Brown v. Smyth
| Decision Date | 19 October 1959 |
| Docket Number | No. 7896.,7896. |
| Citation | 271 F.2d 227 |
| Parties | George BROWN, Jr., Appellant, v. W. Frank SMYTH, Jr., Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Charles W. Laughlin, Richmond, Va. (Court-appointed counsel) for appellant (George Brown, Jr., pro se, on brief).
Thomas M. Miller, Asst. Atty. Gen., of Virginia, (A. S. Harrison, Jr., Atty. Gen., of Virginia, on brief) for appellee.
Before SOBELOFF, Chief Judge, and HAYNSWORTH and BOREMAN, Circuit Judges.
The appellant is serving a life term in the Virginia State Penitentiary for robbery with a deadly weapon. The District Court denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, brought after he had exhausted his state remedies, including application for certiorari which was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States, Brown v. Smyth, 1958, 358 U. S. 854, 79 S.Ct. 83, 3 L.Ed.2d 88.
The sole contention of the petitioner which merits consideration is that he was "coerced" into pleading guilty by his court-appointed attorney who advised him that "the plea of not guilty meant only death in the electric chair." In denying the petition, the District Court pointed out that when the trial court imposed sentence it recited that the accused tendered his guilty plea after a private discussion with his counsel and that his counsel was "an able, experienced and competent attorney in the trial of criminal cases of all sorts * * *."
The petitioner supplied no details to support his claim of coercion; nor does he suggest that he had a defense to present. Certainly the mere allegation that a lawyer suggested to a defendant that if he stood trial he was in jeopardy of a death sentence does not constitute such coercion as to make the plea of guilty an involuntary act. In Diggs v. Welch, 1945, 80 U.S.App.D.C. 5, 148 F.2d 667, 668, certiorari denied 325 U.S. 889, 65 S.Ct. 1576, 89 L.Ed. 2002, petitioner likewise set up the claim that "he was coerced and intimidated to enter a plea of guilty by the attorney appointed by the court to defend him." In affirming dismissal of the petition, the court held these general allegations, standing alone, insufficient to require a hearing upon the petition for the writ of habeas corpus. In another case involving an allegation of incompetence of counsel, the same court stated:
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