Donnell v. Nash

• Decision Date: 01 November 1963
• Docket Number: No. 17476.,17476.
• Citation: 323 F.2d 850
• Parties: William B. DONNELL, Petitioner, v. E. V. NASH, Warden, Missouri State Penitentiary, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

323 F.2d 850 (1963)

William B. DONNELL, Petitioner, v. E. V. NASH, Warden, Missouri State Penitentiary, Respondent.

No. 17476.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

October 22, 1963.

Rehearing Denied November 1, 1963.

William B. Donnell, pro se.

Thomas F. Eagleton, Atty. Gen., of Missouri, Jefferson City, Mo., for respondent.

Before JOHNSEN, Chief Judge, and MATTHES, Circuit Judge.

PER CURIAM.

Concepts and standards were announced in Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837, and Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed. 2d 770, which neither the state courts nor the lower federal courts had previously been applying in dealing with collateral attacks on state convictions.

Disposition of claims of constitutional violation, which have the capacity to render a state conviction void, cannot now, of course, be properly effected, either by a state court or by a lower federal court, except upon the basis of these announced concepts and standards.

Further, dispositions heretofore made of such claims by the federal courts, in which these concepts and standards have not been applied, are not subject to the operation of the escape provision of 28 U.S.C.A. § 2244 (and habeas corpus principle generally) that a court need not entertain subsequent applications by a prisoner for a writ of habeas corpus upon the same grounds as have previously been presented to and determined by it.

Equally, on the inability of such previous dispositions by state courts to have any determinative significance, for want of application of the concepts and standards in the Noia and Townsend decisions, it seems to us that the federal courts are entitled and called upon to deal realistically with the special situation which has now come to confront both court systems, in its relation to 28 U.S.C.A. § 2254 (exhaustion of state remedies) and the object of the statute to give the state courts "the opportunity to pass upon and correct errors of federal law in the state prisoner's conviction" (372 U.S. at 438, 83 S. Ct. at 848, 9 L.Ed.2d 837).

In other words, we believe that, as a matter of appropriate federal-state relationship and fitting judicial deference in this special situation, the federal courts ordinarily, before entertaining an application by a state prisoner for federal habeas corpus relief, should require him to again seek consideration and determination of his claims of constitutional violation under the state's collateral-attack remedy,...