Abbott v. Laurie

• Decision Date: 08 November 1976
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 76-298.
• Citation: 422 F. Supp. 976
• Parties: John M. ABBOTT and Richard E. Freeman v. William E. LAURIE, Assistant Director of Adult Services.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Rhode Island

422 F. Supp. 976

John M. ABBOTT and Richard E. Freeman v. William E. LAURIE, Assistant Director of Adult Services.

Civ. A. No. 76-298.

United States District Court, D. Rhode Island.

November 8, 1976.

Barbara Hurst, Asst. Public Defender for State of Rhode Island, Providence, R. I., for plaintiffs.

Judith R. Wegner, Special Asst. Atty. Gen. for State of Rhode Island, Providence, R. I., for defendant.

OPINION AND ORDER

PETTINE, Chief Judge.

This petition for habeas corpus raises difficult and delicate issues regarding the relationship between federal courts and state courts as they undertake the business properly allocated to each. Petitioners have been convicted of certain offenses in a Rhode Island state trial court. They have appealed these convictions to the Supreme Court of Rhode Island and are awaiting that Court's decision. While the appeal was pending they sought release on bail. This was denied by the trial court and by the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Petitioners are here contending that this denial of bail pending appeal violated due process and ask this Court to grant appropriate relief. The state argues that this Court should stay its hand under principles of Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1970) because the appeal of the convictions, although not of the bail decision, remains pending before the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

I

The travel of the case has been complicated. Petitioners John M. Abbott and Richard E. Freeman were indicted on September 15, 1969, for the crimes of rape, kidnapping, sodomy and robbery. On February 26, 1973, they pleaded nolo contendere to rape, kidnapping, sodomy, and the amended charge of larceny in the Superior Court of Providence County. The pleas were accepted by the Superior Court justice who then stated he would impose the following on each defendant:

On the rape charges: deferred sentencing On the kidnapping charges: deferred sentencing On the sodomy charges: 7 years suspended 7 years probation On the larceny charges: 2 to 3 years committed

Subsequently the sentencing promises were retracted, the nolo pleas were ordered withdrawn, pleas of not guilty were entered to each charge, and the defendants went to trial before a different justice. On October 26, 1973, they were found guilty by a jury of rape and kidnapping and not guilty of sodomy and larceny. They were each sentenced to ten years committed on the rape convictions and sentencing was deferred on the kidnapping convictions. The defendants appealed their convictions of rape to the Supreme Court of the State of Rhode Island.

Having been denied bail in the trial court pending that appeal, the defendants successfully moved for bail in the State Supreme Court. State v. Abbott and Freeman, 322 A.2d 33 (R.I.1974). In its decision of July, 1974, the Supreme Court laid out certain standards for bail pending appeal, found that petitioners had met those standards, and set bail for defendants at $7500.

In early 1976, the Rhode Island Supreme Court decided petitioners' substantive appeal. The Court ordered the sentences on the rape convictions vacated on the authority of Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 92 S.Ct. 495, 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (1971) and the case was remanded to the Superior Court for resentencing in accordance with the original plea bargain. See State v. Abbott and Freeman, 351 A.2d 824 (R.I.1976).

On remand on March 8, 1976 in the Superior Court, the original justice reinstated all four nolo pleas for each defendant and imposed all eight originally promised dispositions. The defendants have now appealed in the Supreme Court of the State of Rhode Island challenging the convictions of, and sentences imposed on, the charges of sodomy and larceny entered as to each defendant. That appeal is currently pending.

On March 8, 1976, the defendants moved in the Superior Court for bail pending appeal. That motion was denied.¹ The defendants then petitioned the Supreme Court of the State of Rhode Island for bail pending appeal; that petition was denied without opinion. State v. Abbott et al., 355 A.2d 410 (R.I.1976). Petitioners were thereupon returned to the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI).²

The defendants petitioned this Court for a writ of habeas corpus.

II

Petitioners' first claim is that the state has denied them due process of law by denying them bail pending appeal without any articulated basis in state law. They claim that such denial is, under the peculiar circumstances of this case, arbitrary and capricious.

