Blackburn v. Copinger

• Citation: 300 F. Supp. 1127
• Decision Date: 11 June 1969
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 19688.
• Parties: Earl Leroy BLACKBURN v. Roger B. COPINGER, Warden, Maryland State Penitentiary.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

300 F. Supp. 1127

Earl Leroy BLACKBURN v. Roger B. COPINGER, Warden, Maryland State Penitentiary.

Civ. No. 19688.

United States District Court D. Maryland.

June 11, 1969.

E. Clinton Bamberger, Jr., Larry P. Scriggins, and George A. Nilson, Baltimore, Md., for plaintiff.

Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., of Maryland, and Alfred J. O'Ferrall, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., of Maryland, for defendant.

FRANK A. KAUFMAN, District Judge:

Earl Leroy Blackburn is a state prisoner in the Maryland Penitentiary confined under a sentence of death. Blackburn seeks in this case a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that the only incriminating evidence introduced against him at his trial was his own confession and that that confession was involuntarily given. Blackburn contends that his confession was the product of an overborne will, obtained in violation of his right to counsel, in violation of his right to be advised of his constitutional rights, under coercive circumstances, and during a period when he was illegally denied due process of law.

Blackburn was tried under an indictment containing four counts: murder in the perpetration of a robbery (murder in the first degree); stealing $130 more or less (robbery); robbery with a deadly weapon of $130, more or less (armed robbery); and assault. In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 4, 1962, an attendant was killed during the course of a robbery of a gasoline station on Route 40 at Joppa Road in Harford County, Maryland. The victim, Willis Snider, was robbed at gun point of approximately $130 of the station owner's money. One of the felons thereafter shot Snider in the head. Somehow, Snider was able to make his way to a nearby restaurant, where he told an employee that he had been robbed and shot. According to the employee, Snider stated that he could identify the felons if he saw them again but could not give their names; the only description that Snider was able to give was that one man had black hair and the other reddish bushy hair. Snider died in a hospital several hours later after emergency treatment failed to save his life.

The robbery at Route 40 at Joppa Road was similar to one other robbery-murder and several other robberies of service stations which had been committed in Baltimore County during the previous year. The Baltimore County Police had suspected one Frederick Mefford of participation in those other robberies and had questioned him about them in February, 1961. After yet another robbery-murder in Baltimore County at Route 40 at Chesaco on April 16, 1962, only a month after the Joppa robbery, the Baltimore County Police arrested Mefford, without a warrant, and held him for interrogation. This was during the morning of April 20. Mefford was released three days later, but the State Police, having learned that he was in custody, immediately arrested him (again without a warrant) and took him to Benson Barracks located in Harford County, Maryland. After interrogation that day (April 23), Mefford volunteered to clear up the Route 40 cases. He said that he and Blackburn had participated in the March 4th robbery and he claimed that Blackburn shot Snider with his (Mefford's) gun. This gun was found, with Mefford's help, at the home of Mefford's brother-in-law, Irvin Ellis.¹

On the basis of Mefford's statements, Corporal Seekford, Detective White and two other State Police officers arrested Blackburn at about 3:00 a. m. on Monday, April 24, 1962. For the next two days — for over 40 consecutive hours — Blackburn was held without formal charge and interrogated by groups of state and county police officers until he confessed on the night of April 25. Blackburn was then 29 years old and was holding a steady job as a barber in Annapolis. He had previously served time in prison and was on probation when those events occurred in 1962.

At Mefford's trial in the Circuit Court for Harford County before Judges Day and Harlan, sitting without a jury, it was established² that Mefford's gun was the murder weapon and that a car fitting the description of Mefford's (a 1955 red Chevrolet hardtop with automatic transmission) had been observed "casing" several service stations along Route 40 during the late night of March 3 and early morning of March 4. In addition, a possible motive for the murder of Snider was shown: Mefford had worked with Snider once or twice in Route 40 service stations and may have feared recognition if he had left the robbery victim alive. Mefford's confession was admitted into evidence during his trial. On July 13, 1962, Mefford was found guilty and sentenced to death for murder and to imprisonment for robbery and robbery with a deadly weapon.³

