The record now brought before us through the diligence of court-appointed counsel extends back over a period of eighteen years. On July 6, 1942, Huey R. Lee, Jr. was arrested, confined in the jail of Barbour County, Alabama, and charged with murder in the first degree for the slaying of his father, Huey R. Lee, Sr.

On July 13, 1942, one G. D. Boyd filed a request for a sanity hearing for said Huey R. Lee, Jr.¹ The hearing was conducted before the judge and a jury on July 20, 1942. Both the petitioner and the State were represented by counsel. Some seven physicians and seventeen lay witnesses testified upon that hearing. A general idea of the type of insanity which some of the evidence tended to prove may be gleaned from the affidavit of Dr. Fred Wilkerson of Montgomery, Alabama,² and from the diagnostic summary and conclusion of Dr. E. D. Bondurant of Mobile, Alabama.³ The jury returned a verdict reading: "We the Jury find defendant to be sane."

Thereafter, on October 20, 1942, the Grand Jury returned an indictment charging Lee with the murder of his father. Two days later, the Sheriff of the County filed a request that Lee be sent to Bryce Hospital at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for observation, and accompanied his request with a report from Dr. W. D. Partlow, Superintendent of the Alabama State Hospitals, that "* * * it is my professional opinion there is reasonable ground to believe that said defendant was insane either at the time of the commission of the offense charged in said indictment, or presently."

Lee's attorneys filed a similar request. Acting under Section 425 of Title 15 of the 1940 Code of Alabama,⁴ the judge entered an order in accordance with such requests. Lee remained in that hospital from October 24, 1942, to August 3, 1943. On July 21, 1943, Dr. W. D. Partlow, Dr. J. S. Tarwater and Dr. P. B. Mayfield, who constituted the commission on lunacy, submitted the following report:

"It is the opinion of each of us, and it is our opinion jointly and collectively, that the said Huey R. Lee, Jr., at the time of his admission to The Bryce Hospital, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which is one of the Alabama State Hospitals, on October 24, 1942 was insane and that at all times continually from the date of admission to the present date of this report has been insane. It is our opinion that this case is a type of insanity characterized by both grandiose delusions and delusions of persecution. It is our opinion that he in his own estimation so magnifies the ego or self in importance as compared with every other person or consideration that when others with whom he has to deal fail to accept his viewpoint in their attitude toward him in compliance with his wishes or will, he immediately feels and decides such persons are his enemies and are endeavoring to persecute him. We are of the opinion further that his feelings and emotions are governed by these delusions of grandeur and of persecution, and that he, therefore, acts or endeavors to act under such emotions, ideas, beliefs and delusions to vindicate himself against those who, he believes, persecute or conspire to persecute him. We are further of the opinion that such ideas and beliefs, and the feelings and emotions incident thereto, so completely dominate and control him and determine his course of action wherever his will is not thwarted by others, as to be abnormal and thus render him abnormal mentally or insane to the extent that distinctly affects his present criminal responsibility and so affects such criminal responsibility at any time from the date of his admission to The Bryce Hospital to the present date of this report.

"Based upon our knowledge of the mental condition of the said Huey R. Lee, Jr., from the date of his admission to The Bryce Hospital October 24, 1942, to the present date, based upon a conservative study of his case with other similar mental conditions which have come under our observation in the course of time, and based upon a study of the history of his case, including facts supplied us relative to the record of the crime of which he is charged, as shown in transcript of certain court records in his case submitted to us for study, it is our further opinion that his mental condition as described above existed prior to his admission to The Bryce Hospital and prior to and at the time of the commission of the crime to the extent that it did affect his criminal responsibility at the time of the commission of the crime.

"Under the provisions of the same Section (425, Title 15, Code of Alabama 1940) above referred to, we understand that with the rendering of this report our obligation and that of the Alabama State Hospitals has been discharged and that, therefore, if it is the wish of the Court that the said Huey R. Lee, Jr. be detained longer in this institution as a patient it would be necessary for the Court, or some court jurisdiction, to issue a commitment or an order for the further detention of the said Huey R. Lee, Jr., in said Alabama State Hospitals."

On August 3, 1943, pursuant to an order of the trial court, the Sheriff removed Lee from Bryce Hospital to the jail of Barbour County "to await further criminal proceedings against him." Lee was arraigned and called on to plead to the indictment on October 21, 1943, and the record discloses that three pleas were interposed for him: (1) "Not guilty," (2) "Not guilty by reason of insanity," and (3) "Not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of the commission of the offense." The case came on for trial on October 27, 1943, and Lee's counsel thus stated his pleas to the jury:

"By Mr. Lee: Gentlemen, to that indictment, the Defendant pleads not guilty. That plea puts in issue the material facts in the case. He also says that he is not guilty by reason of insanity, and that plea puts in issue the fact of whether or not, as we in our language sometimes express it, the man was insane and incapable of committing the crime, and under the Alabama laws did not commit any crime, and in this case we say that he is not guilty, and, not guilty by reason of insanity.

"By the Court: You mean to say to the jury that he was insane at the time of the commission of the offense?

"By Mr. Lee: We don\'t want to differ with the Court, and we plead, as the Court suggested, that he was insane at the time of the commission of the offense."⁵

After a full trial, in which he was represented by counsel and testified in his own behalf,⁶ the applicant was convicted of murder in the first degree and his punishment fixed at life imprisonment. The judgment of conviction was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Alabama,⁷ and certiorari denied by the Supreme Court of the United States.⁸

On January 16, 1946, the applicant, represented by different attorneys, filed in the Supreme Court of Alabama his petition for leave to file in the Circuit Court of Barbour County a petition for writ of coram nobis. That petition was very elaborate. It alleged that at the time of his trial Huey R. Lee, Jr. was "insane and helpless in the matter and was in no position to properly direct the issues that should have been had or made in the premises," and prayed for an order granting Lee the right "to file a petition in the Circuit Court of Barbour County, Alabama * * * for a writ of error coram nobis to inquire into the facts alleged herein." The Supreme Court of Alabama, after an extended opinion,⁹ held:

"The substantiality of petitioner\'s claim is not shown to the satisfaction of this Court, and in the exercise of the discretion vested in the Court in such matters we are clear to the conclusion that permission to file a writ of error coram nobis in the lower court should be, and is, denied.

"Petition denied."

Certiorari was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States.¹⁰

On December 20, 1948, Lee filed a petition for habeas corpus in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Alabama. This petition was denied and the order affirmed on appeal.¹¹

Before the application for habeas corpus now under consideration, two earlier applications in the federal district court had been denied without a hearing: the first on September 11, 1950, C.A. 696-N, and the second on November 18, 1957, C. A. 1388-N. We have examined the original records in each of those cases, and each of them shows that the judge gave the matter careful consideration and detailed his reasons for denying the application without a hearing. The easy way of ruling upon the present appeal would be simply to say that the district court was not required to entertain a third application for habeas corpus. See 28 U. S.C.A. § 2244. However, declining to entertain a second, third, or ninth application for habeas corpus involves a sound judicial discretion to be exercised with regard to what is right and in the interests of justice. Compare Commercial Credit Corporation v. Pepper, 5 Cir., 1951, 187 F.2d 71, 75. Examples might be collected like the case of O'Neal Massey, who beginning in March 1953 made persistent and repeated applications * * * in many courts both state and federal,¹² until he finally secured a reversal from the Supreme Court,¹³ was ultimately granted a...