Taylor v. State of Alabama

• Decision Date: 21 June 1948
• Docket Number: No. 721,721
• Citation: 92 L.Ed. 1935,335 U.S. 252,68 S.Ct. 1415
• Parties: TAYLOR v. STATE OF ALABAMA
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

335 U.S. 252

68 S.Ct. 1415

92 L.Ed. 1935

TAYLOR

v STATE OF ALABAMA.

No. 721.

Argued April 30, May 3, 1948.

Decided June 21, 1948.

[Syllabus from pages 252-254 intentionally omitted] Messrs. Nesbitt Elmore, of Montgomery, Ala., and Thurgood Marshall, of New York City, for petitioner.

Mr. Bernard F. Sykes, of Montgomery, Ala., for respondent.

Mr. Justice BURTON delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question in this case is whether the State of Alabama deprived the petitioner of due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment¹ to the Constitution of the United States when the Supreme Court of that State denied him permission to file a petition for writ of error coram nobis in the Circuit Court of Mobile County, Alabama. We hold that it did not. We hold also that the Alabama procedure, whereby one of its trial courts, by writ of error coram nobis, may set aside its own judgment in a criminal case because of an error of fact not apparent on the common law record, is a procedure long recognized by the common law and constitutes due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. We hold further that the procedure of that State is in accordance with long-established common law practice and constitutes due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment in requiring that the permission of the Supreme Court of Alabama be secured by a petitioner before filing such a petition for writ of error coram nobis, in a trial court of Alabama if it appears that the trial court's judgment already has been affirmed by such Supreme Court.

October 25, 1946, the petitioner, Samuel Taylor, a Negro, residing in Prichard, Mobile County, Alabama, and then 19 years old, was indicted for rape. The act for which he was indicted was an attack made in Prichard, April 12, 1946, on a white girl then 14 years old. October 26, Henri M. Aldridge, of the Mobile County Bar, was appointed by the Circuit Court of that County to represent the petitioner. However, October 28, on counsel's own motion, this order was set aside and, throughout the trial, he represented the petitioner, evidently as counsel of the petitioner's choice or of that of his family. December 30, on motion of the Circuit Court, the same counsel was appointed to prepare and prosecute the petitioner's appeal to the Supreme Court of Alabama. He thus represented the petitioner at least from October 26, 1946, until the date of the judgment of the Supreme Court of Alabama, April 24, 1947, and it is clear that he rendered adequate and competent service.²

The trial took place in the Circuit Court of Mobile County, November 19, 1946. After a full hearing in which the petitioner did not take the stand, the trial judge submitted to the jury four alternative forms of verdicts: 'guilty of rape as charged in the indictment, and further find he shall suffer death by electrocution'; 'guilty of rape, as charged in the indictment, and further find he shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary for—' ('what- ever you should determine, not less than ten years up to life'); 'guilty of carnal knowledge, as charged in the indictment, and further find he shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary for—years' ('whatever you should determine, not less than two nor more than ten'), and 'not guilty.' The jury returned its verdict in the first form and the petitioner was sentenced to be electrocuted January 9, 1947, at the Kilby Prison, at Montgomery, Alabama. No motion was made for a new trial but notice of appeal was entered and the petitioner's sentence was suspended pending the appeal.

On appeal the case was fully briefed and argued, and, April 24, 1947, the judgment was unanimously affirmed. Taylor v. State, 249 Ala. 130, 30 So.2d 256. From a subsequent brief of the State it appears that the petitioner did not apply for a rehearing, that he was later denied clemency by the Governor, and that he was granted a reprive from the execution of the death sentence until September 19, 1947.

