United States v. La Vallee, 272

• Decision Date: 29 September 1959
• Docket Number: No. 272,Docket 25365.,272
• Citation: 270 F.2d 513
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Joseph CORBO, Relator-Appellant, v. J. Edwin LA VALLEE, Warden, Clinton Prison, and the People of the State of New York, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

270 F.2d 513 (1959)

UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Joseph CORBO, Relator-Appellant, v. J. Edwin LA VALLEE,^* Warden, Clinton Prison, and the People of the State of New York, Appellees.

No. 272, Docket 25365.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued June 1, 1959.

Decided September 29, 1959.

M. Bernard Aidinoff, New York City (Jeffrey A. Fillman, New York City, on the brief), for relator-appellant.

Irving Anolik, Asst. Dist. Atty., Bronx County, New York City (Louis J. Lefkowitz, Atty. Gen., Paxton Blair, Solicitor General, Albany, N. Y., Daniel V. Sullivan, Dist. Atty., Bronx County, Walter E. Dillon, Asst. Dist. Atty., New York City, and George K. Bernstein, Asst. Atty. Gen., on the brief), for appellees.

Before CLARK, Chief Judge, and LUMBARD and WATERMAN, Circuit Judges.

LUMBARD, Circuit Judge.

Relator appeals from the denial, without a hearing, of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He seeks to set aside his 1951 conviction for first degree murder in Bronx County, New York, on the ground that statements and admissions that he made after his arrest and prior to his arraignment, which were admitted into evidence at his trial, were coerced in violation of due process of law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The constitutional validity of the conviction depends solely on whether or not the statements and admissions were made voluntarily. The Supreme Court's decisions in Payne v. Arkansas, 1958, 356 U.S. 560, 567-568, 78 S.Ct. 844, 2 L.Ed. 2d 975, and Spano v. New York, 1959, 360 U.S. 315, 324, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed. 2d 1265, establish that if the statements and admissions were coerced the writ must issue regardless of whether there was ample other evidence, apart from the statements and admissions, to support the jury's verdict.

The district judge denied the writ on the ground that the undisputed evidence did not support the claim of coercion and because he found sufficient other evidence aside from the allegedly coerced statements to support Corbo's conviction. It was error to rest the denial of the writ upon the presence of sufficient other evidence. Payne v. Arkansas, supra; Spano v. New York, supra.

We therefore find it necessary to review the state court record to determine whether the undisputed evidence supports Corbo's claim of coercion. Both parties have relied exclusively on the state trial record and that was all that the district judge was asked to consider. We have examined this record and after a consideration of all the undisputed evidence we are left with a firm and clear conviction that Corbo's statements and admissions were coerced in violation of due process of law. Accordingly, we reverse the order of the district court and direct that the writ issue.

In June 1951 Joseph Corbo and Rudolph Santobello were convicted of first degree murder for the killing on July 21, 1950 of Alfred Loreto, an off-duty policeman. The state proceeded to trial on the theory that the homicide was committed while the defendants were in the course of the commission of the felony of attempted larceny, the taking of Loreto's car.¹

At trial certain statements and alleged admissions given by the defendants were admitted into evidence over the repeated objections of defense counsel that they were the result of police coercion. The trial judge overruled all objections and left it to the jury to decide whether the statements were voluntary. He charged the jury that, if they had a reasonable doubt whether the defendants made the statements as the result of fear produced by beatings or threats, it was their duty to reject the statements and not to consider them as evidence. The trial judge did not charge the jury that if they found that the statements were involuntary they could not convict. The jury returned a general verdict of guilty, recommended mercy and both defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment.

On appeal the Appellate Division unanimously affirmed both convictions in a per curiam opinion. The court did not decide the claims of coercion as it found ample evidence to sustain the convictions aside from the alleged involuntary confessions of both defendants. 1953, 284 App.Div. 273, 131 N.Y.S.2d 540. The Court of Appeals affirmed, without opinion, unanimously as to Corbo, but with two judges dissenting as to Santobello. 1954, 307 N.Y. 928, 123 N.E.2d 574. Certiorari was thereafter denied. 1955, 348 U.S. 977, 75 S.Ct. 543, 99 L.Ed. 761.

In June 1958 Corbo filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Northern District of New York. Judge Brennan considered the petition on the record of the state court trial and on June 16, 1958 denied the petition without a hearing. He held that although it was not possible to tell whether the jury had accepted or rejected the disputed statements of the petitioner, his review of the petitioner's constitutional claim must nevertheless be limited to the undisputed facts. He found that such facts did not support petitioner's claim of coercion.

