Mayeux v. Belt, Civ. A. No. 89-0551-A.
| Decision Date | 12 February 1990 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 89-0551-A. |
| Parties | John Harold MAYEUX v. Sheriff William O. BELT, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Louisiana |
Dan B. McKay, Jr., Bunkie, La., for petitioner John Harold Mayeux.
J. Edward Knoll, Dist. Atty., Marksville, La., for respondent Sheriff William O. Belt.
RULING
No opposition to the report and recommendation of the magistrate having been filed, this court adopts these recommendations as its own.
IT IS ORDERED that the application of John Harold Mayeux for a writ of habeas corpus is GRANTED. Accordingly, the State of Louisiana and any of its political subdivisions, including William O. Belt, Sheriff of Avoyelles Parish, State of Louisiana, are ordered to liberate, free and surrender the petitioner, John Harold Mayeux, from custody immediately.
JOHN F. SIMON, United States Magistrate.
On March 9, 1989, John Harold Mayeux (hereinafter "Mayeux") filed the above entitled and numbered petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. On October 17, 1989, Judge F.A. Little, Jr., referred this case to the undersigned Magistrate for a review, report and recommendation.
In July of 1984, Mayeux was charged with two counts of aggravated battery in violation of La.Rev.Stat. 14:34.1 At trial, the judge incorrectly instructed the jury that a verdict of guilty of attempted aggravated battery was responsive to the crime with which Mayeux was charged, and the jury returned a verdict of "guilty of attempted aggravated battery" on both counts.2 The State failed to object to the error.3
Mayeux appealed his conviction to the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeal (hereinafter "Third Circuit"), which reversed his conviction and sentence, rendered a judgment of acquittal and ordered that Mayeux be discharged.4
The State sought review of the judgment of acquittal in the Louisiana Supreme Court, which reversed the judgment of the Third Circuit and remanded the case for a new trial.5
In a retrial on May 13, 1987, in the Twelfth Judicial District Court, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, a jury found Mayeux guilty on one count of aggravated battery in violation of La.R.S. 14:34 and not guilty on the other count of aggravated battery, and Mayeux was sentenced to serve 18 months at hard labor. On appeal, the Third Circuit affirmed Mayeux's conviction and sentence,6 and the Supreme Court of Louisiana denied Mayeux's application for writ of certiorari and/or review without comment.7
On October 6, 1988, Mayeux filed his first petition for habeas corpus relief in this Court, which this Court dismissed without prejudice on March 6, 1989, as a mixed petition containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims.
Mayeux then filed the above entitled and numbered petition for habeas corpus relief in which he raised three claims for relief:
The State contends that Mayeux has failed to exhaust his state remedies by not having filed an application for post-conviction relief in the state district court, and that his petition therefore should be dismissed (Docket Item No. 9, p. 3).
A Louisiana habeas petitioner must generally provide the courts of Louisiana with a fair opportunity in a procedurally proper manner to pass upon his claims prior to seeking federal habeas relief. Dupuy v. Butler, 837 F.2d 699, 702 (5th Cir.1988).
The grounds raised in Mayeux's current petition to this Court are three of the grounds on which he appealed his conviction directly to the Louisiana Third Circuit and applied for a writ of certiorari and/or review to the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Therefore, all Louisiana Courts before which these claims have been presented have considered the three issues presented to this Court, which exhausted his state remedies as to those claims.
This Court is able to resolve the merits of this habeas corpus petition without the necessity of an evidentiary hearing because there is no genuine issue of material fact that is relevant to the claims of the petitioner and the State court records provide the required and adequate factual basis necessary to the resolution of the habeas corpus petition. Passman v. Blackburn, 797 F.2d 1335, 1340 (5th Cir.1986); Easter v. Estelle, 609 F.2d 756, 761 (5th Cir.1981); Habeas Corpus Rule 8(a).
Mayeux alleges that his conviction on one count of aggravated battery at his second trial resulted from a violation of his Fifth Amendment protection against double jeopardy, and alternatively claims that his conviction at his second trial is invalid because collateral estoppel prohibited relitigation of the issue, decided at the first trial, of whether Mayeux was guilty of aggravated battery.
Mayeux cites the case of Adams v. Murphy, 653 F.2d 224 (5th Cir.1981) as being almost identical to the case at bar in its facts and principles of law. In Adams, the habeas corpus petitioner had been tried in a Florida State Court for testifying falsely to a Florida Grand Jury. At the close of evidence in the state trial, the defense requested a charge on "attempted perjury" as a lesser included offense, and the trial court charged the jury both on perjury and "attempted perjury", even though there was no such offense as attempted perjury under Florida law. The jury returned a verdict of "guilty of the lesser included offense of attempted perjury."
Adams unsuccessfully challenged his conviction in Florida state courts and then sought habeas relief in the United States District Court, which concluded that no such offense as attempted perjury existed under Florida law and granted the writ on due process grounds. The state appealed to the U.S. Fifth Circuit, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed, stating that "Nowhere in this country can any man be condemned for a non-existent crime."
Then, in dicta, the Fifth Circuit stated the following:
653 F.2d at 225.
Even though the above quoted statement is dicta in the Adams case, it appears, nonetheless, to be correct.
The U.S. Supreme Court long ago established that the Fifth Amendment prohibition of double jeopardy barred the retrial of a defendant for a crime of which he was previously acquitted. United States v. Ball, 163 U.S. 662, 16 S.Ct. 1192, 41 L.Ed. 300 (1896); Kepner v. United States, 195 U.S. 100, 24 S.Ct. 797, 49 L.Ed. 114 (1904). In Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the double jeopardy provision of the Fifth Amendment should be applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
In the case at bar, the State argues that because the jury verdict in Mayeux's first trial purported to convict Mayeux of a crime that did not exist, the jury's verdict was null and could not constitute an acquittal of the crime of aggravated battery.
Undoubtedly the jury's verdict was null with regard to the purported crime of "attempted aggravated battery", and that verdict was properly set aside by the appellate courts. However, by returning a verdict of "guilty of attempted aggravated battery", the jury implicitly acquitted Mayeux of the crime of "aggravated battery."
In his charge to the jury, the State court judge stated the following:
"The defendant is charged with Aggravated Battery. In order to convict the defendant of the offense charged, you must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the state proved every element of the offense charged. If you are not convinced that the defendant is guilty of the offense charged, you may find the defendant guilty of a lesser offense if you are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of a lesser offense.
The following offenses are responsive lesser offenses:
The following verdicts may be returned:
Record from La.Sup.Ct., Vol. III, pp. 77 & 78.
When the jury's verdict was returned, the clerk read the following:
Record from La.Sup.Ct., Vol. III, p. 82.
In the case of Price v. Georgia, 398 U.S. 323, 327-329, 90 S.Ct. 1757, 1760, 1761, 26 L.Ed.2d 300, the U.S. Supreme Court analyzed "implicit acquittal" as it had previously been set out in Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 78 S.Ct. 221, 2 L.Ed.2d 199 (1957). In Green, the court had reversed a first degree murder conviction that had been obtained at the retrial of a defendant who had been convicted at his first trial for the lesser included offense of second degree murder, which first conviction had...
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