Williams v. Holbrook

Decision Date23 September 1982
Docket NumberNo. 82-1027,82-1027
Citation691 F.2d 3
PartiesBetty J. WILLIAMS, a/k/a Tina Williams, Petitioner, Appellant, v. Terry HOLBROOK, et al., Respondent, Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Philip M. Weinberg, Boston, Mass., with whom Geller & Weinberg, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for appellant.

Paula J. DeGiacomo, Asst. Atty. Gen., Boston, Mass., with whom Francis X. Bellotti, Atty. Gen., Stephen R. Delinsky, Asst. Atty. Gen., Chief, Crim. Bureau, and Barbara A. H. Smith, Asst. Atty. Gen., Chief, Crim. Appellate Div., Boston, Mass., were on brief, for appellee.

Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, BOWNES, Circuit Judge, ROSENN, Senior Circuit Judge *.

ROSENN, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner, Betty Williams, appeals from the dismissal by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts of her second application for a writ of habeas corpus which challenges the constitutionality of her criminal conviction by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and resulting incarceration. The district court agreed with the magistrate to whom respondents' motion to dismiss the application for lack of exhaustion and abuse of the writ was referred that petitioner's state remedies were exhausted. The court differed with the magistrate, however, on the issue of abuse of the writ. On that ground, the court dismissed the petition, holding that petitioner was estopped from ever raising claims presented by her first petition pending in the district court when she escaped from prison. We reverse.

I

In 1971, a jury found Williams guilty of murder in the first degree, and the Superior Court of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, sentenced her to life imprisonment. On appeal, the Supreme Judicial Court found no error in the conduct of the trial or the jury's verdict but, nevertheless, modified the verdict to guilty of murder in the second degree, making petitioner eligible for parole after fifteen years. Commonwealth v. Williams, 364 Mass. 145, 301 N.E.2d 683, 688 (1973). On April 13, 1978, while Williams was serving her life sentence at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Framingham, she filed in the United States District Court her first application for federal habeas corpus relief along with a request for appointment of counsel. The application alleged that violations of her constitutional rights invalidated her conviction. The court did not act upon her petition and request for counsel until November 14, 1978, seven months after filing, when the court allowed the motion for appointment of counsel and ordered respondents to show cause why the writ should not be granted, returnable November 24, 1978. 1 Petitioner, however, had escaped from prison the day before and did not receive notice of the court's action. She was returned to prison March 1, 1979.

Shortly after her return to custody, Williams filed a motion to reopen the original petition for consideration of her constitutional claims on the merits. The court denied the motion expressly declining to decide whether petitioner was entitled to file a successive petition based on the same claims. On May 6, 1980, Williams filed her second petition. Her second petition contained substantially the same claims asserted in her first petition, somewhat more fully articulated. 2 Respondents moved to dismiss the petition on the grounds of abuse of the writ and failure to exhaust all of the claims. The district court referred the motion to a magistrate for a hearing on those questions. The magistrate rejected both challenges to consideration of the merits of the petition. The district court, while agreeing that petitioner had exhausted her claims, dismissed the petition for abuse of the writ because of petitioner's escape from prison during the pendency of her first petition.

II.

The threshold question which may be dispositive of the appeal is whether the petitioner exhausted in the state court her remedies for each of her federal claims.

A.

As a matter of comity between the state and federal courts, the latter are restrained in the exercise of their power to grant writs of habeas corpus to state-held prisoners by the exhaustion doctrine, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b) and (c). Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 1201-1202, 1203, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982); Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 275, 92 S.Ct. 509, 512, 30 L.Ed.2d 438 (1971); Dirring v. Commonwealth, 459 F.2d 953, 955 (1st Cir. 1972). The doctrine reflects acknowledgment at the federal level of a state's enormous interest in maintaining the integrity of its administration of criminal justice and therefore the interest of its courts in initially reviewing alleged trial errors which a state prisoner applying for federal habeas corpus relief would assert in the federal courts. Rose v. Lundy, 102 S.Ct. at 1203; Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. at 275, 92 S.Ct. at 512.

