Littles v. DeFrancis

• Decision Date: 08 July 1981
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 80-36-ATH.
• Parties: Charles A. LITTLES, Sr., Petitioner, v. Paul DeFRANCIS, Warden, Middle Georgia Correctional Institution, Men's Unit, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Georgia

517 F. Supp. 1137

Charles A. LITTLES, Sr., Petitioner, v. Paul DeFRANCIS, Warden, Middle Georgia Correctional Institution, Men's Unit, Respondent.

Civ. A. No. 80-36-ATH.

United States District Court, M. D. Georgia, Athens Division.

July 8, 1981.

Phillip S. McKinney, Atlanta, Ga., for petitioner.

Mary Beth Westmoreland, Atlanta, Ga., for respondent.

OWENS, Chief Judge:

Congress, composed of our publicly elected Senators and Representatives acting pursuant to the authority given them in the Constitution of the United States, has created our system of United States District Courts and by statutory provisions or laws given these courts the responsibility and duty to hear and decide particular criminal and civil matters. Among those congressionally enacted statutory provisions or laws is the following found in 28 U.S.C. § 2254:

"(a) The Supreme Court, a Justice thereof, a circuit judge, or a district court shall entertain an application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court only on the ground that he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States." (emphasis added).

The term "writ of habeas corpus" describes the legal procedure which gives to a person restrained of his liberty — imprisoned — an immediate court hearing so that the legality of his detention may be inquired into and determined by a court. As applied to the detention or imprisonment of persons by the states of these United States it is, in the words of the Supreme Court of the United States, "the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action." Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290, 89 S.Ct. 1082, 1086, 22 L.Ed.2d 281, 286 (1969).

Legal encyclopedias remind us that:

"the origin of the writ of habeas corpus is lost in antiquity. After the grant of Magna Charta, it gradually superseded other writs which had been used to enforce the right of personal liberty. In the reign of Henry VII its scope was broadened to apply in cases of restraint of a subject by the crown in addition to cases of restraint of a subject by another subject, to which its use had been previously limited. Abuses and evasions of the remedy led to legislation culminating in the Habeas Corpus Act of 31 Car. II by virtue of which the writ of habeas corpus became `the most celebrated writ in the English law.' ... It is generally considered that the American colonists brought with them to this country the remedy by habeas corpus as it existed in England as part of the common law. When the American colonies renounced their allegiance to the British crown, and became independent states, the right of the citizens to his remedy by habeas corpus in case of unlawful imprisonment was recognized and preserved by constitutional provisions and by various statutes modeled on the English Habeas Corpus Act of 31 Car. II. While the provision of the Constitution of the United States, that the privilege of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety might require it, does not purport to convey power or jurisdiction to the judiciary, but is merely in restraint of executive and legislative power ... it preserves the writ, and it has been stated that the writ is secured by the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution. So it has been held that the right to petition the courts of the United States is a constitutional right...." 39 C.J.S. Habeas Corpus §§ 2, 3, 4 pp. 460-464.

The already quoted congressionally enacted statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2254, represents Congress' judgment as to the procedure by which this constitutionally secured writ is made available to all detained persons in the courts of these United States.

Pursuant to said congressionally enacted statute or law petitioner Charles Littles filed his habeas corpus petition in this United States District Court¹ alleging that in the course of being tried, convicted, and sentenced by the Superior Court of Greene County, Georgia, to life imprisonment for murder he was deprived of his rights as guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States. In particular he says the evidence heard by the jury which found him guilty of murder does not measure up to the proof beyond a reasonable doubt that is required by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States for him to be convicted of and sentenced for murder.

