United States v. Pate
| Decision Date | 01 November 1965 |
| Docket Number | No. 14955.,14955. |
| Citation | 351 F.2d 910 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Edward F. THOMAS, a/k/a Oscar Jackson, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Frank J. PATE, Warden, Illinois State Penitentiary, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
John E. Allen, Howard Friedman, Chicago, Ill., for appellant.
William G. Clark, Atty. Gen., Richard A. Michael, Asst. Atty. Gen., Chicago, Ill., for appellee.
Before HASTINGS, Chief Judge, and KNOCH and SWYGERT, Circuit Judges.
Rehearing Denied November 1, 1965. En Banc.
Edward F. Thomas also known as Oscar Jackson filed his petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court. Motion of the respondent, Frank J. Pate, Warden, Illinois State Penitentiary, to dismiss was allowed and the petition was dismissed by an order citing Title 28 United States Code, § 2244, which provides:
Petition to reconsider was denied and this appeal followed.
Petitioner contends that his claim has never been determined on the merits and that dismissal constituted an abuse of discretion.
The initial petition for habeas corpus is not a part of the record before us, but from the current petition for writ of habeas corpus it appears that petitioner presented the same grounds to the District Court as are set forth here.1
The respondent at that time urged that the application for writ of habeas corpus was vague, contradictory, uncertain, and failed to set forth a cause of action upon which the District Court's jurisdiction could or should be invoked. The current petition states that the initial petition was denied by the District Court for "lack of jurisdiction."
Petitioner asserts that he was denied his Constitutional right to a speedy trial.
The facts are largely undisputed. In April, 1940, after a hearing before a jury in the County Court of Vermillion County, Illinois, petitioner was found insane and was committed to the State Hospital in Kankakee, Illinois. In July of that same year, he left the State Hospital without authorization. According to a letter dated December 12, 1944, from the Superintendent of the State Hospital at Kankakee, which is a part of the record prepared by the petitioner, he escaped from that institution, and was readmitted December 17, 1943, by commitment in the regular order from the Vermillion County Court, and transferred the same day to the Illinois Security Hospital at Menard, Illinois. Another item in that record is a letter from the Chief Social Worker of the Social Service Department of the State Hospital at Kankakee indicating that petitioner left the institution on "unauthorized absence" in July, 1940.
The record also includes the petitioner's reproduction of his State habeas corpus hearing in the Circuit Court of Vermillion County, Illinois, in 1945, from which it appears that after hearing sworn evidence, the Court there found that petitioner was lawfully held in the custody of the Illinois Security Hospital at Menard, Illinois.
In September, 1943, petitioner was arrested on an unrelated charge, at Waukegan, Illinois, and placed in the Lake County Jail. He was subsequently indicted by the Winnebago County Grand Jury for the crimes of rape and robbery committed near Rockford, Illinois.
Petitioner argues that because of the lapse of time, a new sanity hearing was obligatory in the fall of 1943 when he was indicted. Petitioner disregards the fact that he had never been officially released from custody, that his adjudication of insanity had never been reversed, and that he was at large only because he escaped from the institution at Kankakee.
On July 1, 1948, the Circuit Court of Randolph County, Illinois, ordered petitioner released from the institution at Menard on a finding that he was sane at that time. He was arrested by the Winnebago County authorities on the basis of the 1943 indictment, subsequently tried and convicted on both counts, and on October 29, 1948, he was sentenced to serve 35 years on one count and 10 to 20 years on the other.
He feels that he was unlawfully detained from 1943 until 1948 in the Illinois...
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...of his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. United States v. Smalls, 438 F.2d 711 (2d Cir. 1971); United States ex rel. Thomas v. Pate, 351 F.2d 910, 912 (7th Cir. 1965), cert. denied, 383 U.S. 962, 86 S.Ct. 1232, 16 L.Ed.2d 305 (1966); Germany v. Hudspeth, 209 F.2d 15 (10th Cir.), cert......
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...any deferment of the trial for the 88-day Springfield period is no part of an unreasonable delay." 408 F.2d at 548. In United States v. Pate, 351 F.2d 910 (7th Cir. 1965), the court dealt with a defendant's contention that a five-year detention in a mental hospital had deprived him of his r......
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