Raines v. State of Ala.

• Decision Date: 20 May 1977
• Docket Number: No. 76-2974,76-2974
• Citation: 552 F.2d 660
• Parties: Don RAINES, Petitioner-Appellant, v. STATE OF ALABAMA, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 660

552 F.2d 660

Don RAINES, Petitioner-Appellant, v. STATE OF ALABAMA, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 76-2974.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

May 20, 1977.

Rehearing Denied July 18, 1977.

T. J. Carnes, Albertville, Ala. (Court-appointed), for petitioner-appellant.

William J. Baxley, Atty. Gen., Montgomery, Ala., Barry V. Hutner, Asst. Atty. Gen., Birmingham, Ala., for respondent-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Before WISDOM, CLARK and RONEY, Circuit Judges.

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

I.

This appeal from the denial of a habeas petition presents important constitutional questions concerning Alabama's Youthful Offender Act. ¹

The appellant, Don Raines, was convicted in the Circuit Court of Marshall County, Alabama, of having unlawfully sold a controlled substance, in this case marijuana, a felony punishable by 15 years imprisonment under Alabama law, Title 22, § 258(47) Code of Alabama, 1940 (Recompiled 1958). Because of his age, Raines was eligible for treatment under Alabama's Youthful Offender Act. The circuit judge at arraignment explained the provisions of the Act to him and offered him the opportunity to request such treatment. ² Raines refused to waive trial by jury but insisted on being accorded the benefits available under the statute. The court denied this request and ordered that he be tried as an adult. After trial by jury he was convicted and sentenced to three years in the state penitentiary. The conviction was affirmed in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, 1974, 55 Ala.App. 588, 317 So.2d 555, in the Alabama Supreme Court, 1975, 294 Ala. 360, 317 So.2d 559, and in the federal district court on petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Each court held that the jury waiver provision in the Alabama Youthful Offender Act did not offend constitutional guarantees. We affirm. ³

II.

The Alabama statute provides that a defendant between the ages of 16 and 21 who is accorded the status of youthful offender shall be tried before a judge without a jury at separate court sessions from those at which adult criminals are charged. Title 15, § 266(2). Upon conviction as a youthful offender the court may impose various sentences the maximum of which is a three-year commitment to the custody of the Director of the Department of Correction. ⁴ A person adjudged a youthful offender is not subject to disqualification from public office or public employment, nor does he forfeit any right or privilege, including eligibility to receive any license granted by the state government. ⁵ The court determination is whether the individual is a youthful offender, not whether he is a criminal. This determination is not the equivalent of a conviction, except that the adjudication may be used against him if he is later convicted of a crime. Furthermore, records of the proceedings are not open to public inspection except upon court order. Title 15, § 266(6).

The Alabama Act is modeled after the Model Sentencing Act published by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, which was modeled after New York's Act that had been in effect since 1944. Although legislative history for Alabama's Act is unavailable, the drafters of the Model Act considered the youth offender proceeding to be non-criminal in nature. The committee comment noted, "(I)ts value lies in the opportunity it offers to select cases that merit avoidance of the criminal process and particularly the stigma of a criminal conviction." The legal counsel for the drafting committee has on at least two occasions asserted his belief that "a youthful offender adjudication under the Model Sentencing Act does not constitute a criminal conviction". Rubin, Federal Sentencing Problems in the Model Sentencing Act, 41 F.R.D. 506 (1966). These views, of course, did not bind the Alabama courts in their construction of the Act's purpose and the nature of the consequences provided in the Act, although they provide useful insight into the Model Act after which Alabama's was patterned.

The Alabama Supreme Court's views as to the nature and purpose of the Act were consistent with those regarding the Model Act. That court said, "The Youthful Offender Act is intended to extricate persons below twenty-one years of age from the harshness of criminal prosecution and conviction. It is designed to provide them benefits of an informal, confidential, rehabilitative system." 317 So.2d at 561. It felt that the introduction of juries to the proceedings would create a "tension and overlap between that system (Youthful Offender) and the system of criminal adjudication; and that the application of jury trials in such cases would only serve to vitiate the purpose for which the youthful offender system was conceived and the interests which it was designed to protect". Id. at 562. The Act was conceived to protect youths "from the stigma and practical consequences of a conviction for a crime". Id. at 564. The Act, therefore, provides "for confidentiality in the proceedings and in the availability of the offender's records with regard to the adjudication". Id. The court, then, expressed its feeling that a jury trial would preclude meaningful confidentiality.

