Brown v. Fogel

• Decision Date: 28 November 1967
• Docket Number: No. 11802.,11802.
• Citation: 387 F.2d 692
• Parties: H. Rap BROWN, Appellant, v. Honorable Raymond FOGEL, City Sergeant, Alexandria, Virginia, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

387 F.2d 692 (1967)

H. Rap BROWN, Appellant, v. Honorable Raymond FOGEL, City Sergeant, Alexandria, Virginia, Appellee.

No. 11802.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued October 5, 1967.

Decided November 28, 1967.

William M. Kunstler, New York City, for appellant.

Reno S. Harp, III, Asst. Atty. Gen. of Virginia, for appellee.

Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and BRYAN and WINTER, Circuit Judges.

HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge:

H. Rap Brown seeks relief in this court from a condition imposed upon him by the District Court in ordering his release, on his own recognizance, from the custody of Virginia officials detaining him under an extradition warrant. The District Court's order requires Brown to remain in the general custody of his attorney in the Southern District of New York except for travel for appearances in courts in which criminal charges are pending against him and for necessary preparation for defending such charges. Brown sought unsuccessfully in the District Court, and he now seeks in this Court, a modification of the order to permit him to travel extensively to meet certain speaking engagements throughout the United States and one in England.

We decline the requested relief.

Charged in Maryland with counseling or procuring the burning of a school building, Brown was arrested in Virginia on a governor's extradition warrant. He promptly sought habeas corpus relief in the Corporation Court for the City of Alexandria and release on bail pending the termination of those proceedings. Bail was denied upon the ground that the court lacked jurisdiction to grant bail to one held under a governor's extradition warrant. An application for bail to an individual Justice of Virginia's Supreme Court of Appeals was denied on a similar jurisdictional ground. Brown then filed in the District Court a petition for a writ of habeas corpus for the sole purpose of procuring his release on bail.

At the hearing, it was represented that no corporate surety could be found which would execute another bond for Brown and that cash resources available to him had been substantially exhausted in posting a cash bond in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana and the Southern District of New York in which he faced charges of a federal offense. The District Judge then indicated a willingness to release Brown on his own recognizance to the general custody of his attorney, William M. Kunstler, Esquire, of New York. The suggestion was readily accepted. The court then ordered his release, on his own recognizance, into Mr. Kunstler's custody conditioned upon his remaining in the area of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York except for court appearances or for travel in preparing his defense of criminal charges pending against him.

There was no appeal from that order. Later, however, Brown applied for relief from the travel restriction. He sought permission to travel in response to invitations to speak at universities and colleges and in cities throughout the length and breadth of the United States and in Oxford, England. His application was denied, and he appealed.

We do not pause to consider the appealability of the order, for it has not been contested, and the application deserves a prompt resolution on the merits.

Virginia's Attorney General has questioned the jurisdiction of the District Court to release Brown on bail and the propriety of an exercise of any such jurisdiction in the light of a claimed failure to exhaust state remedies.

We notice the jurisdictional question, of course, but we are not persuaded that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain a petition for a writ of habeas corpus to obtain release on bail pending litigation of the validity of an extradition warrant.¹

Virginia's most insistent objection is a claimed failure of exhaustion of state remedies. This is premised upon Brown's failure to appeal to the full Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia and a contention that the application to an individual Justice under § 19.1-112 of the Code of Virginia, 1950, a part of the general criminal procedure code, was not the equivalent of, nor an adequate substitute for, an appeal asserting a right to bail under § 19.1-66, a part of the extradition act. Some force is lent the contention by reason of the fact that the individual Justice denied the application upon the ground that Brown was not held for a trial for a criminal offense, and thus, inferentially, not one entitled to proceed under § 19.1-112.

