Logan v. Auger
| Decision Date | 09 February 1977 |
| Docket Number | Civ. No. 76-219-2. |
| Citation | 428 F. Supp. 396 |
| Parties | John W. LOGAN, Petitioner, on behalf of Charles Homer McNabb, Relator, v. Calvin AUGER, Warden, Iowa State Men's Reformatory, Anamosa, Iowa, and Lynn Ford, Sheriff, Pottawattamie County, Iowa, Respondents. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Iowa |
John W. Logan, Council Bluffs, Iowa, for relator.
Richard C. Turner, Atty. Gen. of Iowa, and Raymond W. Sullins, Asst. Atty. Gen. of Iowa, Des Moines, Iowa, for respondents.
INTRODUCTION
The Court has before it a habeas corpus action in which Charles Homer McNabb challenges his five-year sentence as a non-accommodation deliverer of amphetamines pursuant to the Iowa Controlled Substances Act. Section 204.101 et seq., Code of Iowa (1975). In essence, McNabb's constitutional claim is that his right to due process was violated when, after pleading guilty to delivery of a controlled substance, he was forced at a post-conviction hearing to carry the burden of proof in establishing that the delivery was designed to accommodate another person without intent to profit. Resolution of this Fourteenth Amendment issue requires an understanding of the Iowa Controlled Substances Act and its accommodation hearing provisions; and, more importantly, it necessitates a discussion of recent Iowa case law which has realigned the burden of proof in those accommodation hearings. At the crux of the pending controversy is the Iowa Supreme Court's refusal to extend to McNabb the benefits of its recent ruling on the "accommodation defense."
Prior to adopting the Uniform Controlled Substances Act in 1971, the Iowa legislature expanded significantly the accommodation provision of the federal statute by making it applicable to the sale of controlled substances other than marijuana. See 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(4) (1970). Furthermore, unlike Congress, the state legislature provided that an accused, if he desired to mitigate his delivery conviction by showing no intent to profit, had to prove entitlement to the lesser accommodation penalty. Hence, upon its enactment, the Iowa statute was framed as follows: Section 204.401(1) prohibited delivery of a controlled substance, and a defendant convicted under that subsection could be sentenced as a felon up to ten years in prison.1 A defendant automatically received the felony penalty unless, pursuant to Section 204.410, he attempted at a post-conviction hearing to reduce his potential sentence to a misdemeanor penalty.2 If at such a hearing the defendant proved by "clear and convincing evidence" that the delivery had only been intended as an "accommodation" to another person, the trial court was to sentence him under Section 204.401(3), which provided for a misdemeanor penalty of up to one year in jail or a $1,000.00 fine or both.3 A defendant unable to prove "accommodation" was presumed to have intended to deliver for his own profit and would be sentenced under the felony penalty of Section 204.401(1). See Comment, The Iowa Controlled Substances Act and the Accommodation Defense, 50 Iowa L.Rev. 640 (1974).
The Iowa Controlled Substances Act, after its enactment, remained essentially unchanged until the Iowa Supreme Court's decision in State v. Monroe, 236 N.W.2d 24 (Iowa 1975). Overruling earlier decisions, the Monroe court determined that the State rather than defendants must carry the burden of proof in post-conviction hearings. Accordingly, the court shifted the burden of proof by excising the ensuing bracketed language from Section 204.410.
Any person who enters a plea of guilty to or is found guilty of a violation of section 204.401, subsections 1 or 2, may move for and the court shall grant a further hearing at which evidence may be presented by the person, and by the prosecution if it so desires, relating to the nature of the act or acts on the basis of which the person has been convicted. If the convicted person establishes by clear and convincing evidence that he delivered or possessed with intent to deliver a controlled substance only as an accommodation to another individual and not with intent to profit thereby nor to induce the recipient or intended recipient of the controlled or counterfeit substance to become addicted to or dependent upon the substance, the court shall sentence the person as if he had been convicted of a violation of section 204.401, subsection 3. Monroe, at 37.
The Iowa Supreme Court found this deletion and its own change in stance constitutionally "unescapable" under Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975). Monroe, 236 N.W.2d at 34. In Wilbur, the United States Supreme Court had upheld a defendant's argument that Fourteenth Amendment due process required the State of Maine, contrary to its statutes, to carry the burden of proof as to each and every element of a homicide charge.
