Jones v. Haskins, 71-1714.
| Decision Date | 20 April 1972 |
| Docket Number | No. 71-1714.,71-1714. |
| Parties | Clyde E. JONES, Petitioner-Appellant, v. E. B. HASKINS, Supt., London Correctional Institute, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Ronald A. Lipez, Cincinnati, Ohio (Court appointed), for petitioner-appellant.
Leo J. Conway, Columbus, Ohio, for respondent-appellee; William J. Brown, Atty. Gen., Leo J. Conway, Asst. Atty. Gen., Columbus, Ohio, on brief.
Before EDWARDS, PECK and KENT, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from denial of a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Petitioner-appellant had previously been convicted after a state court jury trial on a charge of forceable rape of a 13-year-old girl and sentenced to a term of five to twenty years. He complains that the jury was allowed to hear inadmissible and prejudicial hearsay and that the jury was also allowed to hear the prosecutor ask whether he had previously been indicted on a charge of assault with intent to rape. It is conceded he was not convicted on the attempted rape charge, although he pled guilty to a reduced charge of malicious entry.
The District Judge who heard this petition on the state court record ruled that although there were errors in the state court trial, none of them rose to the level of federal constitutional violations. Appellant responds by arguing that the totality of error served to deprive appellant of due process, as required by the Fourteenth Amendment.
This contention has required the reading of the entire transcript of the trial. Frequently a rape conviction poses the problem of determining which of two opposing witnesses is telling the truth. In such a case the jury verdict might easily be affected by errors of the nature of those complained of here, and hence, a due process question might be posed.
In this record, however, we find medical evidence of a torn hymen on this 13-year-old girl (plus other circumstances confirming an assault) when she was examined immediately after reporting the event to her mother. A state police officer also testified to taking her back immediately to the scene and finding a button torn from her coat and two other items which she said her assailant had employed. While we recognize that appellant took the stand and denied the crime in toto and presented several alibi witnesses that he was in a particular bar at the time the assault occurred, we can only characterize...
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Ralls v. Manson
...one-- whether the petitioner's right to a fair trial as guaranteed by the dur process clause was violated. See, e.g., Jones v. Haskins, 459 F.2d 479 (6th Cir. 1972). Here the record does not show that the admission of the fingerpring card deprived Ralls of due process. There was a legitimat......