Brown v. Mitchell

• Decision Date: 09 May 1979
• Docket Number: No. 78-6444,78-6444
• Citation: 598 F.2d 835
• Parties: James Ambrose BROWN, Appellant, v. James P. MITCHELL, Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 835

598 F.2d 835

James Ambrose BROWN, Appellant, v. James P. MITCHELL, Superintendent of the Virginia State

Penitentiary, Appellee.

No. 78-6444.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued Jan. 8, 1979.

Decided May 9, 1979.

Larry J. Ritchie, Washington, D. C. (Michael E. Geltner, Professor, Washington, D. C., Geoffrey W. Mangum, Third Year Law Student, Georgetown University Law Center on brief), for appellant.

Jim L. Chin, Asst. Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va. (Marshall Coleman, Atty. Gen. of Va., Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellee.

Before BUTZNER and RUSSELL, Circuit Judges, and FIELD, Senior Circuit Judge.

BUTZNER, Circuit Judge:

The sole issue in this appeal is whether United States v. Mauro, 436 U.S. 340, 98 S.Ct. 1834, 56 L.Ed.2d 329 (1978), applies to a state conviction that became final prior to the date when Mauro was decided. ¹ Under the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers in Mauro, the Commonwealth of Virginia tried James Ambrose Brown in violation of Article IV(e) of the Agreement. However, applying the controlling test of Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 85 S.Ct. 1731, 14 L.Ed.2d 601 (1965), and Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967), we conclude that Mauro does not apply retroactively and affirm the district court's denial of a writ of habeas corpus.

In Mauro the Supreme Court reviewed two decisions: United States v. Mauro, 544 F.2d 588 (2d Cir. 1976), and United States v. Ford, 550 F.2d 732 (2d Cir. 1977). In both cases the United States had obtained temporary custody of prisoners by writs of habeas corpus ad prosequendum. In Ford, but not in Mauro, the United States had filed a detainer before obtaining custody. The Second Circuit held that a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum was a "detainer" entitling the prisoner to the protection of the Agreement. Upon finding violations of the speedy trial provisions of the Agreement, the court dismissed both indictments. Drawing a sharp distinction between a prisoner subject to a detainer and one who was not, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals in Ford but reversed in Mauro. The Court held that the writ is not itself a "detainer" and therefore that it "does not trigger the application of the Agreement". It also held that the writ is a request for temporary custody which, when preceded by the lodging of a detainer, requires compliance with the Agreement. 436 U.S. at 349, 361-62, 98 S.Ct. at 1841.

The Supreme Court's decision enables a prisoner subject to a detainer whose custody has been obtained by a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum to invoke Article IV of the Agreement. Article IV(e) requires the receiving state ² to try the prisoner before returning him to the state in which he was previously imprisoned and mandates dismissal of the charges with prejudice if the receiving state fails to comply. ³ Interstate Agreement on Detainers, 18 U.S.C. App. A, Article IV(e); Va. Code Ann. § 53-304.1, Article IV(e) (1978).

On March 14, 1976, when Brown was in federal custody in the District of Columbia awaiting trial on robbery charges, a detainer was filed against him based upon unrelated homicide charges then pending in Westmoreland County, Virginia. In July, 1976, Brown was convicted on the robbery charges and incarcerated at the District of Columbia reformatory in Lorton, Virginia.

On October 21, 1976, the Commonwealth of Virginia secured a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum from the state trial court in order to obtain temporary custody of Brown. Pursuant to that writ, the state transferred Brown from Lorton to Westmoreland County on October 28. A county grand jury indicted Brown for first-degree murder. At his arraignment he pled not guilty, counsel was appointed, and trial was set for December 22. The state promptly returned Brown to federal custody. On December 20, the court granted Brown's motion for a continuance, setting the trial for February 3, 1977.

On January 18, 1977, the state secured a second writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum and obtained custody of Brown for a psychiatric examination ordered by the court at Brown's request. Following the examination, Brown was again returned to Lorton. On January 19, the state secured a third writ in order to obtain Brown's presence for trial.

The state trial court denied Brown's pretrial motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground that the previous transfers violated Article IV(e). On February 3, Brown was tried and convicted of first-degree murder. He again raised his Article IV(e) claim in a petition for a writ of error filed with the Supreme Court of Virginia. That court denied the writ without opinion.