Blackburn's trial commenced on July 24, 1962 in the Circuit Court for Harford County, also before Judges Day and Harlan sitting without a jury. The State introduced all of the evidence, except Mefford's confession, which it had produced during Mefford's trial, in order to show the corpus delicti. However, none of this evidence — i. e., Mefford's gun (the murder weapon), the observations of a car similar to Mefford's, and Mefford's motive for wanting Snider killed — implicated Blackburn. Indeed, there was no extrinsic evidence whatsoever which linked Blackburn to the crime. Fingerprints and footprints had been lifted from the scene of the crime, but none of them matched Blackburn's.⁴ Snider's dying description of the felons was not very specific and did not fit Blackburn.⁵ The only incriminating evidence produced by the State at the trial against Blackburn was his own confession. Blackburn's court-appointed counsel objected vigorously to the admission of the confession on the ground that it had been given involuntarily and therefore could not be constitutionally admitted. Over half of the five days of Blackburn's trial was devoted to taking evidence bearing upon the voluntariness of Blackburn's confession. After that hearing, Judges Day and Harlan ruled that the confession was admissible and later denied the defense motion to strike it from evidence.⁶ Blackburn took the stand in his own defense, contending that his confession was not voluntarily given and asserting his innocence. At the close of the trial, Judges Day and Harlan found Blackburn guilty of murder in the first degree, robbery and robbery with a deadly weapon, but acquitted him on the assault charge. The guilty verdict in the murder case was premised on the felony-murder rule, which holds each participant in a robbery equally liable for any resulting death regardless of who fired the fatal shot.⁷ Blackburn was sentenced to death for murder and to imprisonment for concurrent terms of ten and twenty years for robbery and robbery with a deadly weapon, respectively.

Blackburn's conviction was affirmed by a divided Maryland Court of Appeals, 3-2, which filed a joint opinion in connection with the appeals of Mefford and Blackburn. Mefford and Blackburn v. State, 235 Md. 497, 201 A.2d 824 (1964). Judge Hammond wrote the majority opinion; Chief Judge Brune and Judge Prescott dissented, without opinion, with regard to the appeals of both Mefford and Blackburn. Blackburn's petition for writ of certiorari was denied by the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Douglas dissenting. Blackburn v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 937, 85 S.Ct. 944, 13 L.Ed.2d 825 (1965). Blackburn, seeking federal habeas corpus relief in this Court, contends, as he did in all his prior litigation, that his conviction cannot stand because the confession used against him at trial was unconstitutionally obtained.

I.

A. In its answer to this Court's order to show cause, respondent originally averred that petitioner has not exhausted his available state remedies as required by Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963), and 28 U.S.C.A. § 2254. Even though the same contentions advanced by Blackburn herein were decided on the merits adversely by the highest court of Maryland, respondent originally urged that the state courts should be given an opportunity to consider the impact of cases dealing with the test of voluntariness which have been decided by the Supreme Court and by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit since the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed Blackburn's conviction.⁸ However, in a supplemental answer, respondent not only abandoned the claim of nonexhaustion of state remedies but affirmatively asked this Court to entertain the within petition on the merits.

This Court agrees that petitioner has exhausted his state remedies. The exhaustion requirement is not a jurisdictional limitation upon a federal court; rather, it is a rule which has been developed in the interest of comity between the federal and state judicial systems. Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 418-420, 430-431, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963); Hunt v. Warden, 335 F.2d 936, 940 (4th Cir. 1964). When a question has been presented to and adjudicated by the state's highest court once, there is no need to urge it upon the state courts yet a second time under an alternate procedure. Hamric v. Bailey, 386 F.2d 390 (4th Cir. 1967); Grundler v. North Carolina, 283 F.2d 798 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 362 U.S. 917, 80 S.Ct. 670, 4 L. Ed.2d 738 (1960). While there may well be reason to graft an exception when there has been an intervening change of law declared by the Supreme Court, this is not such a case. Since Blackburn's trial was held prior to the Supreme Court's decisions in Miranda and Escobedo, the proper test of the admissibility of the confession was whether it was given voluntarily under the "totality of the circumstances." Clewis v. Texas, 386 U.S. 707, 87 S.Ct. 1338, 18 L.Ed.2d 423 (1967); Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U.S. 737, 86 S.Ct. 1761, 16 L.Ed.2d 895 (1966); Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 86 S.Ct. 1772, 16 L.Ed.2d 882 (1966). This is precisely the test employed by the Maryland Court of Appeals in rejecting Blackburn's appeal; if anything, the voluntariness test used in adjudicating p...