Coffman v. Bomar

• Decision Date: 09 August 1963
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 3505.
• Citation: 220 F. Supp. 343
• Parties: Boyd COFFMAN, Petitioner, v. Lynn BOMAR, Warden Tennessee State Penitentiary, Nashville, Tennessee, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Tennessee

220 F. Supp. 343

Boyd COFFMAN, Petitioner, v. Lynn BOMAR, Warden Tennessee State Penitentiary, Nashville, Tennessee, Respondent.

Civ. A. No. 3505.

United States District Court M. D. Tennessee, Nashville Division.

August 9, 1963.

Robert H. Dedman, Nashville, Tenn., for petitioner.

Henry C. Foutch, Asst. Atty. Gen., State of Tennessee, Nashville, Tenn., for respondent.

WILLIAM E. MILLER, Chief Judge.

The petitioner, Boyd Coffman, was indicted in the Criminal Court of Washington County, Tennessee, on the 15th day of January, 1960, for the crime of robbery by the use of a deadly weapon as defined under the provisions of T.C.A. § 39-3901. He was also indicted under a second count in the same indictment as being a habitual criminal. Since it appeared that the petitioner was an indigent, the Court appointed two members of the Washington County Bar, J. E. Vaughan and B. B. Snipes, to represent him. Also, as the state sought the death penalty, the Court appointed a court reporter to report and transcribe the proceedings at state expense, as authorized by T.C.A. § 40-2010. The petitioner was tried under the indictment on January 29, 1960. He was found guilty under the first count of the offense of robbery by use of a deadly weapon. Under the second count charging that he was a habitual criminal he was found not guilty. His punishment was fixed at a term of twenty years in the state penitentiary.

Having first exhausted without success his available post-conviction remedy in the state courts, petitioner, on July 1, 1963, filed with this Court his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging on Fourteenth Amendment grounds the validity of his conviction in the Washington County Criminal Court. On the same date the Court entered its order appointing Robert H. Dedman, an attorney of the Nashville Bar, to represent the petitioner and fixing July 16, 1963 as the date for a hearing upon the petition.

The attack made by the petitioner upon the validity of his conviction is two-fold. First, he insists that he was denied a fair trial and that his constitutional rights to due process of law were denied him in that he was required to be handcuffed and closely guarded by a number of armed officers during the entire trial before the jury. Secondly, petitioner contends that following his conviction and the entry of an order by the trial court overruling his motion for a new trial, he requested his court-appointed attorneys to perfect an appeal on his behalf to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, but that such attorneys failed to take the proper steps to perfect such appeal within the time allowed under state law. The result of such failure was, the petitioner contends, to deprive him of his absolute right of appeal under the applicable laws of Tennessee. Petitioner's insistence is that such failure on the part of the attorneys appointed by the court to represent him constituted a denial by the state of due process of law and the equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, having the effect of invalidating his conviction.

After the petitioner was convicted on January 29, 1960, his attorneys filed a motion for a new trial which was heard by the Court on February 27, 1960. On that date an order was entered overruling the motion. The order is silent as to an appeal, and there is no other entry in the record of the trial making reference to or bearing upon an appeal or application for an appeal of petitioner's conviction. While there is some conflict in the evidence as to whether the petitioner requested his attorneys to take steps for an appeal, the clear preponderance of the proof is that the defendant did request that the appeal be perfected and was under the impression that necessary steps were being taken by his attorneys to this end until the time to take such an appeal had expired. The trial judge testified that on the day the motion for a new trial was heard he made inquiry of petitioner's attorneys as to whether there would be an appeal and he was advised that the petitioner did not desire to appeal but wanted to begin serving his sentence immediately. There is convincing evidence, however, that if the petitioner did make this representation to the Court through his attorneys, he changed his mind very soon thereafter and requested that his conviction be appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee. For example, on November 2, 1960, at a time when the matter should have been fresh on his mind, one of the court-appointed attorneys, Jack Vaughan, addressed a letter to the Assistant Attorney General of Tennessee at Nashville, presumably in response to a request for information as to what had occurred with reference to the appeal, in which he made the following statement:

"The last time I talked with Coffman, which was on the day when his motion for a new trial was heard, I believe that I told him that Mr. Snipes and I would talk the matter over, as to taking his case to the Supreme Court. After that time he wrote to Mr. Snipes several times but I never did hear from him. He was under the impression that his case would be appealed I am sure, but as I stated in my other letter to you, we could find no error in the record that would warrant an appeal. I did not at any time inform him of this, and I do not know if Mr. Snipes did or not."

