Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/308/444/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 08:33:42+00:00

Document:
Messrs. L. S. Moore and John Foshee, both of Centerville, Ala., and Edward H. Saunders, of Bessemer, Ala., for petitioner.
Mr. Thomas Seay Lawson, of Montgomery, Ala., for respondent.
Had petitioner been denied any representation of counsel at all, such a clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of assistance of counsel would have required reversal of his conviction. 3 But counsel were duly appointed for petitioner by the trial court as required both by Alabama law 4 and the Fourteenth Amendment.
But the denial of opportunity for appointed counsel to confer, to consult with the accused and to prepare his defense, could convert the appointment of counsel into a sham and nothing more than a formal compliance with the Constitution's requirement that an accused be given the assistance of counsel. 6 The Constitution's guarantee of assistance of counsel cannot be satisfied by mere formal appointment.
Petitioner was convicted on an indictment filed in the Bibb County Circuit Court for murder alleged to have occurred in 1932. He was found and arrested in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, shortly before March 21, 1938. On that date, Monday, he was arraigned at a regular term of the Court; two practicing attorneys of the local bar were appointed to defend him; pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity were entered and the presiding judge set his trial for Wednesday, March 23. The case was not reached Wednesday, but was called Thursday, the 24th, at which time his attorneys filed a motion for continuance, on the ground that they had not had sufficient time and opportunity since their appointment to investigate and prepare his defense. Affidavits of both attorneys accompanied the motion.
No ruling on the motion for continuance appears in the record, but on Thursday, the 24th, the trial proceeded before a jury.
When the motion for new trial was heard the only witnesses were petitioner's three attorneys. The third attorney, employed by petitioner's sister, testified only that he had been employed after the trial and verdict. The two attorneys who had represented petitioner at the trial substantially repeated what they had set out in their original affidavits. In some detail they testified that: they had conferred with petitioner after their appointment on Monday, March 21, but he gave them no helpful information available as a defense or names of any witnesses; between their appointment and the trial they made inquiries of people who lived in the community in which the petitioner had lived prior to the crime with which he was charged and in which the killing occurred and none of those questioned, including a brother of petitioner, could offer information or assistance helpful to the defense; they (the attorneys) had not prior to the trial conferred with local doctors, of whom there were four, as to petitioner's mental condition, had neither summoned any medical experts or other witnesses nor asked for compulsory process guaranteed an accused by the Alabama Constitution, Art. 1, Sec. 6. And in response to inquiries made by the trial judge they stated that they had not made any request for leave of absence from the court to make further inquiry or investigation.
Under the particular circumstances appearing in this record, we do not think petitioner has been denied the benefit of assistance of counsel guaranteed to him by the Fourteenth Amendment. His appointed counsel, as the Supreme Court of Alabama recognized, have performed their 'full duty intelligently and well.' Not only did they present petitioner's defense in the trial court, but in conjunction with counsel later employed, they carried an appeal to the State Supreme Court, and then Const. of Ala. (1901) Art. VI, Sec. 144. Their appointment and the representation rendered under it were not mere formalities, but petitioner's counsel haveas was their solemn dutycontested every step of statute, entertain causes at substantially case. Petitioner has thus been afforded the assistance of zealous and earnest counsel from arraignment to final argument in this Court.
The offense for which petitioner was convicted occurred in a County largely rural. The County seat, where court was held, has a population of less than a thousand. 14 Indictments in the Bibb County Circuit Court, as in most rural Counties throughout the Nation, are most frequently returned and trials had during fixed terms or sessions of court. 15 And these rural 'Court Weeks' traditionally bring grand and petit jurors, witnesses, interested persons and spectators from every part of the County into the County seat for court. 16 court terms; Idaho Code Ann. (1932) 1-706 rural Counties know each other, and information concerning witnesses and events is more widespread and more generally known than in large cities. Because this was so, petitioner's attorneys were able to make the inquiries during Court Week at the County seat, to which they testified, and that they apparently withdrew the plea of insanity after this inquiry is significant. That the examination and preparation of the case, in the time permitted by the trial judge, had been adequate for counsel to exhaust its every angle is illuminated by the absence of any indication, on the motion and hearing for new trial, that they could have done more had additional time been granted.
