Geagan v. Gavin

• Decision Date: 27 January 1960
• Docket Number: Civil No. 60-4.
• Citation: 181 F. Supp. 466
• Parties: Michael V. GEAGAN et al. v. John A. GAVIN, Superintendent, Massachusetts Correctional Institution.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

181 F. Supp. 466

Michael V. GEAGAN et al. v. John A. GAVIN, Superintendent, Massachusetts Correctional Institution.

Civil No. 60-4.

United States District Court D. Massachusetts.

January 27, 1960.

Paul T. Smith and Manuel Katz, Boston, Mass., for McGinnis, Costa & Pino.

Lawrence O'Donnell, Dorchester, Mass., for Richardson, Faherty & Geagan.

Robert DeGiacomo, Boston, Mass., for Maffie.

Henry Sontag, Boston, Mass., for Baker.

John F. McAuliffe and George F. Hurley, Sp. Asst. Attys. Gen., Boston, Mass., for defendant.

WYZANSKI, District Judge.

January 18, 1960 eight persons, now serving sentences in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Walpole, filed in this Court a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

The petition states that on October 6, 1956 the eight "were found guilty in the Superior Court for Suffolk County, Massachusetts, of various offenses arising out of the $1,219,000 so-called Brinks robbery". It recites the sentences imposed, and the commitments to Walpole. Then petitioners claim that the sentences are "in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as hereinafter set forth."

The gist of the alleged violation of the Fourteenth Amendment may fairly be summarized as follows: first, that the publicity issued or stimulated by federal and state enforcement officials and other massive, sustained publicity prejudiced the grand jury; second, that the publicity issued or stimulated by such officials made it impossible for petitioners to obtain a fair trial at any time during the period within which they might have obtained a constitutionally speedy trial; third, that the publicity issued or stimulated by such officials and other massive, sustained publicity prejudiced the petit jury; and fourth, that the trial judge denied the petitioners the opportunity to offer evidence to sustain the foregoing allegations.

Then the petition recites that petitioners have exhausted their remedies available in the courts of Massachusetts by appealing from the Superior Court to the Supreme Judicial Court, which on July 1, 1959 affirmed the judgment of the Superior Court in accordance with an opinion entitled Commonwealth v. Geagan, Mass., 159 N.E.2d 870; and by seasonably petitioning the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, which petition was on November 16, 1959 denied by that court. 361 U.S. 895, 80 S.Ct. 200, 4 L.Ed.2d 152.

The petition ends with the usual prayers.

This Court forthwith issued to the respondent an order to show cause, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2243.

January 21 respondent filed his return. January 25 petitioners filed a traverse. On the same day this Court held a hearing for the express purpose of determining whether a plenary hearing was necessary and if not whether the petition should be granted or denied.

The first question is whether this Court has jurisdiction to entertain this petition. A lower court must answer with due deference to the interpretation which Brown v. Allen, 1953, 344 U.S. 443, 73 S.Ct. 397, 97 L.Ed. 469 and Irvin v. Dowd, 1959, 359 U.S. 394, 79 S.Ct. 825, 3 L.Ed.2d 900 have given to 28 U.S.C. § 2241(c) (3). But see Note by Henry M. Hart, 73 Harv.L.Rev. 84, 103-121 (1959).

In the Act of February 5, 1867, 14 Stat. 385, now incorporated in 28 U.S.C. § 2241(c) (3), Congress conferred upon United States District Judges authority to entertain a petition for habeas corpus from a state prisoner "in custody in violation of the Constitution * * * of the United States." In the light of the existing case law, the 1867 Congress should have foreseen and undoubtedly did foresee that this would authorize a United States District Judge to make a twofold inquiry whether there was a state court judgment which purported to authorize the custody and whether the state court which entered that judgment had jurisdictional competence, that is "authority to make decisions" of the kind involved in the judgment. See Hart & Wechsler, The Federal Courts and The Federal System, (1953), p. 1238 note 48.

But Congress did not use language, and there was nothing in the avowed purpose or legislative history of the 1867 statute, which compelled the Supreme Court of the United States to interpret the statute as conferring upon United States District Judges authority to inquire whether a state court judgment by a jurisdictionally competent court rested upon any procedural step or substantive ruling involving a violation of the United States Constitution.

