West v. State of Louisiana

• Decision Date: 05 September 1973
• Docket Number: No. 72-1338.,72-1338.
• Parties: Limmie WEST, III, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. STATE OF LOUISIANA, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

478 F.2d 1026 (1973)

Limmie WEST, III, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. STATE OF LOUISIANA, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 72-1338.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

May 1, 1973.

Rehearing Granted September 5, 1973.

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Wm. J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen. of La., Baton Rouge, La.; Jim Garrison, Dist. Atty., Shirley Wimberly, Jr., Asst. Dist. Atty., Byron P. Legendre, New Orleans, La., for defendant-appellant.

George M. Leppert, New Orleans, La., Court appointed, for plaintiff-appellee.

Before RIVES, WISDOM and RONEY, Circuit Judges.

Rehearing En Banc Granted September 5, 1973.

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

Limmie West was convicted of armed robbery after a jury trial in the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, Louisiana. On June 12, 1969, he was sentenced to forty-nine years and six months at hard labor. He did not appeal his conviction. A year after his conviction he filed a petition for habeas corpus in the state trial court. West's petition alleged that his lawyer, privately retained, had conferred with him for only five minutes before the trial, had no opportunity to subpoena witnesses, and had no time to prepare an effective defense. After holding an evidentiary hearing the state court denied the petition. The Supreme Court of Louisiana denied review. West then filed what he termed a "petition for rehearing" with the trial court, alleging in addition that he had been denied his right to appeal. After forty-five days elapsed without action by the trial court, West sought a writ of mandamus from the Louisiana Supreme Court. This writ was denied for West's failure to comply with procedural requirements.

After five and one-half months passed without action by the state trial court on his petition for rehearing, West sought habeas corpus relief from federal district court. His petition named the State of Louisiana as respondent. While this federal habeas petition was pending, the state court finally denied his petition for rehearing, seven months after it was filed. The federal district court subsequently granted West's petition without holding a further hearing, and ordered the State to release or retry West within thirty days. The State appeals from this order. It does not appear that the State presented any of its contentions to the district court, nor does the State contest the district court's holding that West was denied adequate representation by counsel. Though we amend the district court's order to direct it against West's immediate custodian rather than against the State of Louisiana, we affirm the holding of the district court in all other respects.

I.

The State first contends that West's petition must be dismissed on the ground that he failed to name a proper respondent. The federal habeas corpus statute requires that an application for habeas corpus

shall allege the facts concerning the applicant\'s commitment or detention, the name of the person who has custody over him and by virtue of what claim or authority, if known.

28 U.S.C. § 2242 (1972). West was in the immediate custody of the warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary. His federal habeas corpus petition, however, named the State of Louisiana as respondent, rather than the warden. The State argues on this appeal that the failure to name a proper respondent is sufficient ground for dismissing a habeas corpus petition.¹

Failure to name a proper respondent is a procedural rather than a jurisdictional defect, and it may be corrected by amendment of the petition.² See Ashley v. State, 9 Cir. 1968, 394 F.2d 125; Developments in the Law—Federal Habeas Corpus, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1038, 1167 (1970).

It is true that in the present case West apparently made no effort to correct his petition, and the district court did not amend it on its own initiative. But since West's unamended petition supplied in substance all the information which a habeas petition must contain, denial of his petition would give an unreasonably narrow reading to the habeas corpus statute.

In preparing his petition West utilized a standard form supplied by the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.³ He entered "State of Louisiana" as respondent at the head of the form. Line 1 of the form requires the petitioner to state his place of detention. West entered "Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, Louisiana" as his place of detention on this line. This entry makes it plain that his immediate custodian was the warden of the Angola penitentiary.⁴

West's petition therefore adequately conforms with 28 U.S.C. § 2242. The statute requires the petitioner to "allege . . . the name of the person who has custody over him." It does not specify that his allegation must be in the title of the case. Nor does it suggest that an allegation contained in the body of the petition may or must be disregarded by the courts.