On November 5, 1960, the same attorney wrote a letter to Ed R. Davies, an attorney of the Nashville Bar who was making inquiry into the same question, and this letter contains a similar statement:

"I do not recall that we said that we would appeal his case to the Supreme Court, but I do think we told him that we would consider it, but as I said, we could find no error on which to base an appeal. He wrote to Mr. Snipes several times but never did write to me. Soon thereafter Mr. Snipes retired from practice and moved away from here.

"I always try to do my best for any man under any kind of an indictment, but I do not and cannot afford to spend money on a Court appointed case which would have been necessary had I investigated all the things he told me. On the other hand I do not like to waste time on a case which would bring no reversible verdict in the Supreme Court. In this case I also considered the fact that here is a man who perhaps had had more experience in Criminal Courts than most attorneys, and also had the aid of the best criminal lawyers in this country over a period of twenty years, and from such has acquired a knowledge of the finer points of law from which a man can always make an effort to beat a rap. Most of his life has been spent in prison, which is one of the best places to study every type of a criminal defense as one can always find plenty of information fom his cell mates etc."

These letters, both written within a very few months after the trial, clearly corroborate the petitioner in his testimony that he requested the attorneys to appeal his conviction, that he was under the impression that they were doing so, and that he did not learn otherwise until after the time for perfecting an appeal had expired. The petitioner's testimony in this respect receives further corroboration from a series of letters written to the petitioner following his conviction by his other court-appointed attorney, B.B. Snipes, in reply to letters written by the petitioner himself. The tenor of these letters indicates that the petitioner had expected an appeal to be taken and that he was making inquiry to find out what the situation was. This attorney was not available as a witness and, consequently, there is no denial from him of the petitioner's testimony. Testifying at the hearing in the present case, Vaughan did not deny writing the letters above referred to, nor did he say that they did not represent the true facts. On the contrary, he conceded that the petitioner may have been under the impression that his case would be appealed, and he further stated that he and Snipes discussed the question of an appeal between themselves and decided against it because they were of the opinion that there was no error in the record upon which an appeal could be successfully prosecuted. He admits that this information, however, may not have been communicated to the petitioner. The end result was that while the petitioner may have originally indicated to the trial court that an appeal would not be taken, he thereafter requested his court-appointed counsel to take an appeal, he expected that it would be accomplished, and he was never advised by them of their own private decision not to appeal.

Under the laws of Tennessee, after a motion for a new trial is overruled in a criminal case, a defendant is entitled as a matter of right to an appeal in the nature of a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the state. T.C.A. § 40-3401. As a condition to such an appeal, however, an appeal bond must be filed or the pauper oath taken within thirty days from the date of the order overruling the new trial motion, or within an extended period not exceeding thirty days if the application for the extension is made within the original thirty-day period. T.C.A. § 27-312. A defendant may also appeal a criminal conviction as a matter of right to the Supreme Court by filing the record for a writ of error, even though he has failed to file an appeal bond or to take the pauper oath within the time required to perfect an appeal in the nature of a writ of error. T.C.A. §§ 40-3402 and 27-601, 607. The writ of error may be moved for and obtained in the appellate court, or issued by the clerk of the appellate court in vacation, upon the filing of the transcript of the record in his office. T.C.A. § 27-602. The application to the clerk for issuance of the writ may be made within one year after the order appealed from, T.C.A. § 27-604, or within two years if the application is made to the appellate court or a judge thereof, T.C.A. § 27-605. Under state law, an appeal in the nature of a writ of error or an appeal...