"The judicial Power of the United States having been vested in one supreme court ..." by Article III of the Constitution of the United States, it is the Supreme Court of the United States which construes and interprets the provisions of our Constitution. Its constructions and interpretations are the last, final word on the meaning of our Constitution; its final words are binding on all, including but not limited to, the courts of the fifty states of these United States and the United States District Courts and Courts of Appeals. Pursuant to this concept petitioner relies upon the Supreme Court's construction and interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as found in the case of Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). There the Supreme Court of the United States stated:

"It is axiomatic that a conviction upon a charge not made or upon a charge not tried constitutes a denial of due process... These standards no more than reflect a broader premise that has never been doubted in our constitutional system: that a person cannot incur the loss of liberty for an offense without notice and a meaningful opportunity to defend... A meaningful opportunity to defend, if not the right to a trial itself, presumes as well that a total want of evidence to support a charge will conclude the case in favor of the accused. Accordingly, we held in the Thompson case that a conviction based upon a record wholly devoid of any relevant evidence of a crucial element of the offense charged is constitutionally inform (sic)... The `no evidence' doctrine of Thompson v. Louisville thus secures to an accused the most elemental of due process rights: freedom from a wholly arbitrary deprivation of liberty.

"The Court in Thompson v. Louisville, explicitly stated that the due process right at issue did not concern a question of evidentiary `sufficiency.' 362 U.S., at 199, 80 S.Ct. 624 at 625, 4 L.Ed.2d 654, 80 A.L.R.2d 1355. The right established in In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 however, clearly stands on a different footing. Winship involved an adjudication of juvenile delinquency made by a judge under a state statute providing that the prosecution must prove the conduct charged as delinquent—which in Winship would have been a criminal offense if engaged in by an adult — by a preponderance of the evidence. Applying that standard, the judge was satisfied that the juvenile was `guilty,' but he noted that the result might well have been different under a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In short, the record in Winship was not totally devoid of evidence of guilt.

"The constitutional problem addressed in Winship was thus distinct from the stark problem of arbitrariness presented in Thompson v. Louisville. In Winship, the Court held for the first time that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a defendant in a criminal case against conviction `except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.' 397 U.S. at 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068 at 1072, 25 L.Ed.2d 368, 51 Ohio Ops 2d 323. In so holding, the Court emphasized that proof beyond a reasonable doubt has traditionally been regarded as the decisive difference between criminal culpability and civil liability. Id., at 358-362, 90 S.Ct. 1068 at 1071, 25 L.Ed.2d 368, 51 Ohio Ops 2d 323... The standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, said the Court, `plays a vital role in the American scheme of criminal procedure,' because it operates to give `concrete substance' to the presumption of innocence, to ensure against unjust convictions, and to reduce the risk of factual error in a criminal proceeding. 397 U.S. 363, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368, 51 Ohio Ops 2d 323. At the same time, by impressing upon the factfinder the need to reach a subjective state of near certitude of the guilt of the accused, the standard symbolizes the significance that our society attaches to the criminal sanction and thus to liberty itself. Id., at 372, 90 S.Ct. 1068 at 1076, 25 L.Ed.2d 368, 51 Ohio Ops 2d 323 (Harlan, J., concurring).

"The constitutional standard recognized in the Winship case was expressly phrased as one that protects an accused against a conviction except on `proof beyond a reasonable doubt....' In subsequent cases discussing the reasonable-doubt standard, we have never departed from this definition of the rule or from the Winship understanding of the central purposes it serves... In short, Winship presupposes as an essential of the due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment that no person shall be made to suffer the onus of a criminal conviction except upon sufficient proof—defined as evidence necessary to convince a trier of fact beyond a reasonable doubt of the existence of every element of the offense.

"Although several of our cases have intimated that the factfinder's application of the reasonable-doubt standard to the evidence may present a federal question when a state conviction is challenged ... the Federal Courts of Appeals have generally assumed that so long as the reasonable-doubt instruction has been given at trial, the no-evidence doctrine of Thompson v. Louisville remains the appropriate guide for a federal habeas corpus court to apply in assessing a state prisoner's challenge to his conviction as founded upon insufficient evidence...

"The Winship doctrine requires more than

...