Humes v. Robbins, 1068.
| Citation | 128 F. Supp. 586 |
| Decision Date | 18 February 1955 |
| Docket Number | No. 1068.,1068. |
| Parties | Raymond C. HUMES, petitioner, v. Allan L. ROBBINS, Warden, Maine State Prison. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Maine |
Silas Jacobson, Portland, for petitioner.
Alexander A. LaFleur, Atty. Gen., and Roger A. Putnam, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.
The time has now come to complete my opinion in Humes v. Robbins, Warden etc., Civil No. 1068 on the docket of the United States District Court for the District of Maine.
In my earlier opinion of May 25, 1954, D.C., 121 F.Supp. 552, it appears that Humes applied to Judge Clifford of the above court for release by writ of habeas corpus from the custody of the Warden of the Maine State Prison, that Judge Clifford disqualified himself and I was designated by Chief Judge Magruder to act in the matter in his place, and that pursuant to that designation I held a hearing on the merits in Portland last May but withheld final decision until Humes should present his federal claim, i. e. his claim for relief under the "Due Process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to an appropriate state court or state court justice. Promptly after my opinion came down Humes applied to a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine for a writ of habeas corpus grounded upon deprivation of federally guaranteed rights, but on the Warden's motion the justice dismissed the application for the reason that habeas corpus was not the remedy provided by the law of Maine for the correction of the irregularities alleged by Humes to have occurred at his trial. Humes then applied in vacation to a justice of the Superior Court of the State of Maine for a writ of error coram nobis, which the justice dismissed without prejudice on the ground that in vacation no member of the Superior Court had power to entertain the writ or issue a valid order on the merits thereof. Humes therefore waited until the next term of the Superior Court for the County of Kennebec wherein he had been convicted and then filed another application for writ of error coram nobis. The justice presiding at that term held a hearing on the merits and on January 29, 1955, denied Humes' petition on the ground that although there were irregularities in the summoning of some members of the jury which found Humes guilty, Humes had nevertheless had a fair and impartial trial and "his rights under the laws and Constitution of the State of Maine and under the Constitution of the United States" had not been violated.
Since Humes is a pauper, and as such is denied access to the highest court of his state, I shall assume as I have before (see my prior opinion in this case and Robbins v. Green, 218 F.2d 192, decided by the Court of Appeals for this circuit on December 21, 1954 and the cases cited therein) that Humes has exhausted his available state remedies. It therefore becomes necessary for me to dispose of Humes' application on the merits.
Humes is at present confined in the Maine State Prison serving a sentence imposed at the February Term, 1950, of the Superior Court of the State of Maine for the County of Kennebec after a jury had found him guilty of breaking and entering the railroad station at Winthrop, Maine, and larceny therefrom of a few hundred dollars. For some reason which the evidence does not disclose Humes' trial aroused a lot of local interest with the result that so many of the jurors regularly summoned for service were excused for cause that talesmen had to be called in to complete the jury. One of Humes' complaints has to do with the way these talesmen were selected.
I am not concerned with whether these talesmen were selected in accordance with the statutory law of Maine or whether they were not. That is a question for the Maine courts to decide. Under the Fourteenth Amendment the states are free to regulate their criminal procedure in accordance with their conceptions of policy and fairness unless in so doing violence is done to "some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental." Snyder v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1934, 291 U.S. 97, 105, 54 S.Ct. 330, 332, 78 L.Ed. 674 and cases cited; Brown v. State of Mississippi, 1936, 297 U.S. 278, 285, 56 S.Ct. 461, 80 L.Ed. 682. Thus the function of the federal courts under the Fourteenth Amendment is not to prescribe procedures for the selection of state juries in criminal cases. It is only to protect the integrity of the trial process employed in the states by striking down any device a state may set up whereby the judicial process is reduced to a sham and its courts are organized to convict. Fay v. People of State of New York, 1947, 332 U.S. 261, 294, 67 S.Ct. 1613, 91 L.Ed. 2043. I must look then to see whether the method used for selecting the talesmen who sat on Humes' jury offended recognized standards of fundamental fairness.
Humes claims that recognized canons of fairness were violated at his trial for the reason that the talesmen selected for service on the jury which found him guilty were picked in the first instance by the sheriff of Kennebec County who had a strong interest in obtaining a conviction since he not only bore a personal grudge against Humes, but was also the arresting officer and the officer who investigated the crime for which Humes was on trial and thus an important witness for the state. The suggestion is that the sheriff, in order to assure a conviction, scoured the county to find persons for service as talesmen who would be predisposed to bring in a verdict of guilty.
It is true that the sheriff was the officer who arrested Humes, the officer...
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Henson v. Wyrick, 79-1808
...have been appointed to select bystander jurors where marshal was personally involved in the investigation of defendant); Humes v. Robbins, 128 F.Supp. 586 (D.Me.1955) (dictum). The Supreme Court described the potential dangers of excessive discretion in officials who select jurors in Glasse......