Cagle v. Davis

• Decision Date: 18 December 1980
• Docket Number: No. CIV-2-80-100.,CIV-2-80-100.
• Citation: 520 F. Supp. 297
• Parties: Sheridan Ray CAGLE, Petitioner, v. Herman C. DAVIS, et al., Respondents.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Tennessee

520 F. Supp. 297

Sheridan Ray CAGLE, Petitioner, v. Herman C. DAVIS, et al., Respondents.

No. CIV-2-80-100.

United States District Court, E. D. Tennessee, Northeastern Division.

June 12, 1980.

On Motion for Summary Judgment September 5, 1980.

On Writ of Habeas Corpus November 13, 1980.

On Stay of Judgment December 18, 1980.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

W. Gordon Ball, Newport, Tenn., and A. Benjamin Strand, Jr., Dandridge, Tenn., for petitioner.

James A. DeLanis, Asst. Atty. Gen. of Tenn., Nashville, Tenn., for respondents.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

NEESE, District Judge.

The petitioner Mr. Sheridan Ray Cagle, a person represented by retained counsel and in custody of the respondent warden pursuant to the judgment of November 27, 1972 of the Criminal Court of Hamblen County, Tennessee, applied to this Court for the federal writ of habeas corpus, claiming that he is in such custody in violation of his federal rights to due process of law,^* Constitution, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and to a reasonably representative jury of the state and district wherein the crime was committed, Taylor v. Louisiana (1975), 419 U.S. 522, 538, 95 S.Ct. 692, 701, 42 L.Ed.2d 690, 7032; Constitution Sixth Amendment. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). He claims the exhaustion by every procedure of the remedies available to him under the laws of Tennessee in its courts, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2254(b), (c), by having presented the questions he presents here to a Tennessee trial court with an appeal to the highest state court having jurisdiction without having been accorded his federal rights.

It does not appear plainly from the face of the applicant's petition and the brief annexed thereto that the petitioner is not entitled to any relief; accordingly, the respondent-warden hereby is ORDERED to file an answer including a return certifying the true cause of the applicant's detention and showing within 43 days herefrom any cause why the federal writ of habeas corpus should not be granted. Rule 4, Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts; 28 U.S.C. § 2243. The noticed slow movement of the mail currently provides good cause for the additional time allowed. Idem.; Rule 81(a)(2), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

ON MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

The respondents filed an answer in which they certified herein the true cause of the applicant's detention and undertook to show that the federal writ of habeas corpus should not be granted. They moved also for a summary judgment as to all claims for relief of the applicant. Rule 56(b), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Such motion has merit as to 2 claims of the applicant.

The applicant claims he was denied federal due process of law when the state trial judge did not hear sua sponte and determine the voluntariness of his purported confession to a fellow-inmate before allowing testimony concerning the confession to be related to the jury. Federal due process, as delineated in the Constitution, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, did not require the state trial judge to conduct a hearing on the voluntariness of the applicant's confession in a situation in which the applicant had made no contemporaneous challenge to the use as evidence of that confession by the state of Tennessee. Wainwright v. Sykes (1977), 433 U.S. 72, 86, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 2506, 53 L.Ed.2d 594, 607-6084.

The applicant claims also that he was deprived of his federal right under the Constitution, Sixth Amendment, to a reasonably representative jury of the state of Tennessee and Hamblen County because females who were otherwise eligible for juryservice were excused from such service under a statute excusing them unless they agreed to serve. T.C.A. §§ 22-101 et seq., and because there were excluded systematically from such jury-panels also persons between the ages of 17 and 21 years, Constitution, Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Here again, the failure of the applicant to raise before trial his challenges to the respective make-ups of the grand jury which indicted him and the trial jury which convicted him constituted a waiver of his objections thereto, as the applicant claims no actual prejudice caused him by either of those makeups. Francis v. Henderson (1976), 425 U.S. 536, 537-542, 96 S.Ct. 1708, 1711, 48 L.Ed.2d 149, 151-1551a1b.

As to the applicant's claims for relief predicated upon deprivation of due process from such lack of a hearing and such unrepresentational juries, therefore, such motion hereby is GRANTED, Rule 56(c), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and summary judgment for the respondents will enter as to those claims only. However, an evidentiary hearing will be required as to the third claim for relief of the applicant.

