Woodcock v. Amaral

• Decision Date: 26 December 1974
• Docket Number: No. 74--1140,74--1140
• Citation: 511 F.2d 985
• Parties: Lyle S. WOODCOCK, Petitioner-Appellant, v. R. W. AMARAL, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 985

511 F.2d 985

Lyle S. WOODCOCK, Petitioner-Appellant, v. R. W. AMARAL, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 74--1140.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Argued Sept. 11, 1974.

Decided Dec. 26, 1974. ^*

Daniel F. Featherston, Jr., Boston, Mass., with whom Featherston, Homans, Klubock & Griffin, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for appellant.

Michael C. Donahue, Deputy Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom Robert H. Quinn, Atty. Gen., John J. Irwin, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Chief, Crim. Div., and David A. Mills, Asst. Atty. Gen., Chief, Crim. Appellate Section, were on brief, for appellee.

Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge, and MOORE, ^** Senior Circuit Judge.

MOORE, Senior Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decision of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts dismissing appellant's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The district court's memorandum and order (reported at 373 F.Supp. 644) was based on an agreed record and the parties' briefs and oral arguments.

The appellant Lyle S. Woodcock was at one time an executive vice president and director of Liberty Loan Corporation, a company in the business of making small loans. In 1964 he was indicted by a Massachusetts special grand jury along with numerous other employees of small loan companies, the companies themselves, and some state officials. The indictment charged conspiracy and bribery of the state officials and resulted in two trials (commonly known as the 'small loans cases'). Only the first trial--the so-called 'first small loans trial'--is directly at issue in this appeal, although it will be necessary for us to refer occasionally to the 'second small loans trial' and the matters at issue therein.

The first small loans trial involved fifteen defendants and a total of forty-eight indictments, three of which named Woodcock. The trial lasted five months and generated a voluminous record, and Woodcock, along with most of his codefendants, was found guilty of conspiracy and bribery.

Appeals from the convictions were deferred until after the second small loans trial, which concerned an unrelated bribery scheme and in which Woodcock received a directed verdict of acquittal. Eventually appeals from the two trials were consolidated and heard by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, which affirmed the convictions in one of the longest opinions in that court's history. Commonwealth v. Beneficial Finance Company, 1971 Mass.Adv. Sheets, 1367, 275 N.E.2d 33 (1971). The Supreme Court denied certiorari, 407 U.S. 914, 92 S.Ct. 2433, 32 L.Ed.2d 689, and Woodcock's petition for a writ of habeas corpus followed.

The object of the conspiracy and bribery involved in the first trial was to insure that the Massachusetts Rate Board, which regulated the interest rates on small loans, did not lower the permissible rate. One Martin J. Hanley was the Deputy Commissioner of Banks in Massachusetts and the supervisor of the small loans industry. It was his job to present information pertinent to interest rates to the Rate Board at hearings beginning in November 1962. The agreement to bribe Hanley and through him at least some of the members of the Rate Board was made at a meeting held in October 1962, at the Commodore Hotel in New York City. ¹ Woodcock was present along with officials of other small loan companies, including one William Heath, a public relations executive with American Investment Co. Heath was to become the prosecution's star witness at trial, and without his testimony the government concedes that Woodcock could not have been convicted.

At trial, Heath recounted the proceedings at the Commodore Hotel meeting. First there was a discussion concerning whether to have a 'program' to bribe the Rate Board and then the size of the sum necessary to effectuate the bribe was considered. One participant, Frank Glynn, estimated that between $50,000 and $75,000 would be required. Woodcock responded that this figure was ridiculously high and that his company would have nothing to do with a program of that size. Heath then opined that $25,000 would probably be adequate, and, according to Heath, Woodcock replied:

'At the $25,000 figure perhaps we have no choice, but I want it clearly understood that the figure is $25,000 and not one penny more, and no one is to come back at a later date and request that the figure be raised under any conditions.'

The parties have stipulated that this testimony was crucial to Woodcock's conviction.

Woodcock urges reversal of the district court's dismissal of his petition on several grounds. All of his arguments have been considered by the trial court (either in motions made at various stages during the trial or in the defendants' subsequent motions for a new trial), the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and the district court. His contentions will be discussed in the order in which he raises them in his brief.

