Vargas v. Brown

• Citation: 512 F. Supp. 271
• Decision Date: 15 April 1981
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 81-0017.
• Parties: Raul VARGAS v. John BROWN.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Rhode Island

512 F. Supp. 271

Raul VARGAS v. John BROWN.

Civ. A. No. 81-0017.

United States District Court, D. Rhode Island.

April 15, 1981.

James MacFadyen, III, Barbara Hurst, Asst. Public Defenders, Providence, R. I., for plaintiff.

Kathryn A. Panciera, Appellate Division, Dept. of the Atty. Gen., R. I., Providence, R. I., for defendant.

OPINION AND ORDER

PETTINE, Chief Judge.

Raul Vargas, currently serving a life sentence for first degree murder in the Adult Correctional Institutions, has petitioned this Court for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He argues that he was denied due process by the state trial court's refusal to enquire into the voluntariness of a prior statement made by one Eduardo Guitard — a witness at trial — before permitting the prosecution to use that statement in impeaching Guitard's testimony. Petitioner properly presented this issue to the Rhode Island Supreme Court on direct appeal. That Court, although apparently agreeing with him that "there was a question whether the statement was in fact voluntarily given," held that the Constitution does not mandate a separate judicial inquiry into the voluntariness of a witness' prior statement when the statement is introduced only for purposes of impeachment. State v. Vargas, 2 R.I.Adv.Sh. 504, 420 A.2d 809, 813-14 (1980). Noting that this conclusion squarely conflicts with the holding of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in La France v. Bohlinger, 499 F.2d 29, cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1080, 95 S.Ct. 669, 42 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974), petitioner seeks habeas relief in this Court.¹

La France was a habeas case that raised the precise issue presented here. Writing for the Court, Judge Campbell concluded that a defendant's Fourteenth Amendment due process rights are violated by the prosecution's use of a witness' prior involuntary statement to impeach the credibility of that witness. If the defendant raises a genuine issue as to facts which, if established, would warrant a finding of involuntariness, then the trial judge must hold a hearing on the voluntariness issue before permitting the witness' statement to be used for any purpose. 499 F.2d at 35-36. The failure to hold such a hearing presents a cognizable habeas claim.

In opposing petitioner's claim in this case, the State relies on four main arguments:² 1) petitioner did not properly raise the issue at trial; 2) the issue was fully and fairly considered by the Rhode Island Supreme Court; 3) the La France approach has not been endorsed by the Supreme Court and has been rejected by some courts; and 4) even assuming its correctness as a statement of law, La France does not mandate a hearing in this case. Each of these arguments will be addressed in turn.

Failure Properly to Raise the Issue at Trial

Although conceding that petitioner's counsel objected to use of Guitard's prior statement at the time it was offered on grounds that it might have been involuntary, see Tr. at 46-47, the State contends that the due process issue was not properly raised at trial. It states that petitioner's counsel never presented a "Fourteenth Amendment argument" to the trial justice, and that counsel never explicitly requested an evidentiary hearing on voluntariness. Assuming arguendo that petitioner did not sufficiently pinpoint at trial the constitutional claim he now presses,³ it cannot be gainsaid that the claim was presented fully and specifically to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Indeed, the State's second argument for denial of this petition rests on that Court's thorough exploration and actual decision of the issue.

The principles of comity codified as the exhaustion requirement of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b) & (c) mandate that the state court be presented with "the same claim the petitioner urges on the federal courts", so that it may have a "fair opportunity to consider" that claim and "to correct the asserted constitutional defect". Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 276, 92 S.Ct. 509, 512, 30 L.Ed.2d 438 (1971). These federalism concerns would seem amply satisfied if the highest state court has been able to pass on the issue, regardless of whether every lower level of the state court system was asked its opinion along the way. No one has suggested that the Rhode Island Supreme Court was incapable of rectifying any error it found in Vargas' conviction. If that Court was willing to overlook possible deficiencies in petitioner's position at trial and reach his due process claim on appeal, this Court certainly need not concern itself with whether he committed some procedural default. See New Jersey v. Portash, 440 U.S. 450, 455, 99 S.Ct. 1292, 1295, 59 L.Ed.2d 501 (1979); Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 485 n.4, 97 S.Ct. 1272, 1275 n.4, 51 L.Ed.2d 498 (1977); United States ex rel. Cuomo v. Fay, 257 F.2d 438, 441 (2d Cir. 1958), cert. denied, 358 U.S. 935, 79 S.Ct. 325, 3 L.Ed.2d 307 (1959).

