Patton v. State of North Carolina, Civ. No. 2397.
Citation | 256 F. Supp. 225 |
Decision Date | 20 July 1966 |
Docket Number | Civ. No. 2397. |
Court | United States District Courts. 4th Circuit. Western District of North Carolina |
Parties | Eddie W. PATTON, Petitioner, v. STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, Respondent. |
William W. Van Alstyne, Durham, N. C., for petitioner.
Wade Bruton, Atty. Gen. of North Carolina, and Theodore C. Brown, Jr., Staff Atty., Raleigh, N. C., for respondent.
By establishing that he was unconstitutionally imprisoned, Eddie Patton won a new trial and, ironically, lost more of his liberty.
Patton was arrested on June 10, 1960, and has been imprisoned ever since. For lack of money to post bond, he stayed in jail in Bladen County from June 10, 1960, until his trial on October 26, 1960, when, without the assistance of counsel, he tendered a plea of nolo contendere to the felony of armed robbery. He was sentenced to serve a term of twenty years imprisonment in the State's prison and did not appeal.
Then came Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963). In April of 1964 Patton filed in the Bladen County Superior Court an application for a post-conviction hearing. His petition was denied, but, subsequently, the Supreme Court of North Carolina, in an order dated September 2, 1964, ordered a plenary hearing for Patton. On November 17, 1964, the Superior Court of Bladen County found as a fact that Eddie Patton, at the October 1960 term, had requested the court to appoint counsel to represent him, and that the court had denied such request, and that at the time of the request Patton was an indigent person unable to employ counsel, and that he had not waived his right to counsel. As required by Gideon, the court concluded that Eddie Patton had been denied his constitutional rights "and that his sentence and the term for which he is now serving confinement is unlawful and should be set aside and declared null and void, and the said Eddie Walter Patton awarded a new trial." The North Carolina Prison Department surrendered Patton to the Sheriff of Bladen County. Bond was set in the amount of $12,000.00, and, for lack of it, Patton was confined in the Bladen County jail from about November 17, 1964, until about February 17, 1965, awaiting his second trial. Represented this time by counsel, he entered a plea of not guilty, but was convicted.
In February 1965, Patton received the same, identical sentence, i. e., twenty years imprisonment, that he had received in October of 1960. The sentence and the trial judge's rationale of it appears in the transcript as follows:
If Patton had not sought a new trial, he would have become eligible for parole in October 1965.1 Under the second sentence, he will become eligible for parole in February 1970, i. e., some four years and four months after the original eligibility date. If ineligibility for parole be assumed and earned time factors ignored, he would have completed the first sentence in October 1980; whereas, on the same assumptions, he will complete the second sentence in February 1985.
As a result of having sought and obtained a new trial, Eddie Patton is worse off than he was before. It matters not to him whether what happened be verbalized as increased punishment or denial of credit for time served. Whether unjust or not, such a result is said to be lawful. The syllogism runs somewhat as follows:
To the foregoing, Eddie Patton interposes the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and insists that:
May this court properly consider these contentions?
Patton's petition for writ of habeas corpus was filed in this court on the 26th day of July, 1965, on a simple form used for processing the numerous applications received. Without benefit of counsel at that time, he alleged that he was unconstitutionally confined for the reasons mentioned in the order2 summarily dismissing the application for the writ.
Patton appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and his present contentions then became apparent for the first time. After consultation between the district judge and Chief Judge Haynsworth of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the case was remanded for further consideration. With the assistance of able counsel, the petition was amended to present the important contentions previously stated.
The power of a federal district court to consider a state prisoner's petition for writ of habeas corpus and to review the constitutionality of his state trial is conferred by Title 28 U.S.C.A. Section 2254. In conferring that jurisdiction upon the federal courts, the Congress has specifically provided that this court shall not grant the writ unless the state prisoner (1) has exhausted remedies available in the courts of the state, or (2) there is no available state corrective process, or (3) there are circumstances rendering the state process ineffective to protect the rights of the prisoner.
North Carolina has a wholly adequate and enlightened procedure under which state prisoners may obtain from state courts a review of the constitutionality of their trial and imprisonment. N.C. G.S. Sections 15-217 to 15-222. Patton has not sought review of his second trial and sentence pursuant to the North Carolina Post-Conviction Hearing Act. Jurisdiction, if it exists, therefore depends upon "the existence of circumstances rendering such process ineffective." 28 U.S.C.A. Section 2254.
These circumstances exist by reason of prior decisions of the Supreme Court of North Carolina foreclosing in the state courts Patton's contentions that (a) he is entitled to credit for time served, and (b) that he cannot be more harshly punished at a second trial. State v. Williams, 261 N.C. 172, 134 S.E.2d 163 (1964); State v. Anderson, 262 N.C. 491, 137 S.E.2d 823 (1964); State v. White, 262 N.C. 52, 136 S.E.2d 205 (1964); State v. Slade, 264 N.C. 70, 140 S.E.2d 723 (1965).
Recently the North Carolina Supreme Court, in State v. Weaver, 264 N.C. 681, 142 S.E.2d 633 (1965), reexamined Williams, White, Anderson, and Slade. Mr. Justice Bobbitt, speaking for the court, said: "Decision on this appeal does not necessitate reconsideration of the decision in White as applied to the factual situation considered therein or to the later decisions based thereon, to wit, Anderson and Slade." Weaver, supra, 142 S.E.2d at 637. Thus, those decisions were left standing. Williams, which had held flatly that the "contention that the judge was compelled to allow him credit for the period spent in prison before a valid trial was had is also without merit", Id., 134 S.E.2d at 165, was modified and overruled only to this extent: if the subsequent sentence plus the time already served under the invalid sentence exceed the statutory maximum provided for the offense, then the prisoner must be given credit for time served to the extent of the excess so that total time served will not be longer than the statutory maximum. Since Patton, under his present sentence, will serve not quite twenty-five years and the statutory maximum sentence is thirty years, Weaver avails him nothing, and Williams controls as to him.
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