United States ex rel. Gereau v. Henderson

• Decision Date: 06 February 1976
• Docket Number: No. 74-3890.,74-3890.
• Citation: 526 F.2d 889
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Beaumont GEREAU, Ishmael LaBeet, Warren Ballentine, Meral Smith and Rafael Joseph, Petitioners-Appellants, v. James D. HENDERSON, Warden, United States Penitentiary, et al., etc., Respondents-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

526 F.2d 889

UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Beaumont GEREAU, Ishmael LaBeet, Warren Ballentine, Meral Smith and Rafael Joseph, Petitioners-Appellants, v. James D. HENDERSON, Warden, United States Penitentiary, et al., etc., Respondents-Appellees.

No. 74-3890.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

February 6, 1976.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

William M. Kunstler, Center for Rights, J. Otis Cochran (Court-appointed), Margaret Ratner, New York City, for petitioners-appellants.

John W. Stokes, U.S. Atty., J. Robert Cooper, Asst. U.S. Atty., Atlanta, Ga., for respondents-appellees.

Before BROWN, Chief Judge, GEWIN and THORNBERRY, Circuit Judges.

John R. BROWN, Chief Judge:

Appellants Beaumont Gereau, Ishmael LaBeet, Warren Ballentine, Meral Smith and Rafael Joseph, who are presently incarcerated in various federal prisons within the continental United States, brought this habeas action pursuant to 28 U.S.C.A. §§ 2241, 2254 and 2255 seeking to be returned from the custody of the United States Bureau of Prisons to the Attorney General of the Virgin Islands, or, at least, to be incarcerated in the same prison pending exhaustion of all appeals from their convictions. The District Court denied the writ, finding no abuse of discretion on the part of the prison authorities in transferring appellants to the Bureau of Prisons from the Virgin Islands. We agree with the District Court and affirm.

Violence In The Virgin Islands

On September 6, 1972, eight persons were killed and four persons wounded in a ruthless daylight attack on the clubhouse area of the Fountain Valley Golf Course in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. The assailants wore masks and fatigue outfits and were heavily armed, brandishing a machine gun and shotguns among other weapons. They robbed some of the guests and a clubhouse shop before making their exit. The five appellants were tried for this brutal crime and found guilty by a jury of the offenses of robbery, assault and murder, all in violation of the Virgin Islands Code (V.I.C.).¹ On the same day, August 14, 1973, they were each sentenced to eight consecutive life terms on the murder counts and concurrent terms on the robbery and assault counts.

The Scene Shifts To The Mainland

Upon being sentenced, the appellants were immediately sent to the Presidio Penitentiary in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. Soon thereafter they were placed in the custody of the Attorney General of the United States for service of their sentences pursuant to a contractual agreement between the Attorney General and the territorial government of the Virgin Islands, executed under authority of 18 U.S.C.A. § 5003.²

Upon their transfer to the United States Bureau of Prisons, appellants were sent to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary where they were all temporarily confined. Four of the five appellants were soon permanently assigned to different prisons in the federal system.³ At no time were the appellants or their counsel afforded prior notice, statement of reasons, or an opportunity to object to their transfer from the Virgin Islands to federal authorities or from Atlanta to separate federal prisons.

The Momentary Habeas Confinement In Atlanta

Appellants pursued a direct appeal of their convictions to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Counsel for the appellants filed a motion in the Third Circuit requesting that they be temporarily transferred to the same federal prison to facilitate preparation of their direct appeal. By letter from the Clerk of the Third Circuit dated November 8, 1973, Chief Judge Seitz of that Circuit approved a government proposal that all the appellants be transferred back to Atlanta for three days to enable them to confer with their attorneys. Pursuant thereto, the five appellants were together at the Atlanta prison from December 31, 1973 through January 2, 1974. While all the appellants were temporarily confined in Atlanta under this plan, appellants filed their petition for habeas corpus relief. By agreement of counsel, appellants have been returned to their respective places of permanent confinement pursuant to the plan approved by Chief Judge Seitz. The Third Circuit upheld appellants' convictions on August 15, 1974. Government of the Virgin Islands v. Gereau, 3 Cir., 1974, 502 F.2d 914, cert. denied, 420 U.S. 909, 95 S.Ct. 829, 42 L.Ed.2d 839 (1975).⁴

Shortly thereafter the District Court below denied habeas relief, dismissing the petition for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.

Appellants seek to be discharged from federal custody and to be returned to the custody of territorial authorities of the Virgin Islands so that they may be confined at some correctional facility within the Territory. Alternatively, they seek to be confined together at a single federal institution until they have exhausted all legal challenges to their convictions.

