Stevens v. Warden, Maryland Penitentiary

• Decision Date: 16 September 1966
• Docket Number: No. 10098.,10098.
• Citation: 366 F.2d 565
• Parties: Robert Linwood STEVENS, Appellant, v. WARDEN, MARYLAND PENITENTIARY, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

366 F.2d 565 (1966)

Robert Linwood STEVENS, Appellant, v. WARDEN, MARYLAND PENITENTIARY, Appellee.

No. 10098.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued January 5, 1966.

Decided September 16, 1966.

David E. Belcher, Baltimore, Md. (court-assigned counsel), for appellant.

Julius A. Romano, Asst. Atty. Gen. of Maryland (Thomas B. Finan, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, on brief), for appellee.

Ronald P. Sokol, Charlottesville, Va., amicus curiae.

Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and SOBELOFF, BOREMAN, BRYAN and J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judges, sitting en banc.

HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge.

In this habeas corpus proceeding, the appeal appeared to present a substantial question under Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed. 2d 977, if that decision was to be given a retroactive effect. To consider the question of the retroactivity of Escobedo and whether its principle would require issuance of the writ in this case, the case was heard by the Court en banc. Thereafter the Supreme Court in Johnson v. State of New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 86 S.Ct. 1772, 16 L.Ed.2d 882, held that Escobedo should not be given retroactive application to trials commenced before that opinion was announced. Stevens was tried in 1962, more than two years before Escobedo was decided, so the principal questions which the appeal appeared to present have now been resolved by Johnson.

There is a remaining question about the voluntariness of the confession.

Stevens and three others, Damron, Giles and Cantler, planned to rob a Mrs. Baker who lived in the same general residential section of Baltimore. Damron had done repair work for Mrs. Baker and had been called by her to come to her house to repair some plumbing. He reported to the other three that Mrs. Baker had approximately $60,000 hidden in the vicinity of the kitchen.

Their plan was that Stevens would go with Damron, linger near the door while Mrs. Baker was showing Damron the work to be done and secretly admit Giles and Cantler to the house. If Mrs. Baker discovered Giles and Cantler before Damron and Stevens departed, they were to stage a fight, but otherwise Damron and Stevens were to depart in apparent peace, leaving a defenseless Mrs. Baker to be handled by Giles and Cantler.

In its early stages everything went according to the plan. Stevens admitted Giles and Cantler to Mrs. Baker's house while she was preoccupied showing Damron the faulty plumbing. They were not discovered by Mrs. Baker until they confronted her after Damron and Stevens had left.

Stevens had supplied Giles and Cantler with some ladies' stockings to be used to bind Mrs. Baker and to keep her quiet while they ransacked the house. They did bind her, but they became much more violent than had originally been contemplated when they failed to discover any substantial sum of money. Having found only $4.00 in cash, they demanded of her information about where the supposed hoard was kept. They beat her; they kicked her; they mutilated her. Seventeen bones, including a vertebra, were broken as was her nose. They finally left her in a bedroom, still bound and mortally wounded, after setting a fire in another bedroom. Mrs. Baker was discovered by firemen who extinguished the blaze and heard from her before she died a brief recital of what happened.

Stevens lived with his sister and brother-in-law, Whitaker, and it was in Whitaker's house that the four made the plans for the robbery. Whitaker overheard them and was invited to participate, but he declined to do so. He was also cooperative with the police, and he told them that he had heard Damron, Stevens, Giles and Cantler planning to rob someone in the vicinity. Damron was already under suspicion so that, with the information they had gained from Whitaker, Damron and Stevens were arrested when they were encountered together in a tavern. Giles and Cantler were arrested later.

At the police station, Stevens was told that anything he said "had to be voluntary." He was not otherwise advised of his rights. He was only nineteen years old, but he had previously been convicted of other offenses.

Stevens was questioned about the crime. He denied knowledge of it. They told him what they had learned from his brother-in-law, Whitaker, and they brought Whitaker into the interrogation room to obviate any doubt in Stevens' mind that the policeman's statement of Whitaker's revelations was true. Whitaker came in weeping, informed Stevens that he had told the police and that he thought Stevens should tell the truth. Whitaker was led away and Stevens promptly told the entire story.

At the trial, Stevens' confession was introduced in evidence without objection. Stevens had told his lawyer that his statement, made after he had been in custody only approximately an hour and a half, was entirely voluntary.

Tried by two Judges, sitting without a jury, Stevens was found guilty of first degree murder and of robbery. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on the murder charge and to a concurrent term of ten years on the robbery charge. The Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. Stevens v. State, 232 Md. 33, 192 A.2d 73, and the Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari. Stevens v. State of Maryland, 375 U.S. 886, 84 S.Ct. 160, 11 L.Ed.2d 115. Thereafter Stevens sought postconviction relief in the Maryland courts, and its denial was affirmed by Maryland's Court of Appeals. Stevens v. Warden, 237 Md. 611, 205 A.2d 213. Stevens then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court. The District Judge reviewed the record made at the plenary postconviction hearing in the state court as well as the record of the initial trial. He accepted the state court findings and dismissed the petition without a hearing. It is from that order that Stevens has...