Reizenstein v. Sigler

• Decision Date: 30 June 1970
• Docket Number: No. 19847.,19847.
• Citation: 428 F.2d 702
• Parties: Alex REIZENSTEIN, Appellant, v. Maurice SIGLER, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

428 F.2d 702 (1970)

Alex REIZENSTEIN, Appellant, v. Maurice SIGLER, Appellee.

No. 19847.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

June 30, 1970.

Robert L. Gilbert, Morrill, Neb., for appellant.

Clarence A. H. Meyer, Atty. Gen., and Harold Mosher, Asst. Atty. Gen., Lincoln, Neb., for appellee.

Before MEHAFFY, HEANEY and BRIGHT, Circuit Judges.

BRIGHT, Circuit Judge.

In a habeas corpus proceeding filed in the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, Alex Reizenstein sought relief from incarceration in the Nebraska state penitentiary under a Nebraska state court sentence of life imprisonment (later commuted to fortyfive years) following his conviction for first degree murder entered in 1957. The federal district court (Judge Robert Van Pelt) denied petitioner any relief, and Reizenstein prosecutes this appeal. For reasons stated in this opinion, we reverse and remand.

Reizenstein contends that his statements connecting him with participation in the crime were obtained involuntarily at an in-custody interrogation and that their use by the prosecutor at his state court trial violated federally-guaranteed constitutional rights.

We need to sketch the facts and general background as a basis for our opinion. The Nebraska Supreme Court states the facts in greater detail in its consideration of Reizenstein's direct appeal. Reizenstein v. State, 165 Neb. 865, 87 N.W.2d 560, modified on rehearing, 166 Neb. 450, 89 N.W.2d 265 (1958). Reizenstein's wife was shot on November 30, 1956, during a family quarrel. Police, summoned by a neighbor, took Reizenstein into custody shortly after the shooting. He was interrogated for approximately two hours by local police, sheriff's officers and the assistant county attorney. These questions and Reizenstein's answers were taken down by a court reporter. That evening, Mrs. Reizenstein, though near death, implicated Reizenstein in the shooting.

The state charged Reizenstein with deliberately killing his wife. The defense contended that the shooting occurred accidentally. A jury found the defendant guilty and recommended a life sentence. The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the conviction. Reizenstein v. State, supra. Reizenstein, thereafter, unsuccessfully sought to annul the conviction through coram nobis and through proceedings authorized under Nebraska's Post-Conviction Act.¹ The sentencing court denied him relief, and the Nebraska Supreme Court again affirmed. State v. Reizenstein, 183 Neb. 376, 160 N.W.2d 208 (1968). Having exhausted his state remedies, Reizenstein filed the instant petition for habeas corpus. The evidence, as stipulated by the parties, consists of the transcripts and exhibits in the original trial and the files compiled in Reizenstein's post-conviction proceedings.

Reizenstein maintains that the Nebraska authorities obtained his incriminatory statements without his volition and through coercion and deceit, citing several reasons, to-wit:

(1) He was intoxicated at the time.²

(2) Possessing a moron's level of intellect, he failed to comprehend the investigation.³

(3) His questioners intimidated and deceived him.⁴

(4) Law enforcement officers participating in the questioning, failed to advise Reizenstein of his basic constitutional right to remain silent or that his statements could be used against him.⁵

(5) Police officers testified at the trial to a false or misleading version of Reizenstein's in-custody statements.⁶

Since we focus on the use made by the prosecutor of petitioner's statements, we particularly examine the circumstances surrounding their introduction into evidence. The prosecutor introduced Reizenstein's statements through witness Shipley, the assistant chief of police of Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. Shipley recapitulated the shooting incident by specifically mentioning that Reizenstein admitted obtaining the weapon used in the shooting from a back bedroom, loading the gun and, thereafter scuffling with his wife over the weapon. Shipley further testified that Reizenstein offered two versions of how the gun fired — first, that Mrs. Reizenstein grabbed the gun and pulled the trigger; later, that Reizenstein did not know how the gun went off. Shipley included additional comments of Reizenstein: for example, that Reizenstein said he did not intend to kill his wife, but intended to commit suicide and that Reizenstein stated he had been drinking liquor prior to the altercation.⁷ Shipley further stated his conclusion that Reizenstein had spoken voluntarily — without promise or threat.