The question whether state remedies were exhausted may be a nice one, but we do not think we are compelled to reach it. The exhaustion of remedies doctrine is not jurisdictional.² It is a rule of comity, which, in our federal system, should be faithfully applied in the absence of unusual circumstances.³ These we find present here in the fact that Virginia acquiesced in the District Court's original release order. No appeal was taken; there was no effort to obtain a stay of it. Virginia chose to contest the matter no further, and elected to release Brown. After Virginia's acceptance of the order and its complete execution by Brown's release, the belated exhaustion of remedies objection to the entry of any order does not command our attention. When Virginia complied with the order and took no appeal, it waived all objections except those strictly jurisdictional.

On the merits of the appeal, we think it was well within the discretion of the District Judge to impose the conditional limitation upon Brown's travel in the first instance and to refuse to modify it on the later application.

It is well settled that a release on bail may be subject to reasonable conditions and limitations. There is precedent for a condition that the bailee remain within the territorial jurisdiction of the court,⁴ and, for many years, he was held subject to the absolute power of direction and control by his bondsman.⁵ The latter requirement faded as bonding became a business,⁶ but resort to its underlying principle is not inappropriate when the proffered supervision of an attorney is accepted as the substitute for a bond.

Brown is the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, with offices in New York and Atlanta. When his New York lawyer represented that Brown could obtain no bond, the District Judge, quite appropriately, turned to a consideration of what reasonable substitutes might be available to assure his appearance in lieu of the usual financial incentive a bond provides. He found enough in the lawyer's expression of willingness to assume the responsibilities of custodian.

In releasing Brown, without a bond, to the custody of his lawyer and imposing the condition that Brown remain in New York, except for travel necessary to his defense of criminal prosecutions, the judge displayed great consideration for Brown and his duties as the chairman of the organization he heads. He was not restricted to Virginia, where he has no office, but allowed to go to New York where he has one of his two principal offices. The travel limitation was imposed with an appropriate exception which would not impede Brown's defense of any criminal charge, but with regard for the assurance inherent in the lawyer's assumption of custodial responsibilities.

Neither we nor the District Judge have any notion that Mr. Kunstler is responsible for a minute supervision of Brown, and his custodial responsibilities do not prevent his leaving the Southern District of New York in the practice of his profession. When Mr. Kunstler is away, however, his office is there is New York to relay messages from or about Brown. If Brown is free to travel wherever he would, even outside the United States, the force of the lawyer's influence is left largely to Brown's whims, and the minimal assurance, in lieu of a bond, of appearance which the District Judge sought, would be largely undermined.

Consideration may also be given to the apparent substantiality or insubstantiality of Brown's attack upon extradition. We express no considered opinion upon it, but his original petition presented no claim of patent or impressive merit. He alleged that his arrest was illegal for several reasons⁷ and, for wholly unspecified reasons, that he feared bodily harm and deprivation of constitutional rights should he be delivered to Maryland authorities.⁸ In his original petition Brown raised no question about the sufficiency of the Maryland warrant, his presence in the state at the time of the alleged commission of the crime or his identity as the person being sought.⁹

We find no First Amendment question present. Brown's physical limitation to New York deprives him of the privilege of accepting invitations to speak elsewhere, but there is no limitation upon his right to speak in New York or to communicate, by any means other than personal travel, with people in other states. Since, as we have found, the travel limitation is a reasonable one in the context of his release on his own recognizance to the custody of his New York lawyer, the incidental limitation upon his activities as a public speaker is a collateral consequence of which he cannot complain.

Affirmed.

ALBERT V. BRYAN, Circuit Judge (dissenting):

I think the Federal court's grant of bail to H. Rap Brown was improvident and should be vacated. As far as I know, a person charged with a State felony has no absolute and unconditional Constitutional or statutory right to bail; its allowance is dependent upon many factors.¹ But whatever the right, it is a judgment to be made initially by the State courts. At any rate, the prisoner should not have been permitted at will to skip the procedure laid out by the Virginia law to enable her courts to weigh the advisability of bail.

To begin with, the simple issue of whether he should be delivered to Maryland has thus been allowed to balloon into enormous proportions. The majority opinion quite fully...