The purposes of the statutory requirement are equally well served whether the immediate custodian is named as respondent or is identified elsewhere in the petition. Some courts have held it necessary to name the immediate custodian as respondent on the ground that it is he who must certify the cause of detention and respond to the court's order. See, e. g., Johnson v. State, 1968, S.D.Fla., 283 F.Supp. 494, 495-496; Osborn v. Court of Common Pleas, 1967, W.D.Pa., 277 F. Supp. 756. In fact, however, the role of the warden in habeas corpus litigation is limited to performing the perfunctory duties of producing the prisoner for a hearing or of releasing the prisoner should the petition be granted. Indeed, the response to the petition is customarily prepared by the state's attorney. Thus in this case the district attorney's office for the Parish of Orleans responded both to West's state habeas corpus petition, in which he named the warden as respondent, and to the federal habeas corpus petition, in which West named the State as respondent. The warden had no interest in the proceeding independent of that of the State. By supplying the locus of his detention, together with other information required by the standard form for habeas petitions, West furnished sufficient information to enable the state's attorney to represent the interests of the State and the warden, and to enable the court to frame a proper order. There is therefore no reason not to consider his petition as though he had named the proper respondent. See Wooley v. Consolidated City of Jacksonville, 5 Cir. 1970, 433 F. 2d 980.

Strict interpretation of the procedural requirements of § 2242 is sometimes justified as necessary to protect the courts from the burden of entertaining frivolous petitions. Developments, supra, 83 Harv.L.Rev. at 1175. Precisely the opposite result would occur were we to dismiss West's petition for failure to name a proper respondent. Dismissal for this reason would be without prejudice to West's right to submit a petition naming the correct respondent. See, e. g., Burns v. Welch, 1947, 81 U.S.App.D. C. 384, 159 F.2d 29. Thus West would once more have to labor up the judicial ladder, and the judiciary would once more have to consider his case. The result would only be to delay granting the relief to which West is entitled.

This case exemplifies well the need for giving a liberal construction to habeas corpus pleadings. See Gibbs v. Burke, 1949, 337 U.S. 773, 69 S.Ct. 1247, 93 L.Ed. 1686; Cisneros v. Beto, 5 Cir. 1970, 423 F.2d 201, cert. denied, 1970, 400 U.S. 839, 91 S.Ct. 78, 27 L.Ed.2d 72; Aiken v. United States, 4 Cir. 1960, 282 F.2d 215, 216; R. Sokol, Federal Habeas Corpus 99-102 (2d rev. ed. 1969); Developments, supra, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1174-75. West prepared his petition without the assistance of counsel. The record shows that he had only a limited education and had subnormal intelligence. His petition is meritorious and adequately prepared in every respect save his failure to designate the proper respondent. It is possible that this error may have been induced by the standard habeas corpus form. The form is designated for the use of "Persons in State Custody," but nowhere does it explain that, for purposes of pleading, the petitioner is to regard himself as in the warden's custody and not the state's.⁵

We are unwilling to disregard a violation of a petitioner's constitutional rights solely because he has tripped on a procedural hurdle of the kind involved in this case. See Chapman v. Texas, 1965, S.D.Tex., 242 F.Supp. 378, 381. When, as here, a layman preparing his own petition supplies in substance all the information which the statute requires, the petition may and should be considered on its merits.⁶

Though the district court would thus have been justified in treating West's petition as though he had named the warden rather than the State as respondent, the district court's order nevertheless was directed against the State. The order to release West should have been directed to the warden, as the state official responsible for carrying out the release. The order is affirmed, subject to the condition that it be amended to direct the warden to release West unless the State retries him within a reasonable time, preferably thirty days.

II.

The State next contends that the district court erred in granting relief without holding an evidentiary hearing and without giving comity to the findings of the state courts. This contention is without merit.

Under the standards enunciated by the Supreme Court in Townsend v. Sain, 1963, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770, a federal evidentiary hearing is required in habeas cases only when factual issues are not fully and fairly developed at the state level. In the present case all the relevant witnesses testified extensively at the state hearing. The state court's findings of fact pertinent to this appeal were that (1) West's lawyer had adequate time to prepare for the trial; (2) West conferred with his lawyer for more than five minutes; (3) West's lawyer was not appointed by the court in place...