Deters v. Collins
| Decision Date | 11 March 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 91-6066,91-6066 |
| Citation | 985 F.2d 789 |
| Parties | Jesse Joseph DETERS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. James A. COLLINS, Director, Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice Institution Division, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Jesse Joseph Deters, pro se.
S. Michael Bogarth, Asst. Atty. Gen., Dan Morales, Atty. Gen., Austin, TX, for respondent-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Before JOHNSON, GARWOOD, and JONES, Circuit Judges.
Jesse Joseph Deters, proceeding pro se, asks the Court to reverse the district court's decision not to issue a writ of habeas corpus. Deters presented a number of federal and state claims in his petition. However, finding that he failed to exhaust state remedies available to him, the Court declines to review the merits of this case and remands to the district court for dismissal without prejudice.
In August of 1973, a Texas jury convicted petitioner Deters of murder with malice aforethought in the Second Ninth Judicial District Court, which is located in Montgomery County, Texas. Deters was sentenced to imprisonment for ninety-nine years and one day. Although Deters' attorney properly provided notice of appeal in open court and requested the preparation of the statement of facts and exhibits for appeal, he apparently failed to do anything more, jeopardizing Deters' right to appeal.
Recognizing that something was amiss, Deters filed a petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas three years later, on November 15, 1976. 1 On August 21 1978, the district court dismissed Deters' petition based upon his failure to exhaust state remedies. 2 Accordingly, Deters filed a petition for habeas corpus in the state trial court on March 23, 1979. After that court failed to timely respond to Deters' petition, Deters, on May 2, 1979, filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in Texas' highest criminal court, the Court of Criminal Appeals. The Court of Criminal Appeals issued a per curiam opinion on May 23 of that year ordering the state trial court to hold an evidentiary hearing to, among other things, "investigate and determine any and all further facts relevant to the disposition of [Deters'] application for writ of habeas corpus."
The state trial court held hearings on August 1 and August 9, 1979; however, it limited the hearings to only one of Deters' complaints--whether he had been denied the right to appeal. 3 The trial court, in a September 13, 1979, memorandum, expressed its findings of facts and concluded that Deters should be given an out-of-time appeal. The Court of Criminal Appeals ordered such an appeal in a memorandum dated October 10, and on October 17, 1979, Deters filed his second notice of appeal in the Second Ninth Judicial District Court of Texas. The following day, however, Deters volunteered to serve the remainder of his state sentence in a federal prison. Retaining the right to return to the state system, which he could exercise one time, Deters was removed to the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas.
Appealing pro se, Deters corresponded with officials in the state district court from November 1979 through April 1980 about the records of his 1973 trial. After learning that the court reporter no longer possessed her shorthand notes from the trial and was thus unable to prepare a statement of facts therefrom, Deters informed the state court that the statement of facts was not available. 4 In January of 1980, Deters' court-appointed attorney discovered that the exhibits--the real evidence admitted during the trial--had either been destroyed or lost. Consequently, Deters submitted objections to the record in the state trial court and requested the opportunity to review the record. He later received a copy of the transcript, and on March 26, 1980, he sent supplemental objections to the trial court. After learning that no hearing had been set to review his motions and objections, Deters filed yet a third petition for a writ of mandamus in the Court of Criminal Appeals. In that petition, dated April 22, 1980, Deters claimed that the trial court was obstructing his right to appeal by failing to set a hearing date to review his objections to the record. The court refused to issue the writ.
The state trial court later scheduled the hearing for September 26, 1980. Prior to that hearing, Deters filed a motion requesting that he, Deters, be present at the hearing and act as his own counsel. However, because Deters was not in Texas' custody the Texas trial judge refused to expend Texas or Montgomery County funds to transport Deters from Kansas for the hearing since he had voluntarily placed himself in federal custody. 5 In a December 12, 1980, order, the court indefinitely postponed the hearing, stating that "[w]hen [Deters] voluntarily presents himself, a hearing will be set to consider his objections to the appellate record." The following January, Deters filed a habeas corpus petition in the Court of Criminal Appeals, alleging the denial of his right to appeal. In September of the same year, that court declined to grant the writ because the appeal was still pending.