September 18, 1947, the petitioner, represented by new counsel, instituted the present proceeding in the Supreme Court of the State at Montgomery. This proceeding is numbered First Division 308 and is entitled 'Ex Parte Taylor, In Re No. 279 Samuel Taylor Appellant v. State of Alabama, Appellee.' 249 Ala. 667, 32 So.2d 659. It was initiated by a petition to the Supreme Court of Alabama for an order granting the petitioner the right to file a petition in the Circuit Court of Mobile County, Alabama, for writ of error coram nobis. The petition in this new proceeding was sworn to by the petitioner and supported by the affidavits of three men who had been in the Prichard jail with him June 29—July 3, 1946. This petition and these affidavit executed in September, 1947, presented for the first time a charge that the petitioner's several confessions, his identification of the prosecutrix and the demonstration of locations which had been made by the petitioner as to his part in the crime, all on July 3, 1946, had been induced by physical violence administered to him or threats made to him in the Prichard jail prior to that date. Throughout the trial uncontradicted testimony had been given repeatedly that the petitioner had volunteered his confessions and that he had made his disclosures 'to get it all off his chest.' This attitude was reinforced by the petitioner's ready and complete disclosures of many details otherwise unavailable. In each instance these were consistent with the other evidence in the case and were demonstrative of the unfailing truthfulness of the statements made by the petitioner on July 3. United the filing of this new proceeding, the petitioner's statements had not been at any point self-contradictory or in conflict with other evidence. His present petition, on the other hand, is in direct conflict with the statements made by him to the Mayor of Prichard and others, July 3, and as to which the Mayor testified at the trial, November 19, 1946. The petitioner now alleges that when, apart from the trial, he 'was asked by his said attorney who represented him in the trial * * * if he was mistreated or beaten in any fashion by the law enforcement officers in connection with the giving of said confession he replied in the negative, being uneducated and ignorant as aforesaid, and fearful of further reprisals by said police officers.' I does not appear that he made any contrary disclosures to his counsel even during the trial of November 19, 1946, or up to the affirmance of the case on appeal, April 24, 1947, although the petitioner had long been out of the custody of the Prichard police and was aware of the diligence with which his counsel, without success, had sought throughout the trial to uncover possible evidence of violence or other coercion in connection with the petitioner's disclosures made on July 3. It is worthy of notice that, prior to the admission in evidence of each statement of the petitioner in the nature of a confession, his counsel diligently sought to inquire into its voluntariness, and never succeeded in bringing out evidence of its involuntary character. The trial judge in each instance expressly found the evidence to be admissible. The petitioner's failure to change his original statement to his counsel would of course be consistent with its truthfulness and with all the evidence on record before September 18, 1947.

After the filing of the present proceeding the sentence of execution of the petitioner was further suspended. September 25, 1947, the State of Alabama filed its motion to dismiss the new petition. In that motion it called the attention of the court to the testimony in the original proceeding recently reviewed by that court and contradictory to the new position taken by the petitioner. October 29, 1947, the issue was argued and the State filed an affidavit accompanied by eight photographs which had been taken of the petitioner at 5:37 p.m., July 3, 1946. Seven of these were taken of him in the nude immediately after he had made his several confessions on that day and immediately following the dates June 29 to July 2, inclusive, on which dates the new petition alleges that severe beatings had been administered to him. ³ November 13, 1947, the Supreme Court of Alabama, by a vote of six to one, denied the petition. Ex parte Taylor, 249 Ala. 667, 32 So.2d 659. December 4 it denied a rehearing. March 3, 1948, petition for certiorari was filed here. Because of the important relation of this proce- dure to due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment, especially in capital cases, we granted certiorari. 333 U.S. 866, 68 S.Ct. 787.

The first question is whether this Alabama procedure to secure a review of a judgment in a criminal case by writ of error coram nobis constitutes due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. It is clear that it does. This procedure to enable a trial court to correct its own judgment when found by it to have been based upon an error of fact not apparent on the common law record has long been recognized at common law.⁴ It survives in varying forms in state practice but it may be that in federal practice its purpose is otherwise served.⁵ This Court has held expressly that, in the form in which the procedure came before us from Florida, in 1942, it conformed to due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. Hysler v. Florida, 315 U.S. 411, 62 S.Ct. 688, 86 L.Ed. 932.⁶ The Supreme Court of Alabama, at least since its decision, in 1943, in Johnson v. Williams, 244 Ala. 391, 13 So.2d 683, has followed Florida precedents as to this procedure, and there is no controversy e re as to the conformity of the present procedure with that of those precedents.⁷

As distinguished from the traditional writ of error enabling a superior court to review an error of law committed by a trial court, the writ of error coram nobis brings the error of fact directly before the trial court. However, when the judgment of the trial court already has been affirmed by the judgment...