Thompson v. Estelle

Citation642 F.2d 996
Decision Date17 April 1981
Docket NumberNo. 80-1329,80-1329
PartiesWilliam THOMPSON, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. W. J. ESTELLE, Jr., Etc., Respondent-Appellee. . Unit A
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)

Randy Taylor, Dallas, Tex., for petitioner-appellant.

Mark White, Atty. Gen., John W. Fainter, First Asst. Atty. Gen., Ted L. Hartley, Executive Asst. Atty. Gen., W. Barton Boling, Joe Foy, Jr., Asst. Attys. Gen., Austin, Tex., for respondent-appellee.

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

Before AINSWORTH, CHARLES CLARK, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

CHARLES CLARK, Circuit Judge:

William Sonny Thompson, Jr., appeals from the district court's denial of his petition for habeas corpus relief. Thompson was convicted of murder with malice and is presently serving a life sentence in the Texas Department of Corrections. He urges that evidence of four prior uncounselled convictions was improperly admitted at the punishment stage of his state court trial and that its admission adversely influenced the jury's assessment of his punishment. We affirm the denial of habeas corpus, holding that the admission of two of the prior convictions was not improper and that admission of the remaining two convictions was harmless error.

Thompson was tried before a jury in Criminal District Court, No. 5, Dallas County, Texas, and convicted of the offense of murder with malice on November 27, 1974. At the punishment phase of the trial, two police officers, neither of whom had worked on Thompson's case, gave unrebutted testimony of Thompson's bad reputation for peaceableness in the community. The state also introduced evidence of six prior convictions, four of which are involved in this appeal. The four challenged convictions include two state misdemeanors for unlawful drug possession for which Thompson received a 30-day sentence on one and a $150 fine on the other. They also include a state and a federal felony conviction for unrelated burglaries. Thompson had pleaded guilty to all four convictions.

With this evidence before it, the jury assessed a life sentence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and the sentence. Thompson v. State, 537 S.W.2d 732 (Tex.Cr.App.1976). After Thompson unsuccessfully sought a state writ of habeas corpus, he filed the present habeas corpus petition in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Dallas Division). In an Order adopting and supplementing the Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations of the United States Magistrate, the district court denied Thompson relief. This appeal followed.

Thompson argues that the state trial court should not have admitted evidence of his 1956 state felony conviction for burglary. Thompson pleaded guilty to the burglary charge and received a three-year sentence. The district court found that Thompson had been represented by an attorney and that he had entered his guilty plea to the burglary charge upon the advice and consent of his lawyer. To reach this conclusion, the district court relied upon the appearance of the name "Joe McNicholas" on state trial court documents and refused to credit Thompson's own denial that he had been represented by counsel when he pleaded guilty. Because the district court found that the prior burglary conviction was not uncounselled, it held that no error was made when the state court admitted evidence of that conviction at the punishment stage of Thompson's trial.

The district court's finding that Thompson was represented by a lawyer is not clearly erroneous. Both the state court trial docket and the waiver of trial by jury form filed in that cause show "Joe McNicholas" as Thompson's attorney on the burglary charge. In addition, the certified copy of the judgment and sentence recites that Thompson's counsel was present with him when the conviction was entered. The district court could properly rely upon the regularity of the state court's documents in preference to Thompson's own self-serving testimony that he did not have a lawyer. Therefore, Thompson's contention that his prior state burglary conviction was improperly admitted is without merit.

The district court also correctly decided that the state trial court committed no constitutional error when it admitted evidence of Thompson's 1963 misdemeanor conviction for unlawful possession of dangerous drugs. For this conviction Thompson received only a $150 fine. The Supreme Court has firmly established that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments do not require the state to provide counsel to indigent criminal defendants in those misdemeanor cases in which the offender is not incarcerated. Scott v. Illinois, 440 U.S. 367, 373-74, 99 S.Ct. 1158, 1162-63, 59 L.Ed.2d 383, 388 (1979). Furthermore, this court in Wilson v. Estelle, 625 F.2d 1158 (5th Cir. 1980), has specifically held that evidence of a prior uncounselled misdemeanor conviction for which no imprisonment was imposed may properly be introduced in the punishment phase of a trial. Accordingly, the state trial court committed no constitutional error when it admitted evidence of Thompson's 1963 misdemeanor conviction.

The asserted error in introducing evidence concerning Thompson's 1959 federal felony conviction for burglary of a United States Post Office presents a more serious issue. The district court accepted Thompson's claim that the federal conviction was invalidly obtained because he did not have the benefit of counsel. Nevertheless, it held that Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977), bars federal habeas review of his claim, finding that Thompson had failed to comply with the Texas contemporaneous objection rule. The district court also found that Thompson had not made the...

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36 cases
  • Fleming v. Kemp
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit
    • 29 Noviembre 1984
    ...error and reaches the merits instead, the federal habeas courts may review the petitioner's claim of error. See also Thompson v. Estelle, 642 F.2d 996 (5th Cir.1981). Here, the Superior Court of Tattnall County, Georgia, in considering petitioner's Witherspoon claim, denied it on the merits......
  • Lowery v. Estelle
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit
    • 24 Enero 1983
    ...federal review of a petitioner's constitutional claims if the state courts have adjudicated the claims on the merits, Thompson v. Estelle, 642 F.2d 996, 998 (5th Cir.1981). The state trial court rested its denial of Lowery's petition for state post-conviction relief on its determination tha......
  • Rogers v. Lynaugh
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit
    • 30 Junio 1988
    ...generally Alderman, 695 F.2d at 125-26; Edwards, 576 F.2d at 1155; Stone, 556 F.2d at 1245-46.22 See generally Thompson v. Estelle, 642 F.2d 996, 999 (5th Cir. Unit A 1981); Wilson v. Estelle, 625 F.2d 1158, 1159-60 (5th Cir. Unit A 1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 912, 101 S.Ct. 1985, 68 L.Ed......
  • Osborn v. Shillinger
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit
    • 7 Noviembre 1988
    ...because "the state courts have not relied exclusively upon" the procedural ground. Brasier, 815 F.2d at 65 (quoting Thompson v. Estelle, 642 F.2d 996, 998 (5th Cir.1981)). Finally, even if we were to accept the State's argument that the district court dismissed Osborn's petition solely beca......
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