Pruitt v. Peyton
| Decision Date | 19 November 1964 |
| Docket Number | No. 9436.,9436. |
| Citation | 338 F.2d 859 |
| Parties | Calvin W. PRUITT, Appellant, v. C. C. PEYTON, Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Michael L. Soffin, Richmond, Va. (Court-assigned counsel), for appellant.
Reno S. Harp, III, Asst. Atty. Gen. of Virginia (Robert Y. Button, Atty. Gen. of Virginia, on brief), for appellee.
Before HAYNSWORTH, BRYAN and J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judges.
Has the prisoner deliberately bypassed the state court procedures available to him and thereby forfeited his right to a federal court hearing? The district court so held and dismissed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus without an evidential hearing.
On May 15, 1958, Pruitt was tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Caroline County, Virginia, by the court sitting without a jury, on two separate charges of armed robbery, and he is presently serving a thirty year sentence for one of these convictions. At this trial, which involved the possibility of a death penalty, there was no court reporter, and consequently no stenographic record of the proceedings was made. After the sentencing, Pruitt was immediately taken to Fairfax County, Virginia, where he pleaded guilty to a murder charge and was sentenced to life therefor. It would appear from this record that he is now under total sentences of "life and 73 years."
When first admitted to prison, Pruitt was inadvertently recorded as serving the life sentence, apparently because he had been sent to the prison immediately after his sentencing in Fairfax County; and it was not until nearly a year later that the error was corrected on the prison records. In the interim Pruitt filed habeas corpus proceeding in the state court attacking his two sentences for robbery. This petition was dismissed by the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, apparently on the basis of an answer by the respondent custodian alleging that Pruitt was then serving the life sentence. Although the error was discovered and corrected on the prison records, apparently the prisoner was not informed. Again, he sought by a post-conviction proceeding to attack his sentence, this time his life sentence, only to have that proceeding dismissed also on the ground that he was in fact serving the thirty year term for robbery.
On July 18, 1962, the district court entered an order which detailed the history of Pruitt's aborted efforts to have his constitutional rights adjudicated in the state courts and further indicated that he was then free to attack in the state courts his thirty year sentence on any grounds. The final paragraph of that order contained these sentences:
(Emphasis added.)
On August 1, 1962, Pruitt dutifully filed his habeas petition in the state court attacking his thirty year sentence. By July 11, 1963, he had acquired court-appointed counsel who filed an amended petition. This amended petition listed seven grounds for relief, including contentions that a confession was improperly introduced in evidence at the trial because it was obtained from Pruitt by coercion at a time when he was incompetent and that Pruitt was insane at the time of trial. Pruitt's counsel here vigorously attacks the fairness of the state habeas trial. We have read the record for background, but we refrain from commenting upon this point, since it may become necessary for the district court to pass upon it. At the insistence of the Attorney General's representative at that hearing, the state court refused to construe the petition as raising an issue of physical or psychological coercion and confined its ruling to the issue of insanity. On July 31, 1963, the state court entered an order denying Pruitt's habeas petition. On November 29, 1963, a newly appointed counsel appealed from this decision to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.
On January 6, 1964, Pruitt wrote to the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia that he was withdrawing his appeal and was notifying his court-appointed counsel to this effect. On January 16, 1964, Pruitt filed another pro se petition with the federal district court asserting that he had met with a plea of res judicata in his appeal to the state court. The district court ordered his petition filed but noted that it was premature until the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals took final action.1 On January 20, 1964, the Court of Appeals acquiesced in Pruitt's withdrawal of his appeal without communicating with his court-appointed counsel. On February 18, 1964, ...
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