Stalnaker v. Roberts

• Decision Date: 18 December 1981
• Docket Number: 15358,Nos. 15176,s. 15176
• Court: West Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: William Bryce STALNAKER v. Virginia L. ROBERTS, Com'r, etc. STATE ex rel. Lawrence L. PARRISH v. Virginia L. ROBERTS, Com'r, etc.

Page 166

287 S.E.2d 166

168 W.Va. 593

William Bryce STALNAKER v. Virginia L. ROBERTS, Com'r, etc.

STATE ex rel. Lawrence L. PARRISH v. Virginia L. ROBERTS, Com'r, etc.

Nos. 15176, 15358.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Dec. 18, 1981.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 23, 1982.

Syllabus by the Court

The proper forum for attacking the constitutional validity of a prior traffic offense conviction when that offense is the foundation for adverse administrative action by the commissioner of motor vehicles is the county in which such a conviction was initially rendered if the conviction is a West Virginia conviction, or the state courts of the state in which the conviction was initially rendered if it is an out-of-state conviction. To the extent that State ex rel. Vance v. Arthur, 142 W.Va. 737, 98 S.E.2d 418 (1957) and State ex rel. Lemley v. Roberts, W.Va., 260 S.E.2d 850 (1979) are to the contrary, they are overruled.

Chauncey H. Browning, Atty. Gen. and S. Clark Woodroe, Asst. Atty. Gen., Charleston, for appellant.

Albright, Fluharty, Bradley & Townsend, Joseph P. Albright and Robert A. Ellison, Parkersburg, for appellee Stalnaker.

Sullivan & Cowan, John J. Cowan and George Castelle, Charleston, for appellee Parrish.

NEELY, Justice:

These two appeals by the State of West Virginia present the question of the appropriate forum for a collateral attack upon old traffic convictions. Under W.Va.Code, 17C-5-2 [1976] the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles is required to revoke the driver's license of any person convicted of drunk driving, and the period of revocation is determined by the number of convictions that the person has. Consequently, the validity of prior, unappealed, and frequently uncontested convictions becomes an issue of compelling concern to a person who is about to lose his driver's license for ten years as a result of three successive drunk driving offenses.

Under our case of State ex rel. Vance v. Arthur, 142 W.Va. 737, 98 S.E.2d 418 (1957) and the more recent case of State ex rel. Lemley v. Roberts, W.Va., 260 S.E.2d 850 (1979) the prior convictions can be challenged in a mandamus proceeding against the commissioner of motor vehicles brought in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County. The State asserts in this appeal that the Circuit Court of Kanawha County is both an inappropriate and inconvenient forum for this type of litigation and that both Vance and Lemley should be overruled. We agree.

In both of the cases before us the appellees brought successful mandamus proceedings against the commissioner of motor vehicles in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County. Both sought reinstatement of their driving privileges, which had been revoked by the commissioner. The Circuit Court of Kanawha County permitted each appellee to present evidence attacking the constitutional validity of his prior traffic convictions upon which the commissioner's revocation was predicated.

Appellee William Stalnaker had been convicted of drunk driving in Chesterfield County, Virginia, on 2 August 1974. On 27 June 1975 he was arrested in Hinton, West Virginia for drunk driving. He was released from jail upon the posting of $106.00 bond. He did not appear for trial in the City Police Court of Hinton on 7 July 1975 and his bail was forfeited. Pursuant to W.Va.Code, 17B-3-4 [1951] an abstract of the court record indicating that he had forfeited bail for the offense of drunk driving was sent to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Code, 17B-3-4 [1951] provides that "a forfeiture of bail ... shall be equivalent to a conviction." The commissioner revoked Mr. Stalnaker's license pursuant to W.Va.Code, 17B-3-5 [1951] and petitioner brought an action in mandamus against the commissioner to require reinstatement of his license on the grounds that his forfeiture of bail in Hinton was constitutionally infirm. Mr. Stalnaker testified below that he had not been informed of his trial date. The Circuit Court of Kanawha County concluded that the police court conviction was void because Mr. Stalnaker had not pleaded guilty in accordance with either of Call v. McKenzie, W.Va., 220 S.E.2d 665 (1975) or W.Va.Code, 62-3-1a [1965], and issued the writ directing the commissioner to reinstate Mr. Stalnaker's license.

Appellee Lawrence Parrish was a North Carolina resident with a North Carolina driver's license when he was convicted of drunk driving on 4 April 1978 and again on 24 July 1978. Mr. Parrish pled guilty to both charges of drunk driving in district courts of North Carolina. In both cases he was not represented by counsel. As a result of the second conviction his license was suspended for a period of four years. Mr. Parrish subsequently moved to West Virginia where he applied for a driver's license. When the West Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles discovered that his North Carolina license had been revoked for drunk driving the department revoked his West Virginia license for ten years. Mr. Parrish then brought a mandamus action in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County where he successfully attacked the North Carolina convictions because he had not been given his right to counsel. The court below reinstated his license.

I

In the case of State ex rel. Vance v. Arthur, supra, the issue of forum non conveniens was never raised or contemplated because Mr. Vance had been convicted of his traffic violations in Kanawha County and the proceeding was an original mandamus action in this Court. In that case we said:

As already indicated, the failure of the petitioner to apply for an appeal from the judgment of conviction in each proceeding and to seek reversal of each judgment upon appeal does not preclude him from attacking the judgment collaterally in a proceeding in mandamus. To obtain a reversal of each judgment it would be necessary to prosecute successfully two appeals and, if both judgments were reversed and set aside by means of that procedure, the commissioner of motor vehicles could not have been required, in either appellate proceeding, to reinstate the license of the petitioner, if the commissioner, after the reversal of both judgments, should refuse to reinstate the license. The time required and the costs incurred in the prosecution of the appeals to a successful final conclusion, which would not directly accomplish the reinstatement of the license, would be substantially greater than the time required and the costs incurred in the prosecution of a proceeding in mandamus in which adequate and complete relief in avoiding the effect and preventing the enforcement of the judgments and in requiring the reinstatement of the license can be expeditiously obtained by the petitioner.

98 S.E.2d at 425.

It must be remembered that State ex rel. Vance v. Arthur, was decided in May 1957 at a time when the procedures in justice of the peace courts were notoriously irregular. The holding in Arthur may have been appropriate in 1957 since it was not until the 1960s that the Supreme Court of the United States embarked upon its wholesale reform of criminal procedure. Furthermore, in 1974 this Court decided State ex rel. Shrewsbury v. Poteet, 157 W.Va. 540, 202 S.E.2d 628 (1974), in which we concluded that the fee system in justice of the peace courts was such a violation of due process that judgments from those courts were constitutionally infirm. As a direct result of our decision in Poteet the West Virginia Legislature adopted, and the voters of West Virginia ratified, the Judicial Reorganization Amendment of 1974.

The combined effect of the changes made in the criminal law at both the state and federal level during the past twenty-four years has been a dramatic increase in the level of fairness, competence, and regularity in proceedings conducted in courts of limited jurisdiction. While at the time Vance v. Arthur, supra, was written it can almost be said that there was a presumption against the validity of a criminal judgment rendered in justice of the peace court, we can now say without the least hint of irony that there is a well-justified presumption of regularity in the proceedings of the magistrate courts of this State and courts of limited jurisdiction...