People ex rel. Brown v. Johnston

• Decision Date: 27 April 1961
• Citation: 215 N.Y.S.2d 44,174 N.E.2d 725,9 N.Y.2d 482
• Parties: , 174 N.E.2d 725 PEOPLE of the State of New York, ex rel. Edward B. BROWN, Appellant, v. W. Cecil JOHNSTON, as Director of Dannemora State Hospital, Respondent.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 44

215 N.Y.S.2d 44

9 N.Y.2d 482, 174 N.E.2d 725

PEOPLE of the State of New York, ex rel. Edward B. BROWN, Appellant, v. W. Cecil JOHNSTON, as Director of Dannemora State Hospital Respondent.

Court of Appeals of New York.

April 27, 1961.

Ephraim London and Jordan Derwin, New York City, for appellant.

Louis J. Lefkowitz, Atty. Gen. (Winifred C. Stanley and Paxton Blair, Albany, of counsel), for respondent.

BURKE, Judge.

The appellant, a prisoner, validly incarcerated in one prison, seeks a writ of habeas corpus in connection with an allegedly invalid transfer to a State hospital for the insane maintained at another penal institution.

Appellant was sentenced in October of 1952, upon a plea of guilty to rape in the first degree, to hard labor at Attica State Prison for the indeterminate sentence of one day to life. The sentence was presumably imposed subsequent to a psychiatric examination and the submission to the court of a report thereof in accordance with section 2189-a of the Penal Law, Consol.Laws, c. 40.

In May of 1957 appellant was transferred to Dannemora State Hospital, an institution maintained for the purpose of confining and caring 'for such male prisoners as are declared insane' (Correction Law, Consol.Laws, c. 43, § 375). Appellant thereafter applied for a writ of habeas corpus upon the ground, inter alia, that he, being sane, was illegally transferred. He does not challenge on this issue the validity of the original commitment to Attica State Prison but merely protests his removal to Dannemora State Hospital.

The Appellate Division, ignoring the issue of sanity, upheld the denial of the writ solely upon the ground that the place of confinement may not be challenged by habeas corpus. 'Once a valid commitment is made', they said (203 N.Y.S.2d 355), 'the place of detention is an administrative matter not subject to court intervention' (citing People ex rel. Sacconanno v. Show, 4 A.D.2d 817, 164 N.Y.S.2d 750).

Although under ordinary circumstances a mere transfer (as distinguished from a commitment for insanity) is purely an administrative matter, and a prisoner has no standing to choose the place in which he is to be confined, we do not feel that the courts should sanction, without question, removals, in cases of alleged insane prisoners, which can conceivably be uncontrolled and arbitrary.

The issue here is not whether appellant is insane, but whether the courts below may properly refuse to even inquire into the nature of his condition and the possibility that he may be illegally confined with deranged persons who are liable to harm and/or adversely affect him.

In spite of the fact that it is well settled that one may not by means of a writ of habeas corpus challenge imprisonment or restraint 'by virtue of the final judgment * * * of a competent tribunal of * * * criminal jurisdiction' (Civil Practice Act, §§ 1231, 1230), it seems quite obvious that any further restraint in excess of that permitted by the judgment or constitutional guarantees should be subject to inquiry. An individual, once validly convicted and placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction (Correction Law, § 6), is not to be divested of all rights and unalterably abandoned and forgotten by the remainder of society. If these situations were placed without the ambit of the writ's protection, we would thereby encourage the unrestricted, arbitrary and unlawful treatment of prisoners, and eventually discourage prisoners from co-operating in their rehabilitation.

Since the writ of habeas corpus has traditionally been relied upon to alleviate the oppression of unlawful imprisonment and abuses of similar character, it can be invoked to obtain a hearing to test the validity of a commitment in an institution for the criminally insane. We cannot merely by virtue of the valid judgment sanction the subsequent abrogation of lawful process.

The State's right to detain a prisoner is entitled to no greater application than its correlative duty to protect him from unlawful and onerous treatment (Annotation 155 A.L.R. 145, 146), mental or physical. '(R)elief other than that of absolute discharge' should be forthcoming (see Matter of Albori, 218 Cal. 34, 37, 21 P.2d 423; 39 C.J.S. Habeas Corpus & 9, p. 440; Annotation 155 A.L.R. 145, 146; Matter of Rider, 50 Cal.App. 797, 195 P. 965; Matter of Byrnes, 26 Cal.2d 824, 161 P.2d 376).

To implement this duty and secure the relief due the prisoner, we can and should recognize that '(C)ourts have...