Although the Alabama court's characterization of the purpose and nature of the Act is not conclusive with respect to the constitutional inquiry in this case, see part IV of this opinion, it is the most persuasive statement on the legislative intent of the statute. The primary intent, then, was to prevent stigmatization and to afford youths a better opportunity for self improvement based on the notion that the probability of redemption for youths between 16 and 21 outweighed the need of society for harsh punishment of "criminal" behavior. This is not to say that punishment does not inhere in many youthful offender determinations. But punishment was not the Act's primary object.

III.

The major question before us is whether a youthful offender has a constitutional right to a jury trial. This case flows naturally from the 1971 confluence of two major developments in constitutional law, the underpinnings of which provide guidance for our decision.

A.

The first development was the application to the adjudicative stage of the juvenile process of the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. In Haley v. Ohio, 1948, 332 U.S. 596, 68 S.Ct. 302, 92 L.Ed. 224; Gallegos v. Colorado, 1962, 370 U.S. 49, 82 S.Ct. 1209, 8 L.Ed.2d 325, 87 A.L.R.2d 614, and Kent v. United States, 1966, 383 U.S. 541, 86 S.Ct. 1045, 16 L.Ed.2d 84, the Supreme Court pointed to the role due process would play in juvenile proceedings. Soon after these cases the extent of that role was given a broad scope by the landmark case of In re Gault, 1967, 387 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1428, 18 L.Ed.2d 527. There the Court held that in the adjudicative phase of the juvenile proceeding, due process applied and embraced at least adequate written notice, advice as to the right to counsel, retained or appointed, and the right to confrontation and cross-examination. The Court guaranteed the privilege against self-incrimination to the juvenile.

Then, in Debacker v. Brainard, 1963, 396 U.S. 28, 90 S.Ct. 163, 24 L.Ed.2d 148, the Court was presented with the question whether juveniles were constitutionally guaranteed a jury trial in juvenile proceedings. The Court concluded that the case was inappropriate for resolution of the jury trial issue, in light of the appellant's hearing having antedated Duncan v. Louisiana, 1968, 391 U.S. 145, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491, and Bloom v. Illinois, 1968, 391 U.S. 194, 88 S.Ct. 1477, 20 L.Ed.2d 522, see part IIIB of this opinion, and because Duncan and Bloom had been given only prospective application by DeStefano v. Woods, 1968, 392 U.S. 631, 88 S.Ct. 2093, 20 L.Ed.2d 1308.

The Court expanded rights of juveniles. The Supreme Court held in 1970 that "the due process clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged" and held that this standard was applicable to a juvenile proceeding. In re Winship, 1970, 397 U.S. 358, 368, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368. A reasonable inference from these rulings was that the full panoply of rights accorded an adult in a criminal trial would be accorded to a juvenile in a juvenile delinquency proceeding.

B.

The second relevant development in the Supreme Court was its extension of the right to a jury trial. In Duncan the Court held that the sixth amendment right to a jury trial in serious criminal cases was a fundamental right protected by the fourteenth amendment that must be recognized in state criminal proceedings. Whether a crime was serious depended on whether the possible penalty exceeded six months imprisonment. Baldwin v. New York, 1970, 399 U.S. 66, 90 S.Ct. 1886, 26 L.Ed.2d 437.

There was also arguable support for the notion that the critical factor in determining the existence of a right to a jury trial was the loss of liberty and not the name given to a proceeding. Bloom v. Illinois, 1968, 391 U.S. 194, 88 S.Ct. 1477, 20 L.Ed.2d 522. In Bloom, the Court overruled a historic line of authority that had held an individual charged with criminal contempt was not entitled to a jury trial in state or federal courts. See, e. g., Cheff v. Schnackenberg, 1966, 384 U.S. 373, 86 S.Ct. 1523, 1537, 16 L.Ed.2d 629; Green v. United States, 1958, 356 U.S. 165, 78 S.Ct. 632, 2 L.Ed.2d 672. The traditional justification for denying a jury trial was that summary power was necessary to preserve the dignity and independence of the courts. 391 U.S. at 196, 88 S.Ct. 1477. This justification notwithstanding, the Court held that when significant loss of liberty is threatened, the right to a jury trial attaches. The contempt proceeding had traditionally been thought of as civil in nature, ⁶ but the Court felt that the charge of criminal contempt was...