Brown v. Allen, however, took the long step of concluding that the 1867 statute should be given such a broad construction that the United States District Judges should have jurisdiction to make this further inquiry in a case where the state prisoner had first exhausted all his remedies in the state courts and had unsuccessfully sought review of the state court determination by a petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Undoubtedly there were plausible reasons for the doctrine of Brown v. Allen. The Supreme Court recognized that if procedural and substantive federal constitutional questions with respect to state cases could be reviewed only upon the often skimpy state records and often uninformative petitions for certiorari of state court records filed in the Supreme Court of the United States those federal constitutional questions would frequently receive inadequate attention. See Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. at pages 494-495, 73 S.Ct. at page 440. To expand the role of federal district judges in habeas corpus cases made it possible for the Supreme Court to treat such district judges virtually as its delegates or masters to make such findings and rulings as were necessary, all subject to ultimate review by federal courts of appeal and the Supreme Court of the United States. Perhaps the Supreme Court also felt that despite the state court judges' oath to support the United States Constitution, their awareness of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, art. 6, cl. 2, and their generally high professional ability, state court judges were not so likely as inferior federal judges to uncover all the facts, summarize them sympathetically to the federal claim, and analyze them consistently with developing trends in the Supreme Court of the United States. In some ways this last consideration resembles the policy which led Congress to authorize the removal to the federal courts of certain federal constitutional cases begun in the state courts. Cf. 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b) and 28 U.S.C. § 1443.

Yet we must recognize that the Brown v. Allen expansion of habeas corpus jurisdiction involves risks which should not be increased. To give the state prisoner the right to file in the United States District Court a petition for habeas corpus to test any alleged procedural or substantive federal constitutional error in the course of the state trial implies that in addition to having his federal constitutional claim considered by a state trial court, a state appellate court, and justices of the Supreme Court of the United States scrutinizing his petition for certiorari of the state court record, he may have that claim considered by a United States District Court, a United States Court of Appeals, and justices of the Supreme Court of the United States scrutinizing his petition for certiorari of the federal appellate court record. Also, when a procedural or substantive constitutional question may be raised by a petition for habeas corpus, the question may be raised long after the petitioner has been sentenced, and thus may deliver from jail persons against whom the requisite evidence for a second trial is no longer available. Perhaps up to now the expansion of the writ of habeas corpus has not caused an unbearable delay in criminal justice, an intolerable burden upon the judicial system, or a widespread jail delivery. But if the Supreme Court of the United States continues to expand the concept of due process of law as applied to state criminal proceedings the consequences may be serious. What is involved is not merely an increase in the substantive part which federal law plays in local criminal jurisprudence but also an increase in the procedural role which individual federal district judges play in local criminal law enforcement.

The reason that this Court has restated the considerations favoring and opposing the doctrine of Brown v. Allen is to put in its appropriate setting the present case in which, as will later appear, petitioners are relying upon alleged federal constitutional claims some of which have not the slightest support in cases of the Supreme Court of the United States, and none of which is firmly supported by a final disposition by that court.

Accepting Brown v. Allen and Irvin v. Dowd as binding authorities, this Court now turns to their application in this case. Those authorities make it clear that to have his petition entertained a state prisoner must show that he has a federal constitutional claim and he must further show that he has exhausted available state court remedies.

In the instant case Geagan and the other petitioners have clearly exhausted their state court remedies. They seasonably prosecuted an appeal to the highest state tribunal, as required by Daniels v. Allen, decided sub nom. Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 73 S.Ct. 397, 97 L.Ed. 469, and seasonably filed in the Supreme Court of the United States a petition for certiorari seeking review of the state court judgment, as required by Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 73 S.Ct. 397, 97 L.Ed. 469 and Darr v. Burford, 339 U.S. 200, 70 S.Ct. 587, 94 L.Ed. 761.

Also petitioners allege colorable federal constitutional claims in two parts of their petition—sections VIII and IX. Section VIII alleges that Massachusetts violated petitioners' federal constitutional right to a fair and impartial trial because state and federal enforcement officers acting collectively stimulated massive publicity which was...