Appellants summed up their habeas complaint in the District Court this way:

Relators, who upon sentencing, were remanded to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States Virgin Islands, were summarily transferred to the custody of respondent Bork in violation of their rights under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Among other things, said transfers took place without requisite due process hearings and have denied to Relators their rights to effective assistance of counsel, to due process of law and to equal protection of the law, as well as subjected them to cruel and unusual punishment. Moreover, power expressly reserved to the states has been usurped and exercised by the Federal Government.

In this Court, appellants have focused on only two of these contentions. First, the transfer of a territorial prisoner to a federal prison offends state sovereignty and is beyond the power of Congress to authorize,⁵ and, second, the summary nature of their transfers violates their right to minimal elements of due process.

State-Federal Cooperation

The threshold argument that 18 U.S.C.A. § 5003 usurps power expressly reserved to the states is without merit.⁶ That section merely authorizes the federal government to make arrangements with a state whereby a state's prisoners may be confined in a federal institution when the state feels that either it or the prisoner may benefit from such an arrangement. The federal government is reimbursed by the state for the cost of confining the state prisoner. Federalism does not preclude cooperative action between the two sovereigns when the interests of both state and nation are thereby served. See United States v. Bekins, 304 U.S. 27, 58 S.Ct. 811, 82 L.Ed. 1137 (1938); Carmichael v. Southern Coal Co., 301 U.S. 495, 57 S.Ct. 868, 81 L.Ed. 1245 (1937). We agree with the only other Circuit to have considered the question that § 5003 is not beyond the delegated powers of the federal government. Duncan v. Madigan, 9 Cir., 1960, 278 F.2d 695, cert. denied, 366 U.S. 919, 81 S.Ct. 1096, 6 L.Ed.2d 242, reh. denied, 366 U.S. 947, 81 S.Ct. 1675, 6 L.Ed.2d 858 (1961), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 905, 82 S.Ct. 185, 7 L.Ed.2d 99.

Due Process and Prison Transfers

Appellants' principle contention on appeal is that they were summarily transferred, both from the Virgin Islands to the federal prison in Atlanta and from Atlanta to federal facilities throughout the United States, without any of the rudiments of due process, such as notice, a statement of reasons, and an impartial hearing, as mandated by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.⁷

Judges Are Not Prison Administrators

Courts have traditionally been extremely hesitant to place restraints on prison authorities in matters of internal prison administration, Krist v. Smith, 5 Cir., 1971, 439 F.2d 146 (administrative segregation); O'Brien v. Blackwell, 5 Cir., 1970, 421 F.2d 844 (censorship of prisoner mail), including the administrative transfer of prison inmates. Moore v. United States Attorney General, 5 Cir., 1973, 473 F.2d 1375; Hogue v. United States, 5 Cir., 1961, 287 F.2d 99 (no right to be confined in federal prison close to home); Rodriguez-Sandoval v. United States, 1 Cir., 1969, 409 F.2d 529 (Attorney General limited only by abuse of discretion standard in sending Puerto Rican prisoner to Atlanta federal prison); Holland v. Ciccone, 8 Cir., 1967, 386 F.2d 825 (transfer of federal prisoner for medical reasons within discretion of Attorney General); Hillen v. Director of Dept. of Social Service and Housing, 9 Cir., 1972, 455 F.2d 510, cert. denied, 409 U.S. 989, 93 S.Ct. 331, 34 L.Ed.2d 256 (administrative transfer pursuant to Western Interstate Corrections Compact held to raise no federal claim); Duncan v. Madigan, 9 Cir., 1960, supra (no right to hearing concerning place of custody); Lawrence v. Willingham, 10 Cir., 1967, 373 F.2d 731 (federal prisoner has no right to be confined near location of his state trial).

Recent Constitutional Trends

This simple hands-off attitude has been complexified by recent Supreme Court cases which have held that prisoners are not stripped of their constitutional rights, including the right to due process, when the prison gate slams shut behind them. Rather, prisoners continue to enjoy the protections of the Due Process Clause subject to restrictions imposed by the practical necessities of prison life and the legitimate aims of the correctional process. Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974); Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974). See also Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 92 S.Ct. 594, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1972); Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U.S. 249, 92 S.Ct. 407, 30 L.Ed.2d 418 (1971).

In Wolff, for example, the Supreme Court held that a state prisoner cannot be deprived of good-time credits without at least the minimal procedural safeguards of (i) advance written notice of the charges against him, (ii) a statement of reasons and evidence...