Halliday v. United States, Civ. A. No. 66-325.
| Decision Date | 11 January 1967 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 66-325. |
| Citation | 262 F. Supp. 325 |
| Parties | Russell T. HALLIDAY, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts |
Russell T. Halliday, pro se.
John A. Canavan, Jr., Nutter, McClennen & Fish, Boston, Mass., Paul F. Markham, U. S. Atty., William J. Koen, Asst. U. S. Atty., for respondent.
Petitioner, Russell T. Halliday, seeks in this proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 an order vacating sentences imposed on him by this court in 1954.
In 1954 petitioner, together with four others alleged to have participated with him in an escape from a Massachusetts penal institution was indicted for violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1201 (kidnaping), 1073 (flight to avoid confinement) and 2312 (transportation of a stolen motor vehicle). Pleas of not guilty were entered and the Massachusetts Voluntary Defenders Committee was assigned to provide counsel for Halliday and another defendant, Schwom. One George H. Lewald was assigned by that organization to represent these two defendants.
Petitioner and his co-defendants went on trial on these indictments on October 19, 1954. On October 22, 1954 after more than two full days of trial, petitioner changed his plea to guilty. Petitioner was thereafter sentenced to twenty years imprisonment on the charge under § 1201, and to five years imprisonment on each of the other violations. The two five year sentences were to run concurrently with each other, to begin after service of the twenty year sentence, which in turn was to begin upon petitioner's release from custody on the sentence he was then serving under order of the state court.
Petitioner contends that these sentences should be vacated because the court violated Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 11, in failing to determine before accepting petitioner's guilty plea that it was made voluntarily, and Rule 32 in failing to give petitioner personally an opportunity to address the court at the time of imposition of sentence.
Petitioner originally brought this petition pro se. Thereafter the court appointed counsel to represent him in these proceedings, and a hearing was held at which petitioner testified, as did Mr. Lewald, his counsel at the original trial.
The record of the original trial shows that at the time Halliday changed his plea, no specific interrogation was made as to the voluntariness of the plea. Rule 11 as it then read required no express interrogation. It did not require any formal inquiry or finding. The acceptance of the guilty plea implicitly included the necessary determination, provided, of course, that there was in fact a substantial basis for such a determination. In the circumstances here where a defendant represented by competent counsel, after hearing most of the government's evidence against him, elected to plead guilty while several of his codefendants chose to proceed with the trial clearly furnished a substantial basis for a determination that the plea was made voluntarily and with an understanding of the charges. Munich v. United States, 9 Cir., 337 F.2d 356, 359-360.
However, assuming that the court did not fully comply with Rule 11, this does not of itself require that the subsequent sentence be vacated. Petitioner contends it does, Heiden v. United States, 9 Cir., 353 F.2d 53, 54-55, but the rule in this Circuit appears to be otherwise. When there has been a violation of Rule 11, the question remains as to whether in fact the plea of guilty was made voluntarily and with an understanding of the charges, and the government has the burden of showing it was so made. But if it is shown that the plea was in fact made with the requisite voluntariness and understanding, the error, if error there was, in failing to make the determination required by Rule 11 was harmless and the plea should be allowed to stand. Domenica v. United States, 1 Cir., 292 F.2d 483.
Petitioner at the time of his trial was 26 years old. He had gone only as far as the fourth grade in school with some additional special schooling as a retarded child. This was not his first experience in a criminal court, since he was already serving a state court sentence for armed robbery.
He was represented throughout the trial by capable counsel. Counsel after being assigned to the case made a visit to Halliday in jail. After obtaining from him personal and background information he explained to him the charges in the indictments. (Copies of these had already been furnished to petitioner.) Counsel read the relevant sections of the statute and pointed out the maximum possible punishments, including the possible life imprisonment under § 1201. He further discussed with Halliday the factual background out of which these charges had arisen.
At some time before trial counsel concluded on the basis of what Halliday had told him and on whatever other facts he had learned about the case that Halliday had committed the acts charged and that there was no possibility of a successful...
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Halliday v. United States
...in the petition the defendant had expressly requested that it be heard by some other judge. Following a hearing the court ruled, 262 F.Supp. 325, that the circumstances had been sufficient to permit a proper finding under Rule 11 as it was then constituted.2 With this we cannot agree. The g......
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Watts v. United States
...2255 on grounds that the guilty plea was not knowingly or understandingly made is initially on the petitioner. See Halliday v. United States, 262 F.Supp. 325 (D.Mass. 1967), vacated on other grounds, 380 F.2d 270 (1st Cir. 1967), on remand, 274 F.Supp. 737 (D.Mass. 1967), aff'd, 394 F.2d 14......