Reizenstein's counsel objected on several grounds, including insufficiency of foundation to show that the statements had been given voluntarily and that the "best evidence" was not being offered. The trial court overruled all objections repetitively made and, at the close of the evidence, instructed the jury in accordance with the defendant's request:

* * * that the State, having introduced the admissions and declarations made by the defendant Alex Reizenstein, the truth of any exculpatory or mitigating facts embraced in the declarations or admissions so introduced would be presumed, unless their falsity was shown by the evidence in the case.

The court gave no further special instruction concerning Reizenstein's remarks which might be considered inculpatory.

On direct appeal, the Nebraska Supreme Court considered the admissibility of the respective versions of Reizenstein's admissions as testified to by several witnesses and the prosecution's refusal to produce the transcript of this interrogation and held those questions to rest within the discretion of the trial court. Reizenstein v. State, supra, 87 N.W.2d at 565. Later, the Nebraska trial court, in considering Reizenstein's application for coram nobis and post-conviction relief, found the evidence submitted insufficient to show "* * * a violation of the defendant's rights or improper procedure on the part of either the trial or appellate courts in previous actions and proceedings * * *." On appeal, the Nebraska Supreme Court (two judges dissenting) affirmed this post-conviction action of the trial court, holding:

(1) The petitioner had failed to sustain the burden of proving his statements were involuntary;

(2) The trial court complied with the dictates of Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964), since in denying the defendant's prayer for post-conviction relief it "* * necessarily found that the statements were voluntary"; and

(3) Petitioner could not now complain about the failure of the trial court to submit the issue of the voluntariness of his confession to the jury. State v. Reizenstein, supra, 160 N.W.2d 208.

The United States district court considered identical issues. Judge Van Pelt recognized that the Nebraska courts may have misapplied federal constitutional standards as enunciated in Jackson, supra, in requiring the defendant Reizenstein to sustain the burden of proving that his confession had been involuntarily obtained. He reconsidered this voluntariness question and independently determined that Reizenstein voluntarily and rationally submitted to the in-custody questioning by Nebraska law enforcement officers. Judge Van Pelt's determination, however, predated the Supreme Court decision in Sigler v. Parker, 396 U.S. 482, 90 S.Ct. 667, 24 L.Ed.2d 672 (1970), reversing per curiam (three justices dissenting) the Eighth Circuit's decision in Parker v. Sigler, 413 F.2d 459 (1969). The Supreme Court held a panel of this court to be in error in initially passing independent judgment on the voluntariness of a confession used to obtain a conviction in a state court. The appropriate remedy when a federal court finds a Jackson v. Denno error in a prior state proceeding is to allow the state a reasonable time to make an error-free determination on the voluntariness of the confession at issue. Sigler v. Parker, supra, 396 U.S. at 484, 90 S.Ct. 667.

Reizenstein's admissions as related by witness Shipley constitute a confession. Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 327 U.S. 274, 66 S.Ct. 544, 90 L.Ed. 667 (1946) (narration by witness of defendant's statement constitutes a confession equal with that of a court reporter's transcribed statement). Marked similarities appear between the posture of this case and Parker v. Sigler, supra. Both defendants had been convicted of murder in the Nebraska courts and, after exhaustion of state remedies, filed habeas corpus proceedings in the federal courts. Parker urged, as does this petitioner that his confession had been introduced into evidence at his murder trial in violation of his constitutional rights. In Parker, the federal district court denied the writ. Finding coercion, we reversed. In this appeal, Reizenstein invites a similar conclusion, which, in the light of Sigler v. Parker, supra, would constitute error.

We perceive our duty to initially determine whether Reizenstein's confession and its introduction into evidence conform to the constitutional mandates of Jackson,supra, and its later progeny of Boles v. Stevenson, 379 U.S. 43, 85 S.Ct. 174, 13 L.Ed.2d 109 (1964); Sims v. Georgia (1), 385 U.S. 538, 87 S.Ct. 639, 17 L.Ed.2d 593 (1967); Pinto v. Pierce, 389 U.S. 31, 88 S.Ct. 192, 19 L.Ed.2d 31 (1967); Sims v. Georgia (II), 389 U.S. 404, 88 S.Ct. 523, 19 L.Ed. 2d 634 (1967) and of course, Sigler v. Parker, supra.⁸

Jackson outlines the due process policy of the Fourteenth Amendment as forbidding the use of involuntary confessions:

* * * not only because of the probable unreliability of confessions that are obtained in a manner deemed coercive, but also because of the "strongly felt attitude of our society that important human values are sacrificed where an agency of the government, in the course of securing a conviction, wrings a confession out of an accused against his will," * * * 378 U.S. at 385-386, 84 S.Ct. at 1785.

When a defendant objects to the admission of his confession, he becomes "* * * entitled to a...