In this claim, the applicant asserts that he was denied federal due process of law when the state of Tennessee suppressed evidence favorable to him which had materiality on the issue of his guilt or innocence after he had requested the prosecuting attorney to provide him evidence of that sort. Mr. Cagle presented this issue in the courts of Tennessee and was denied relief both at the hearing and appellate levels. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b).

The reporting Tennessee courts came to their respective decisions on this issue for different, if not contrary, reasons. The hearing judge found inter alia that the information possessed by the prosecuting attorney and unknown to the defense before and at trial did not constitute evidence which was exculpatory of the applicant, so that the applicant was not deprived of due process. Sheridan Cagle v. State of Tennessee, No. 79-CR-141 in the Criminal Court for Hamblen County, Tennessee, judgment of August 17, 1979. On appeal, however, the resolution of this issue turned on the judicial opinion that the "* * * exculpatory statement made by the petitioner to the agent to the effect that he the applicant did not kill the victim was a self-serving declaration and was not admissible in evidence. * * * The exculpatory(!) evidence was not probative or admissible in evidence and could not have affected the result of the trial. * * *" Sheridan Cagle, appellant, v. State of Tennessee, appellee, No. 114, Hamblen Criminal, in the Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee, opinion of February 15, 1979, permission to appeal denied April 29, 1980 in State of Tennessee, plaintiff-appellee, v. Sheridan Cagle, defendant-appellant, C.C.A. No. 114, Hamblen County, in the Supreme Court of Tennessee.

This Court is of the present opinion that the crucial issue between the parties is, not whether the nature of the information withheld from the applicant was exculpatory of him, and not whether the evidence which might have been supplied by such information was self-serving, inadmissible, and unchanging of the result of the applicant's trial; rather, the issue seems to be whether, factually, the district attorney general who prosecuted the applicant was in a situation pretrial, or became so during trial, in which he was required by elementary fairness upon consideration of all the surrounding facts and circumstances, to disclose to the defense information which had a materiality to the doing of justice in the applicant's trial and, concurrently, to the establishment of the guilt or innocence of the applicant.

If such information was of such substantial value to the defense that the prosecuting attorney should have disclosed it to the defense without a request specifically therefore, then its withholding from the defense infringed upon the applicant's right to a fair trial. United States v. Agurs (1976), 427 U.S. 97, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342, cited in Wagster v. Overberg, C.A. 6th (1977), 560 F.2d 735, 739. There appears to have been no development of the foregoing material facts in the state court hearing in Sheridan Cagle v. State of Tennessee, supra, so the finding of the state hearing court on the fair-trial issue cannot be presumed in this situation to have been correct. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(3). Thus, there are genuine issues of material fact extant between the parties as to this claim, so that summary judgment for the respondents as a matter of law would be inappropriate and the motion therefor hereby is DENIED. Rule 56(c), supra.

Until the facts are fully developed through the testimony of the prosecuting attorney and otherwise, whether the correct principle of law has been applied in this instance by the appellate court of Tennessee cannot be ascertained. As had been observed earlier, the applicant's confession, made to a fellow-prisoner while they were in jail on another charge and before the discovery of the fact that a murder had been committed, was direct evidence, Moon v. State, 146 Tenn. 319, 242 S.W. 39; Monts v. State, 214 Tenn. 171, 379 S.W.2d 34, so that the verdict of guilt against the applicant "* * * rested on both direct and circumstantial evidence * * *." Cagle v. State, C.Cr.App.Tenn. (1973), 507 S.W.2d 121, 130, certiorari denied (1974). But, that confession was verbal and, in so far as this record now shows, made in the presence of the applicant's fellow-inmate alone. This constituted "* * * very unsatisfactory evidence, partly because of the facility with which it could have been fabricated. * *" Beckwith v. Bean (1879), 98 U.S. 266, 25 L.Ed. 124, 129.

The prosecuting attorney and others planted an undercover law-enforcement agent, who was experienced in interviewing suspects, in the cell with the applicant with the avowed purpose "* * * to see if I could get any information as to his being involved in the homicide * * *" with which he was then charged.¹ Any defendant who is said to have confessed a crime voluntarily is permitted to familiarize the jury with all the circumstances that attended the taking of his confession, "* * * including facts bearing upon its weight * * *," and, in such a case, the jury is "* * * at liberty to disregard confessions that are * * * deemed unworthy of belief. * * *" Lego v. Twomey (1972), 404 U.S. 477, 486, 92 S.Ct. 619, 625,...