See 309 U.S. 694, 60 S.Ct. 465, 84 L.Ed. -. specific terms of district courts, and Sec. 57345766, fixing specific dates of county court terms; Idaho Code Ann. (1932) 1-706 et seq., requiring at least two terms each year for the district court in each county to be fixed by court order; Burns Indiana Stat.Ann. (1933) 4-332 et seq., fixing specific terms of circuit courts, 4-407 et seq., and 4-607, fixing specific terms of superior courts; Rev.Stat. of Maine (1930), c. 91, Sec. 21, p. 1262, fixing specific trial terms for superior courts; Mich.Stat.Ann. (Callaghan, 1938) § 27.546 et seq., providing for at least four terms of circuit court in each county organized for judicial purposes, at fixed times subject to change by court order (§ 27.547); Consol.Laws of New York, c. 30, § 84, providing that special and trial terms of supreme court be designated by the appellate division (see also § 150) and requiring that at least one special term and two trial terms must be held in each county annually, § 148; Rev.Stat. of Utah (1933), 20-3-6, 20-3-9, requiring at least three terms during each year for the district court at each county seat, at times to be fixed by the respective district judges; Public Laws of Vermont (1933), Sec. 1374, p. 296, fixing stated terms for holding county courts. In Pennsylvania, courts of quarter sessions, 'of oyer and terminer and * * * jail delivery shall be holden four times, annually, in every county.' 17 Purdon's Penn.Stat., §§ 331, 351, 371.
308 U.S. 540, 60 S.Ct. 119, 84 L.Ed. -.
Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158, 84 A.L.R. 527; see Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 286, 56 S.Ct. 461, 465, 80 L.Ed. 682.
Code of Ala., 1923, Sec. 5567.
Franklin v. South Carolina, 218 U.S. 161, 168, 30 S.Ct. 640, 642, 54 L.Ed. 980; Isaacs v. United States, 159 U.S. 487, 489, 16 S.Ct. 51, 52, 40 L.Ed. 229; see Minder v. Georgia, 183 U.S. 559, 561, 22 S.Ct. 224, 225, 46 L.Ed. 328.
Cf. Powell v. Alabama, supra; Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86, 91, 43 S.Ct. 265, 266, 67 L.Ed. 543.
Leeper v. Texas, 139 U.S. 462, 467, 468, 11 S.Ct. 577, 579, 35 L.Ed. 225; Ughbanks v. Armstrong, 208 U.S. 481, 487, 28 S.Ct. 372, 374, 52 L.Ed. 582; Minder v. Georgia, supra, 183 U.S. 562, 22 S.Ct. 225, 46 L.Ed. 328.
Cf. Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U.S. 97, 104, 24 L.Ed. 616; Walker v. Sauvinet, 92 U.S. 90, 92, 23 L.Ed. 678.
Green v. Frazier, 253 U.S. 233, 239, 240, 242, 40 S.Ct. 499, 501, 502, 64 L.Ed. 878; Nebbia v. New York, 291 U.S. 502, 537, 538, 54 S.Ct. 505, 516, 78 L.Ed. 940, 89 A.L.R. 1469.
Cf. Lewis v. United States, 146 U.S. 370, 374, 375, 13 S.Ct. 136, 137, 138, 36 L.Ed. 1011.
Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 590, 55 S.Ct. 579, 580, 79 L.Ed. 1074; Pierre v. Louisiana, 306 U.S. 354, 358, 59 S.Ct. 536, 538, 83 L.Ed. 757.
Avery v. State of Alabama, supra.
They proceeded upon prior indictments 'as well as upon indictments taken before themselves.' Stubbs's 'Crown Circuit' (Dublin), 2, 5, 7, 9, 10. 'And therefore it hath never been a question, but that the justices of gaol-delivery may take an indictment, try, and give judgment the same day.' 2 Hale's 'Pleas of the Crown', 1st American Ed., 33. The Sheriff was commanded to see that the prisoners 'together with their attachments, indictmenti, and all other muniments any ways concerning those prisoners * * * (be present and that) all they, who will prosecute against those prisoners, be then and there to prosecute against them, as shall be just.' Stubbs, supra, 4, 5. See 1 'Holdsworth's History of English Law', 1927, pp. 4951, 264 et seq.

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