Williams' right to obtain relief in the federal courts on the basis of alleged constitutional infirmities in her state conviction and confinement is therefore conditioned, under the exhaustion doctrine, upon her first having fairly presented, to the extent possible, all of her federal claims to the state courts. She must have provided the state courts not only with all of the facts supporting her constitutional claims but also must have submitted the same governing legal arguments she would make in the district court. Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. at 277-78, 92 S.Ct. at 513-14; Domaingue v. Butterworth, 641 F.2d 8, 12 (1st Cir. 1981); Turner v. Fair, 617 F.2d 7, 11 (1st Cir. 1980); Salemme v. Ristaino, 587 F.2d 81, 86 (1st Cir. 1978); Fillippini v. Ristaino, 585 F.2d 1163, 1165 (1st Cir. 1978). On the other hand, she is not precluded from some reformulation of the claims she made in the state courts, since exhaustion requires only that "the substance of a federal habeas corpus claim must first be presented to the state courts." Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. at 278, 92 S.Ct. at 513 (emphasis added). Nor, for purposes of satisfying exhaustion, must petitioner adhere inflexibly to the legal theories and factual allegations recited to the state courts; a recitation in the state courts "book and verse" of the constitutional provisions on which she relies in the federal court is not mandated. Daugharty v. Gladden, 257 F.2d 750, 758 (9th Cir. 1958), quoted with approval in Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. at 278, 92 S.Ct. at 513.

B.

Following her indictment in Massachusetts for murder in the first degree and her arrest in 1970 in Chicago, Illinois, petitioner made a series of admissions to the police before trial. The first of these inculpatory statements was made while she was in custody on board a plane from Chicago to Massachusetts. She made further statements upon her arrival and detention at the Watertown, Massachusetts, police station.

At trial Williams' attorney moved to suppress the statements. He advanced the argument, first at the suppression hearing, and, after its rejection by the trial judge, on appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, that petitioner had not waived her right to be silent and her right to the presence of counsel despite her receipt of Miranda warnings at various times during the period when the statements sought to be suppressed were made.

Petitioner's second petition for habeas corpus, now before us, asserts that her confinement is illegal because of the following constitutional claims:

25. (Her) confinement ... is founded on a conviction which was based on the jury's consideration of an involuntary confession obtained subsequent to her indictment and after appointment of counsel, in violation of her right to counsel and due process of law under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

26. (Her) confinement ... is founded on a conviction which was based on the jury's consideration of an involuntary confession obtained in violation of petitioner's right to counsel and right not to incriminate herself under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

27. ... (T)he trial court and the Supreme Judicial Court failed to make a determination of the issue of the petitioner's waiver of her right to counsel and the voluntariness of petitioner's confession in accordance with the standards set down by the United States Supreme Court, thereby violating petitioner's rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

28. ... (T)he trial court and the Supreme Judicial Court applied a rule which diminished the burden of proof the prosecution must sustain in order to find that the petitioner waived her rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, thereby violating petitioner's rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The answer to the petition concedes exhaustion in the state courts of petitioner's claims stated in paragraphs 25 and 26 of the petition. Respondents argue only lack of exhaustion of the issues presented in paragraphs 27 and 28 of the petition. Now, on appeal, respondents urge that Williams failed to present to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court the substance or substantial equivalent of her sixth amendment claim contained in paragraph 25, as well as of her claims outlined in paragraphs 27 and 28. Paragraph 25, however, merely states petitioner's general claim that her sixth amendment right to counsel was violated. The specifics of both petitioner's fifth and sixth amendment claims are stated in paragraphs 27 and 28. The latter specifically refers to the sixth, as well as the fifth amendment, and raises issues of the applicable constitutional standards for determining whether rights to legal assistance and to be silent under questioning by police have been waived, the voluntariness of a confession made to police, and the prosecution's burden of proof in establishing such waivers and voluntariness. These specific claims, in any event, incorporate the general claims.

C....

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