It is well established that, regardless of a finding of voluntariness, by jury or by judge in a state proceeding, it is the duty of the federal court in considering a petition for a writ of habeas corpus to make its own independent determination of whether the confession was voluntary. Thomas v. Arizona, 1958, 356 U.S. 390, 393, 78 S.Ct. 885, 2 L.Ed.2d 863; Brown v. Allen, 1953, 344 U.S. 443, 507-508, 73 S.Ct. 397, 97 L. Ed. 469; Stein v. New York, 1953, 346 U.S. 156, 182, 73 S.Ct. 1077, 97 L.Ed. 1522; United States ex rel. Wade v. Jackson, 2 Cir., 1958, 256 F.2d 7, 9. The undisputed facts upon which rests the determination of whether Corbo's statements and admissions were voluntary, are as follows.

The Events of July 21-22, 1950

A. The Homicide

At 7:45 P.M. on July 21, 1950, Ralph Sgueglia, a butcher, after making some deliveries, arrived at his home at 1841 Hering Avenue in his Buick car. When he stopped his car the two defendants, Corbo and Santobello, were waiting on the sidewalk. The two men got into the front seat of the Buick, Santobello on the driver's side, and Corbo on the passenger side, pushing Sgueglia in between them, and Santobello drove the car away. Sgueglia resisted as best he could, attempted to stop the car, grabbed the wheel and sounded the horn. While Santobello drove, Corbo struck Sgueglia over the head with a revolver and threatened to shoot him. Although he was dazed and splattered with blood, Sgueglia wrested the pistol from Corbo and struck him with it.

The erratic movements of the Buick attracted the attention of Alfred Loreto, an off-duty policeman, who lived down the street, and he followed in his green Dodge. The Sgueglia Buick went two blocks, mounted the curb and stopped. Corbo and Santobello both got out and ran back toward Loreto's Dodge. Corbo opened the door of the car and started to get in and shortly afterwards a second gun which he was carrying was discharged and Loreto staggered out of his car and died. Corbo and Santobello ran away through a vacant lot. Several eyewitnesses had seen them and it was known that one of them had brandished a gun.

B. The Arrest and Interrogation of Corbo

The police were alerted and immediately scoured the neighborhood. Two eyewitnesses had driven after the two men and they were able to advise the police patrol cars approximately where the assailants could be found. Within a short time Corbo was found sitting on a stoop a few blocks away from the shooting and he was taken to the 43rd Precinct Station House for questioning where he arrived at about 8:15 P.M. Santobello was stopped about ten blocks away from the shooting by two other officers and was also taken to the station house.

Corbo and Santobello were not booked when they were brought to the precinct station but were taken upstairs to the detective offices for questioning. The police dragnet soon crowded the station house with possible witnesses, police and newsmen, with some 40 or 50 persons clustered in the detectives' offices where Corbo and Santobello were brought. In the early morning hours, the Mayor and the Police Commissioner visited the station house.

Some time after his arrival at the station house, Corbo asked permission to call his wife in order to obtain the name of a lawyer. A policeman called Corbo's wife and obtained the name and address of a lawyer, one Harold Robbins. It does not appear, however, whether the police contacted Robbins.

After questioning four eyewitnesses to the abduction, shooting and flight, the district attorney and the police soon evolved the theory that Corbo and Santobello, upon fleeing the Sgueglia car, had decided to take the Dodge which had been following them, and in the course of this attempted larceny, Loreto had been killed. Under this theory, the defendants would be guilty of felony murder for which they might pay with their lives.² There was much initial confusion, however, among the eyewitnesses on various points, including the identity of the actual gunman, as Corbo and Santobello had both been wearing blue garments.

After about four hours of questioning by the police, Corbo was interrogated at 12:10 A.M. by an assistant district attorney in the presence of a stenographer. In this statement Corbo admitted that he and Santobello had forced their way into Sgueglia's car, that he, Corbo, had hit Sgueglia with a gun, that the car went out of control, and that when it ran up on the sidewalk and stopped they got out and ran away. Corbo identified the gun which Sgueglia had taken away from him and he said that the gun had then been empty. In this statement, however, he did not admit to any complicity in the shooting of Loreto. He denied seeing a green car or any car following Sgueglia's car and hearing any shots. The statement was completed at 12:30 A.M.

From the completion of Corbo's statement at 12:30 A.M. until 5:00 A.M., the record is completely barren of any of the details surrounding the detention and...