I. The Brady Issues

The first group of arguments raised by the appellant relates to the prosecutor's duty to disclose evidence materially favorable to the accused. See Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 86, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Woodcock cites three instances in which the favorable evidence was not disclosed and one in which the evidence, though disclosed, was allegedly the subject of a prosecutorial misrepresentation which induced Woodcock's attorney to refrain from bringing up the evidence at trial. To prevail under Brady, of course, the appellant must show not only that favorable evidence was not disclosed but also that the evidence was material to the issues of guilt or punishment. E.g., Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 154, 92 S.Ct. 763, 31 L.Ed.2d 104 (1972).

During the first small loans trial, Woodcock's attorney was given portions of Heath's grand jury testimony which showed that at the same Commodore Hotel meeting at which Woodcock allegedly entered into an agreement to bribe the Rate Board, he had also angrily refused to pay Hanley on another matter, the so-called Hanley program, which was the subject of the second small loans trial. However, the prosecutor, Mr. Travers, warned Woodcock's trial counsel that to cross-examine Heath on this refusal might well introduce criminal matters which, although not related to the allegations at issue in the first small loans trial, would nonetheless be prejudicial to Woodcock. ² Evidence about Woodcock's refusal to participate in the Hanley program would presumably have undercut the testimony that he agreed to bribe the Rate Board. For the jury to convict him of participating in the Rate Board conspiracy, Woodcock argues, it would have had to believe that he agreed to a bribe at one moment and then shortly thereafter, at the same meeting, emphatically disapproved of another bribe. ³ But having been deterred by the prosecutor's warning and thinking that questioning would bring out incriminating evidence pertaining to the Hanley program (for which the appellant was then under indictment), counsel did not cross-examine Heath about Woodcock's angry refusal to pay. Later, at the second small loans trial, when Heath did in fact finally testify concerning Woodcock's refusal to participate in the Hanley program, no other evidence in any way incriminating to Woodcock was disclosed, and he received a directed verdict of acquittal. Naturally, this development caused Woodcock's lawyer to wish that he had examined Heath about the refusal at the first trial and to think that he had been misled by the prosecutor's warning.

The appellant contends that the prosecutor's warning was not made in good faith, but rather was a device to prevent injection of evidence about the Hanley program into the first trial. Such testimony, Woodcock argues, would inevitably have brought to light the involvement of his codefendants in this wholly separate conspiracy, and the resulting prejudicial effect would have prompted them to move for a mistrial. This, of course, the prosecutor wanted to avoid. Were we to accept the contention that the prosecution deliberately undercut the value of a disclosure made pursuant to Brady with a false warning, there would be little doubt that a new trial would be required. If nondisclosure of Brady material is occasioned by prosecutorial misconduct, prophylactic considerations assume overriding importance. Accordingly, as decisions in other circuits have recognized, ⁴ much-reduced showing of materiality is required for a defendant so victimized to obtain a new trial. We have no doubt that this evidence would clear that small hurdle. In this case, however, there is every indication that the warning was made in good faith. At the hearing on the motions for a new trial made by the various defendants, the prosecutor, Mr. Travers, testified extensively. He explained that based on his knowledge of the evidence, he had thought when he gave the warning (and still thought at the time of the hearing) that an inquiry into Woodcock's refusal to contribute to the Hanley program would bring out evidence of still another conspiracy involving bribery of public officials in Massachusetts, the so-called legislative program. ⁵ After hearing this testimony, the trial court explicitly ruled that the prosecutor had made 'a perfectly correct, proper, and truthful statement under all of the circumstances.' ⁶ There is ample evidence to support this ruling, and we are not willing to dispute it at this stage. ⁷

It is unfortunate that defense counsel may have changed his trial tactics based on a warning which ultimately proved to be unwarranted. But there was full opportunity for counsel to explore the meaning of the warning more fully, and absent deliberate prosecutorial misconduct we see no basis for reversal on this ground.

The appellant's remaining Brady contentions are directed at three alleged failures of the prosecution to make constitutionally mandated disclosures of exculpatory evidence. Woodcock first argues that...