Brown filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court on January 20, 1978. The district court denied the writ because in its view the Interstate Agreement on Detainers did not apply. The court did not address the issue of Mauro 's retroactive application.

On appeal, Brown does not contend that the rights recognized in Mauro are themselves constitutionally protected. ⁴ He does, however, advance an argument based on the due process clause, contending that it would be fundamentally unfair to deny him the benefit of Mauro. He asserts that the indictment should be dismissed because Mauro precludes the state from trying him. He emphasizes that under Mauro 's construction of the Agreement, a state which follows the procedure that was used by Virginia in his case must dismiss the indictment with prejudice.

At the outset, we reject Brown's contentions that Mauro sets forth no new rule of law and that retroactivity is automatic. The threshold test for nonretroactivity analysis is set forth in Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 106, 92 S.Ct. 349, 355, 30 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971). In that case, the court explained: "(T)he decision to be applied nonretroactively must establish a new principle of law, either by overruling clear past precedent on which litigants may have relied, . . . or by deciding an issue of first impression whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed . . . ."

Mauro is such a decision. Prior to Mauro, three of the five courts of appeals that had considered the issue held that transfers pursuant to writs of habeas corpus ad prosequendum were not subject to the Interstate Agreement on Detainers. See Ridgeway v. United States, 558 F.2d 357 (6th Cir. 1977); United States v. Kenaan, 557 F.2d 912 (1st Cir. 1977); United States v. Scallion, 548 F.2d 1168 (5th Cir. 1977). The two courts of appeals which had found that the Agreement established rights of prisoners when the writ was utilized did so only over vigorous dissents. See United States v. Sorrell, 562 F.2d 227 (3d Cir. 1977) (en banc) (dissenting opinion of Weis, J., for himself and two other judges, and dissenting opinion of Garth, J., both appended to companion case of United States v. Thompson, 562 F.2d 232, 235-46 (3d Cir. 1977)); United States v. Ford, 550 F.2d at 744-45 (Moore, J., dissenting); United States v. Mauro, 544 F.2d at 595-97 (Mansfield, J., dissenting).

With the exception of the Second Circuit's holding in Ford, none of these decisions attributed dispositive significance to the presence or absence of a detainer. In addition, the Second Circuit's holdings in Mauro and Ford did not apply to situations in which temporary custody was obtained for arraignment and the prisoner was promptly returned. See United States v. Chico, 558 F.2d 1047 (2d Cir. 1977). The Third Circuit's holding in Sorrell apparently applies only to writs issued after the date of that decision. United States v. Boyd, 437 F.Supp. 519 (W.D.Pa.1977), Aff'd without opinion, 578 F.2d 1376 (3d Cir. 1978).

We therefore conclude that Mauro authoritatively established a principle of law which "was not clearly foreshadowed." See Chevron Oil, 404 U.S. at 106, 92 S.Ct. 349. Accordingly, in order to prevail, Brown must satisfy the established requirements for retroactivity.

In Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 636-38, 85 S.Ct. 1731, 14 L.Ed.2d 601 (1965), and in Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 296-300, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967), the Supreme Court held that four factors generally control the determination of whether a decision announcing a new principle of law is to be given retrospective effect:

(1) the extent of reasonable reliance upon the premise that the now-condemned conduct was legitimate;

(2) the purpose of the new rule and the extent to which that purpose will be aided by retroactivity;

(3) the effect on the administration of justice of applying the new rule retroactively; and

(4) the extent to which the new rule bears on the defendant's guilt or innocence.

Some cases, of course, do not fit neatly within this analytical scheme. Overriding constitutional policies that have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the defendant may compel retroactivity. ⁵ Linkletter and Stovall, nevertheless, set forth the basic test for nonretroactivity.

As our discussion of the state of the law prior to Mauro indicates, there was a reasonable basis for Virginia's reliance on the premise that use of a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum to obtain custody of a prisoner for pretrial proceedings does not trigger Article IV(e) of the Agreement.

The purpose of the rule announced by the Supreme Court in Mauro is the same as the purpose of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers: to encourage the prompt disposition of charges against a prisoner who is subject to a detainer and thereby to prevent frustration of rehabilitation efforts. This purpose would not be aided by applying Mauro to Brown's case. Virginia fully complied with the purpose of the rule announced in Mauro. Brown was tried 98 days after the...