Consideration of the Issue by the Rhode Island Supreme Court

The State also presses this Court to deny the petition on grounds that Vargas' due process claim was "fully and adequately discussed and resolved by the Rhode Island Supreme Court." Memorandum at 25. Conceding this to be true, this Court must remind the State that the deference to state court determinations which is required in habeas proceedings refers only to questions of fact. It is axiomatic that "a federal habeas judge must independently apply the correct constitutional standard to the historical facts underlying petitioner's constitutional claim regardless of how fairly and completely the claim has been litigated in the state courts." Leavitt v. Howard, 462 F.2d 992, 995 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 884, 93 S.Ct. 175, 34 L.Ed.2d 140 (1972). Accord Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 318, 83 S.Ct. 745, 760, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963); Davis v. Heyd, 479 F.2d 446, 449 (5th Cir. 1973). This does not mean, of course, that the federal court should not give thoughtful consideration to the state court's judgment on legal questions. Patton v. North Carolina, 256 F.Supp. 225, 230 (W.D.N.C.1966), aff'd, 381 F.2d 636 (2d Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 905, 88 S.Ct. 818, 19 L.Ed.2d 871 (1968). Ultimately, however, the state court's views carry only persuasive power. In habeas, there is no deference to all but "clearly erroneous" conclusions of law. Cf. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) (setting out this standard for questions of fact).

This Court is not insensitive to the fact that the potential for conflicting rulings by the state and federal courts, which inheres in every § 2254 case, is fully realized in this case. That a single federal judge can overturn a conviction by accepting an argument thoughtfully considered and decisively rejected by the several judges of the highest state court may appear arrogant and unseemly. However, before branding this case as antithetical to all the principles that inspire "our federalism", it is well to recall Justice Frankfurter's admonition:

Insofar as habeas jurisdiction enables federal district courts to entertain claims that State Supreme Courts have denied rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, it is not a case of a lower court sitting in judgment on a higher court. It is merely one aspect of respecting the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution whereby federal law is higher than State law. It is for the Congress to designate the member in the hierarchy of the federal judiciary to express the higher law. The fact that Congress has authorized district courts to be the organ of the higher law rather than a Court of Appeals, or exclusively this Court, does not mean that it allows a lower court to overrule a higher court. It merely expresses the choice of Congress how the superior authority of federal law should be asserted.

Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 510, 73 S.Ct. 397, 448, 97 L.Ed. 469 (1953) (footnote omitted).

The Status of La France Today

In light of the above, much of the State's discussion of La France is irrelevant. Regardless of how thoughtful and well-reasoned the Rhode Island Supreme Court's opinion might be, and despite the fact that its conclusions on the due process issue are shared by the courts of Montana, see State v. Smith, 168 Mon. 93, 541 P.2d 351 (1975), it is surely not the province of this Court to elect between their views and those of the First Circuit. Absent a clear and persuasive showing that the Court of Appeals would not adhere to La France today, this Court must apply it without question.

The State has not adduced, nor has the Court independently found, any reason to suppose that La France might no longer be good law. Certainly, there is no intervening Supreme Court case on point. The State points to Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971), and argues by analogy that the strong policies against countenancing perjury justify the prosecution's use of prior inconsistent statements, even when they are obtained without full compliance with the Constitution. Harris, which permitted the impeachment use of statements procured in violation of Miranda, was decided three years before La France. The Court of Appeals took care to explain why that case was not controlling, and it is unnecessary to reiterate its reasoning here.⁴ The citation to Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969), is simply inapposite. The Alderman rule that a defendant has no standing to challenge the denial of another's constitutional rights is obviously unexceptionable; in La France, however, the First Circuit emphasized that the defendant's own due process rights were implicated by use of a witness' involuntary statement. 499 F.2d at 34-35. The State correctly points out that the more recent decisions in Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978) and New Jersey v. Portash, 440 U.S. 450, 99 S.Ct. 1292, 59 L.Ed.2d 501 (1979), are factually distinguishable from the instant case. However, the State ignores the language in both...