United States ex rel. Portelli v. LaVallee, 287
| Decision Date | 06 December 1972 |
| Docket Number | Docket 72-1801.,No. 287,287 |
| Citation | 469 F.2d 1239 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Anthony PORTELLI, Petitioner-Appellant, v. J. Edwin LaVALLEE, as Superintendent of Clinton Correctional Facility, Dannemora, New York, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Robert S. Hammer, Asst. Atty. Gen., New York City (Louis J. Lefkowitz, Atty. Gen. of New York, and Samuel A. Hirshowitz, First Asst. Atty. Gen., New York City, of counsel), for respondent-appellee.
Michael A. Feit, Albany, N. Y., for petitioner-appellant.
Before MOORE, HAYS and MULLIGAN, Circuit Judges.
Petitioner-appellant, Anthony Portelli, appeals from an order of the district court dismissing his petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
In 1963 Portelli was convicted with a co-defendant in the New York Supreme Court, Kings County, of murdering two New York police detectives who surprised the defendants while in the act of committing an armed robbery. Portelli's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The conviction was affirmed by the New York Court of Appeals where, Portelli raised, and that Court passed upon, the issues which he now seeks to relitigate in this proceeding. People v. Portelli & Rosenberg, 15 N.Y.2d 235, 257 N.Y.S.2d 931, 205 N.E. 2d 857, remittitur amended, 16 N.Y.2d 537, 260 N.Y.S.2d 649, 208 N.E.2d 458, (1965), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 1009, 86 S.Ct. 612, 15 L.Ed.2d 524 (1966).
Upon Portelli's trial there was admitted testimony, undoubtedly very damaging to him, of a witness, Richard Melville. In the police station Melville had been beaten and tortured and, as a result, had given a statement implicating Portelli. However, some eight months later he repeated the same story at trial in open court.
Upon the trial all the circumstances surrounding the giving of the statement, namely, the beatings and the torture, were placed before the jury, which had a full opportunity to pass upon the credence to be given to Melville's testimony in the light of the methods by which it was originally obtained and in the light of his testimony given before them some eight months later while on the witness stand.
The trial judge in the State court in the strongest terms condemned the police action. He did not exclude Melville's statement but said that "the jury may consider the beating, and determine whether or not, in spite of the beating, he Melville came in here and he told the truth as to what happened between him and Portelli. . . ." (Charge, reprinted at Appellant's Br. p. 12).
The law applicable to the facts before us cannot be better stated than it was in the New York Court of Appeals' unanimous opinion:
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