It is well established that, although post-conviction bail for state defendants is not a federally protected right,³ once a state creates such a right it is bound by the due process clause to grant or deny its application fairly and reasonably. United States ex rel. Walker v. Twomey, 484 F.2d 874, 875 (7th Cir. 1973). Accord, United States ex rel. Abate v. Malcolm, 397 F.Supp. 715, 717 (E.D.N.Y.1975) vacated, 522 F.2d 826 (2d Cir. 1975) (after state court released prisoner); Bad Heart Bull v. Parkinson, 381 F.Supp. 985, 986 (D.S.D.1974), vacated, 385 F.Supp. 1265 (after state bail proceeding); Maldonado v. Delgado, 345 F.Supp. 993 (D.P.R.1972).

Some courts have held that the failure of state courts to supply reasons in denying bail is ipso facto violative of the Fourteenth Amendment. As Judge Will explained in United States ex rel. Keating v. Bensinger, 322 F.Supp. 784, 787 (N.D.Ill.1971):

Absent any findings in support of the denial of bond, it is impossible to ascertain whether or not such denial was arbitrary or discriminatory. Respondents urge in effect that the denial of bail without findings or reasons is proper and since, absent such findings, the petitioner has been unable to demonstrate that the denial of bail was arbitrary, the petition should be denied. If they are correct, the guaranty of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments against arbitrariness by a state court in the setting of bail authorized by the state legislature could be reduced to a nullity by the mere silence of the court denying bail. If a court may deny bail with no reason, hardly any set of circumstances can be imagined wherein it could be determined by a reviewing court that the denial was arbitrary or discriminatory. Respondents do not dispute this but urge that such is and should be the law. We do not agree that the right to a reasonable setting of bail may, in effect, be repealed by any court by its mere failure to provide reasons for its action that can be examined by a reviewing court. We conclude, therefore, that the failure of the Appellate Court to state any reasons for its decision was in itself an arbitrary action in relation to petitioner's motion for bail pending appeal.

Accord, United States ex rel. Abate v. Malcolm, supra, 397 F.Supp. 715; Bad Heart Bull v. Parkinson, supra.

In United States ex rel. Abate v. Malcolm, supra, District Judge Pratt had issued a conditional writ, ordering petitioner released unless the state court provided reasons for the denial of bail within fifteen days, and a single judge of the Second Circuit initially issued a stay of that decision. When the panel met, it dissolved the stay, holding that considerations of comity dictated allowing the state court to reconsider its denial of bail, as provided by the conditional writ. Although petitioner had exhausted his state remedies on the bail issue in Abate, the Second Circuit reasoned that the conditional writ was an appropriate way of insuring that the constitutional claim would come before it with an adequate record—(if, indeed, it was not mooted by the granting of bail by the state, which was what in fact took place.) Abate, supra, 522 F.2d at 827. The court upheld Judge Pratt's ruling, holding (by implication) that the denial of post-conviction bail without reasons is arbitrary, and a denial of due process, where the appeal is non-frivolous.

On the other hand, the Seventh Circuit has impliedly overruled Judge Will's decision in Keating, supra. See United States ex rel. Walker v. Twomey, 484 F.2d 874 (1973). The Court agreed that a statement of reasons assisted the federal courts, but believed that a presumption of regularity was appropriately afforded the state courts. Walker therefore requires the petitioner to "bear the burden of showing that the record provides no rational basis for the decision." Id. 484 F.2d at 876 (emphasis added). The State contends that this is the proper rule in this case, and that petitioners have failed to carry the burden thus cast upon them.

In the absence of direction from the First Circuit on this question this Court must decide which of these cases provides the better rule of law. The rationale found in Keating and Abate, supra, applied to petitioners raising nonfrivolous grounds of appeal, is persuasive. Any other rule would effectively nullify the Fourteenth Amendment right involved here, since it would be well-nigh impossible to ascertain whether or not denial of bail was arbitrary or discriminatory in the absence of a stated reason. The bail decision is, after all, a decision regarding liberty, and the state already affords all of the rudiments of due process in bail hearings save for the requirement of written reasons.

The arguments against requiring stated reasons, outlined by the Seventh Circuit in Walker v. Twomey, supra, arise from considerations of comity. However, this Court is of the opinion, as was the Second Circuit in Abate, supra, that considerations of comity go the other way. The conditional writ, staying release to provide time for the state courts to provide reasons for the denial of bail, is a creative remedy fully consistent with the demands of federalism. It recognizes both the interests of petitioners in the availability of federal habeas corpus, and the interests of the state in administering its criminal justice system. This is not a case like Younger v. Harris, supra, where the question is in which forum the...