Floyd v. United States

• Decision Date: 02 September 1966
• Docket Number: No. 22372.,22372.
• Parties: Franklin Delano FLOYD, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

365 F.2d 368 (1966)

Franklin Delano FLOYD, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 22372.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

September 2, 1966.

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Franklin Delano Floyd, pro se.

Sampson M. Culpepper, Asst. U. S. Atty., Macon, Ga., for appellee.

Before BROWN, WISDOM and THORNBERRY, Circuit Judges.

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge:

In a motion to vacate judgment and sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C.A. § 2255, appellant raised a serious question as to whether he was mentally competent at the time he entered a plea of guilty and was sentenced.¹ We hold that the District Court's denial of that motion without a hearing must be reversed on the ground that appellant has never obtained the judicial determination of this question to which he is entitled since the record does not show conclusively that he is entitled to no relief.

Appellant was arrested on March 15, 1963, for robbery of a national bank. On April 1, 1963, the United States Attorney moved for an order requiring a judicial determination of appellant's mental competency to stand trial pursuant to 18 U.S.C.A. § 4244.² In this motion it was alleged that appellant had escaped on March 14, 1963, the day before the alleged offense, from the Criminally Insane Ward of the Milledgeville State Hospital (Georgia) and that the United States Attorney believed that appellant might be mentally incompetent. The District Court granted the motion and ordered appellant delivered to the United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, Georgia, for a psychiatric examination.³ Appellant remained at the Atlanta Penitentiary from April 4 until June 28, 1963. On June 20, 1963, the prison psychiatrist filed his report with the District Court pursuant to § 4244. After noting that Appellant had been confined at the Milledgeville State Hospital from November 1, 1962, to March 14, 1963, where his diagnosis was "Schizophrenic Reaction, chronic, undifferentiated type" and where his "prognosis was considered poor" and his "behavior * * * unpredictable," the report concludes:

"He Appellant is impulsive and very easily frustrated. His judgment is extremely poor due to his faulty emotional development. He fails to appreciate the foolish, almost ludicrous quality of * * * his reasoning * * *.

* * * * *

"In summary we are dealing here with an individual who manifests what one might call an extremely weak ego structure. The inability to control impulses, accept frustration, delay gratification, and the inability to relate to others except in an attitude of dependency are the significant defects in his immature personality structure. Intellectually, he is able to understand the nature of the proceedings against him and should be able to assist counsel in his own defense. He does not manifest symptoms of psychotic disorganization at the present time although he was diagnosed as suffering from a schizophrenic reaction at the time of his confinement at Milledgeville.

"DIAGNOSTIC IMPRESSION: Passive dependent, emotionally unstable, personality."

Upon receipt of this report, the District Judge allowed Appellant, with appointed counsel present, to plead guilty and then imposed a sentence of 15 years.

About a year and a half after his conviction, Appellant filed his § 2255 motion claiming that he was mentally incompetent at the time he pleaded guilty. In support of this claim he alleged that sometime prior to his offense he had spent two years in a California mental institution and immediately prior to his offense he had been confined in the Milledgeville Hospital.⁴ And as to post-conviction indicia of incompetency, he set forth factually that as a consequence of his conviction he was imprisoned at the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a four-story building, and that because of his mental condition, he was then transferred to the U. S. Medical Center at Springfield, Missouri.⁵ Supposedly to obtain evidentiary support for these allegations, Appellant filed with his § 2255 motion a motion to produce his medical records from Springfield. This motion was denied by the District Court, and a similar motion was subsequently denied by this Court since our review ordinarily is that of the record before the District Judge.

The District Judge's order denying Appellant's § 2255 motion without a hearing sets out the following:

"On July 12, 1963, the defendant waived indictment and entered his plea of guilty. Before entry of the plea, Court-appointed counsel examined the psychiatric report, and he made no contention concerning the defendant\'s being mentally incompetent. Before imposing sentence, the Court had the benefit of its presentence report and gave consideration to the psychiatric report and also allowed counsel and defendant to make their statements. Defendant coherently discussed with the Court his background and present difficulties. He told the Court that he had been `properly represented\' by counsel."