However, in concluding its Monroe decision, the Iowa Supreme Court enunciated a limited retroactivity, thereby qualifying the shift in burden of proof at the accommodation hearings.
Relief flowing from the constitutional adjudication in this opinion is available only in (a) the case at bar, (b) cases now pending on appeal where error has been properly preserved at trial and (c) cases in which timely appeal is hereafter taken and in which error has been properly preserved. Monroe, at 39 (emphasis added).
This limited retroactivity is of particular importance to the instant action, for McNabb, whose case was among those "pending on appeal" where error had allegedly not been "properly preserved at trial," claims that such retroactivity resulted in the deprivation of his constitutional rights to due process and equal protection. But, before examining this issue, the Court briefly reviews the procedural history of McNabb's case. Review serves a twofold purpose: it discloses that the trial court did in fact place the burden of proof upon the defendant, as was required by pre-Monroe law; and it places this case within the determinative time-frame of the Wilbur and Monroe decisions.
Following a February 12, 1975 guilty plea to the delivery of amphetamines in violation of Section 204.401(1), McNabb, pursuant to Section 204.410, requested and received an accommodation hearing on April 4, 1975. Judge Harold L. Martin of Pottawattamie District Court subsequently ruled on April 8 that McNabb had failed at the hearing to prove an accommodation delivery by the necessary "clear and convincing evidence."
The Court now having considered all of the evidence finds that the defendant failed by clear and convincing evidence to establish that he delivered the controlled substance only as an accommodation to another individual and not with intent to profit thereby, and the claim of the defendant shall be denied.
After his post-trial motions were overruled on June 6, 1975, McNabb was sentenced on July 2, 1975, to a five-year term in the Men's Reformatory at Anamosa, Iowa and fined $500.00 plus costs. McNabb filed an appeal that same July 2, and an appellate brief was submitted to the Iowa Supreme Court on November 4, 1975.
On November 24, 1975, while McNabb's appeal was pending before it, the Iowa Supreme Court handed down the Monroe decision, a decision prompted by the United States Supreme Court's June 9, 1975 ruling in Wilbur, supra. In light of these decisions, McNabb, his appeal yet pending, filed a reply on January 22, 1976, arguing Fourteenth Amendment due process required that the State should have carried the burden of proof at his accommodation hearing. But on April 14, 1976, the Iowa Supreme Court cited the limited retroactivity of Monroe, refused to extend the accommodation statute as revised by Monroe to McNabb, and affirmed the trial court's non-accommodation finding.
Contrary to defendant's contention . . he does not come under our holding in Monroe. At no time did defendant raise before the trial court the challenge we considered in Monroe. Because the questions were not preserved, he is not free to challenge for the first time on appeal the burden of proof of accommodation . . .. State v. McNabb, 241 N.W.2d 32, 33-34 (Iowa 1976).
The Iowa Supreme Court denied McNabb's June 22, 1976 petition for rehearing.
The matter came before this Court by way of a petition for writ of habeas corpus, which was filed July 7, 1976 by John W. Logan on behalf of Charles Homer McNabb. Said petition seeks relief from the state trial court's determination that McNabb had failed to prove that he was an accommodation deliverer pursuant to Section 204.410. Since the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld the trial court and rejected McNabb's constitutional arguments, the parties' pleadings properly concur that state remedies have been exhausted. See Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U.S. 249, 250, 92 S.Ct. 407, 30 L.Ed.2d 418 (1971); Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 434-35, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963). The pleadings, which address primarily the validity of the limited retroactivity enunciated in Monroe, also raise no factual dispute. Therefore, the lack of factual dispute and extensive briefing having eliminated the need for a hearing, the Court proceeds herein to rule on the pending habeas petition.
McNabb fashions his habeas petition along the following argument:
It is Relator's McNabb's contention that the 1966 United States Supreme Court decision of O'Connor v. Ohio, 385 U.S. 92 87 S.Ct. 252, 17 L.Ed.2d 189 (1966) bars the State of Iowa from denying the Relator his due process right enunciated in Mullaney v. Wilbur sic, 421 U.S. 684 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975) and applied by the Iowa Supreme Court in State v. Monroe, 236 N.W.2d 24 (Iowa 1975).
The O'Connor case, which McNabb claims is analogous to his action, held that the Ohio Supreme Court violated constitutional due process in refusing on remand to extend Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 14...
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