Indeed, as far as this Court knows, that appeal is still pending. 6 Since 1981, Deters has done little, if anything, to speed along his appeal, although he has had ample opportunity to do so. In January of 1984, he was released from prison on parole. While released, Deters did not communicate with the Second Ninth Judicial District Court, let alone enter that court's jurisdiction for the record certification hearing.
Due to his conviction of a felony in Louisiana in March of 1986, 7 Texas revoked his parole in January of 1987. Less than a month before the revocation of his parole, Deters wrote to the Court of Criminal Appeals about the status of his pending appeal. That court suggested that Deters file a petition for a writ of mandamus so as to speed along the appeal. Deters rejected that advice and instead filed this habeas corpus petition in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. That court, determining that it was without jurisdiction to decide the case, transferred the case to the Southern District of Texas.
Although that federal district court recognized that Deters had failed to exhaust state remedies, it excused the exhaustion requirement. The district court, adopting the memorandum and recommendation of the magistrate, determined that exhaustion was not required because of the significant time lapse between Deters' 1973 trial and his petition for habeas corpus. Reaching the merits of the case, the federal district court declined to hold that Deters' constitutional rights had been violated and accordingly refused to issue a writ of habeas corpus. Deters appealed to this Court, asserting that the federal district court had properly decided the exhaustion issue. However, he urges this Court to reverse on the merits of his case.
Considered the most important of all writs, 8 the habeas corpus ad subjiciendum--the Great Writ--is established upon the goal of protecting individual liberty interests from governmental oppression. Fay, 372 U.S. at 400-01, 83 S.Ct. at 828. Its root principle is that neither men nor women should suffer illegal imprisonment. Indeed, although the definition of illegal imprisonment has changed since the inception of habeas corpus jurisprudence, the purpose of the writ has not changed since its birth in the sixteenth century.
Deploring the frequent violations of the "great Charter and auncient good Lawes and statutes of this realme," a member of the House of Commons introduced a bill in that legislative body in 1593 which provided That the provisions and prohibicions of the said great Charter and other Lawes in that behalfe made be dulie and inviolatelie observed. And that no person or persons be hereafter committed to prison but yt be by sufficient warrant and Authorities and by due course and proceedings in Lawe....
And that the Justice of anie the Queenes Majesties Courts of Recorde at the common Lawe maie awarde a writt of habeas Corpus for the deliverye of anye person so imprisoned. 9
By 1670 the habeas corpus doctrine had so thoroughly permeated the English courts that the Chief Justice of the Common pleas asserted that "[t]he writ of habeas corpus is now the most usual remedy by which a man is restored again to his liberty, if he have been against law deprived of it." Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 484-85, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 1833, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), overruled by Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976) (quoting Bushell's Case, Vaughan 135-36, 124 Eng.Rep. 1006, 1007).
Indeed, by the time American settlers achieved independence from England, the use of writs of habeas corpus to release illegally detained prisoners was deeply rooted in the American jural heritage. Id. 411 U.S. at 485, 93 S.Ct. at 1833. So important was the doctrine of habeas corpus that the founding fathers saw fit to ensure that the privilege of habeas corpus relief would never die: They placed the doctrine in the Constitution of the United States. 10 Indeed, the first congressional grant of jurisdiction provided federal courts authority to grant writs of habeas corpus, and by 1807, the United States Supreme Court recognized that such a writ was "a great constitutional privilege." Preiser, 411 U.S. at 485, 93 S.Ct. at 1833 (quoting Ex parte Bollman, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 75, 95, 2 L.Ed. 554 (1807)). 11
Although the habeas corpus doctrine has significant importance in the jurisprudence in this nation, the grant of such a writ is not without limitations. For well over a century, federal law has recognized that the ideals of federal-state comity demand that federal courts at least...
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