The original record before this Court on this in forma pauperis appeal did not contain the transcript of Appellant's sentencing, but pursuant to this Circuit's Rule 18 (which adopts the procedure of F.R.Civ.P. 75(h), amended F.R.Civ.P. 75(d) (see 39 F.R.D. 138)), we have had this transcript certified to us by the District Court and have carefully examined it. In short, all this transcript reveals is that the District Court allowed Appellant to waive indictment and to plead guilty prior to any reference by Judge, Prosecutor, Defense Counsel, or Appellant to the psychiatric report and without any inquiry of Appellant or his attorney as to whether they desired to object to the report or raise the issue of incompetency.⁶ All that the record reflects is that the District Judge, on the basis of an ex parte psychiatric report, impliedly concluded that Appellant was competent to enter the guilty plea⁷ and took no further step toward a judicial determination of that.

On this record, it is clear that Appellant has never, simply never, obtained a hearing on his § 2255 contention that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial, i.e., waive indictment and plead guilty. Indeed, the Government apparently concedes as much. Instead, it relies on cases such as Caster v. United States, 5 Cir., 1963, 319 F.2d 850, cert. den., 1964, 376 U.S. 953, 84 S.Ct. 972, 11 L.Ed.2d 973, Hereden v. United States, 10 Cir., 1961, 286 F.2d 526, and Coffman v. United States, 10 Cir., 1961, 290 F.2d 212, for the proposition that prior to trial of the criminal case there is no necessity for a hearing and findings on competency to stand trial by the Trial Court unless the § 4244 psychiatric report "indicates a state of present insanity."⁸ See note 2, supra. We do not take issue with this proposition.⁹ But it is of little relevance at this stage of the proceedings, for this is not an appeal from the conviction alleging a failure to comply with the statutory machinery of § 4244 but an appeal from the denial of a § 2255 motion alleging that Appellant was unconstitutionally put to trial while mentally incompetent.¹⁰ In such a collateral proceeding under § 2255 mere trial errors, such as a failure to comply with § 4244, cannot be corrected. See Van De Bogart v. United States, 5 Cir., 1962, 305 F.2d 583, 587; cf. Delegal v. United States, 5 Cir., 1966, 363 F.2d 433, and cases there cited. But at the same time, we have often emphasized that mere compliance with the procedures afforded by §§ 4244, 4245, or 4208(b) does not carry the day in a § 2255 proceeding. Gregori v. United States, supra; Van De Bogart v. United States, supra; Johnson v. United States, supra. As we said in Van De Bogart:

"* * * It may seldom any longer be true that the answer may be found in the simple terms of compliance or non-compliance with a specific statute. That certainly is true when the attack on mental competency to stand trial is asserted by post-conviction remedies of a collateral kind such as * * § 2255. * * * A District Judge may not satisfy the duty to provide a judicial ascertainment of the fact of competency in a proper case * * * merely because some statutory mechanisms relating to mentally incompetent defendants is utilized or ignored * * *. What he does, just as what he does not do, must be scrutinized in terms of the real substance of things.

* * * * *

In assaying the actions of the District Judge, it is no longer decisive whether this was a misuse of the statutory mechanism. * * * The question remains, however, whether, conceding a propriety of its use in the first instance, did the information generated by, and reflected in, that psychiatric Report require any new or further action?"

305 F.2d at 584, 587.

Thus, we may here concede that the trial Judge was not compelled by the information generated by the § 4244 report to hold a hearing on Appellant's competency to stand trial prior to acceptance of his guilty plea and sentencing.¹¹ Rather we now concentrate our attention of the unquestioned fact that in his subsequent § 2255 motion Appellant, by detailed factual reference to his escape from a mental institution the day before he committed the offense and to his post-conviction confinement at Springfield for psychiatric treatment, raised a serious factual question about his competence to stand trial but that nevertheless this § 2255 motion was denied without a hearing on this question. There is no longer any doubt about the availability of § 2255 to raise this question. Bishop v. United States, supra; Sanders v. United States, supra; Gregori v. United States, supra; Van De Bogart v. United States, supra; Brown v. United States, 5 Cir., 1959, 267 F.2d 42; Alexander v. United States, 5 Cir., 1961, 290 F.2d 252, cert. denied, 1962, 368 U.S. 891, 82 S.Ct. 144, 7 L.Ed. 2d 89. Hughes v. United States, 5 Cir., 1962, 303 F.2d 776.¹² And likewise, it can no longer be contended, as the Government...