Source: http://supreme.nolo.com/us/404/270/case.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 06:10:05+00:00

Document:
A grand jury returned a murder indictment against a named individual "and John Doe, the true name and a more particular description of the said John Doe being to the said Jurors unknown." After respondent's arrest the indictment was amended pursuant to state law to substitute respondent's name for "John Doe." The highest state court affirmed respondent's subsequent conviction, rejecting his challenge to the legality of the indictment made on the ground that the amending procedure did not comply with the statute. Respondent subsequently filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court, which dismissed the petition. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the procedure by which respondent was brought to trial was violative of equal protection. The court rejected petitioner's contention that respondent, who had not previously raised the equal protection issue, had not exhausted available state judicial remedies as required by 28 U.S.C. § 2254, holding that respondent had presented the state court with "an opportunity to apply controlling legal principles to the facts bearing upon [his] constitutional claim."
Held: The substance of a federal habeas corpus claim must in the first instance be fairly presented to the state courts, and since, on the record and argument before it, the State's highest court had no fair opportunity to consider and act upon the equal protection claim, the Court of Appeals erred in holding that respondent had exhausted his state remedies. Pp. 404 U. S. 275-278.
BRENNAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and STEWART, WHITE, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined. DOUGLAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 404 U. S. 278.
"[Respondent] did not present the constitutional question to the Massachusetts court in the particular focus in which this opinion is directed. We suggested it when the case reached us, and invited the Commonwealth to file a supplemental brief. Not unnaturally, its first contention was to assert that [respondent] had not exhausted his state remedy. . . ."
"an accommodation of our federal system designed to give the State the initial 'opportunity to pass upon and correct' alleged violations of its prisoners' federal rights."
"it would be unseemly in our dual system of government for a federal district court to upset a state court conviction without an opportunity to the state courts to correct a constitutional violation."
Darr v. Burford, 339 U. S. 200, 339 U. S. 204 (1950) (overruled in other respects, Fay v. Noia, supra, at 372 U. S. 435-436). It follows, of course, that, once the federal claim has been fairly presented to the state courts, the exhaustion requirement is satisfied. See, e.g., Wilwording v. Swenson, supra, at 404 U. S. 250; Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U. S. 40, 389 U. S. 42-43 (1967); Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 344 U. S. 447-450 (1953).
Respondent challenged the validity of his indictment at every stage of the proceedings in the Massachusetts courts. As the Court of Appeals pointed out, 434 F.2d at 674, this is not a case in which factual allegations were made to the federal courts that were not before the state courts, see, e.g United States ex rel. Boodie v. Herold, 349 F.2d 372 (CA2 1965); Schiers v. California, 333 F.2d 173 (CA9 1964), nor a case in which an intervening change in federal law cast the legal issue in a fundamentally different light, see, e.g., Blair v. California, 340 F.2d 741 (CA9 1965); Pennsylvania ex rel. Raymond v. Rundle, 339 F.2d 598 (CA3 1964). We therefore put aside consideration of those types of cases. The question here is simply whether, on the record and argument before it, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had a fair opportunity to consider the equal protection claim and to correct that asserted constitutional defect in respondent's conviction. We think not.
denied him equal protection of the laws. Rather, from the outset, respondent consistently argued that he had been improperly indicted under Massachusetts law and, to the extent he raised a federal constitutional claim at all, that the indictment procedure employed in his case could not be approved without reference to whether the Fifth Amendment's requirement of a grand jury indictment applied to the States. He adverted to the Fourteenth Amendment solely as it bore upon that submission. [Footnote 10] The equal protection issue entered this case only because the Court of Appeals injected it.
we do not imply that respondent could have raised the equal protection claim only by citing "book and verse on the federal constitution." Daugharty Gladden, 257 F.2d 750, 758 (CA9 1958); see Kirby v. Warden, 296 F.2d 151 (CA4 1961). We simply hold that the substance of a federal habeas corpus claim must first be presented to the state courts. The claim that an indictment is invalid is not the substantial equivalent of a claim that it results in an unconstitutional discrimination. See Rose v. Dickson, 327 F.2d 27, 29 (CA9 1964); Morris v. Mayo, 277 F.2d 103 (CA5 1960). The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
308 F.Supp. 843 (Mass. 970).
Respondent does not contend that there are no available state judicial remedies through which he can present the equal protection claim. It appears that Massachusetts provides post-conviction procedures adequate to adjudicate that claim, either by motion for a new trial, Mass.Gen.Laws Ann., c. 278, § 29; see Earl v. Commonwealth, 356 Mass. 181, 248 N.E.2d 498 (1969), or by writ of error, Mass.Gen.Laws Ann., c. 250; see Cortellesso v. Commonwealth, 354 Mass. 514, 238 N.E.2d 516 (1968); Crowell v. Commonwealth, 352 Mass. 288, 225 N.E.2d 330 (1967); Shoppers' World, Inc. v. Board of Assessors, 348 Mass. 366, 376 n. 9, 203 N.E.2d 811, 819 n. 9 (1965).
"If the name of an accused person is unknown to the grand jury, he may be described by a fictitious name or by any other practicable description, with an allegation that his real name is unknown. An indictment of the defendant by a fictitious or erroneous name shall not be ground for abatement; but if at any subsequent stage of the proceedings his true name is discovered, it shall be entered on the record and may be used in the subsequent proceedings, with a reference to the fact that he was indicted by the name or description mentioned in the indictment."
"'no person . . . shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime . . . unless he shall have been previously charged on the presentment or indictment of a grand jury.'"
"[T]he dismissal in the Gedzium case of the applicability of the Fifth Amendment provision . . . would appear to be in need of reexamination, in the light of the development by the United States Supreme Court . . . of the doctrine of applicability of guarantees of the Federal Bill of Rights to the states by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment."
Brief for Connor in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court 13.
"As set forth supra, in the argument in support of the first Assignment, the indictment of 'John Doe' was a nullity because it was a general indictment, not limited to any identifiable individual. Since this is a capital case, the defendant Connor was prosecuted in violation of his constitutional right to due process in that he was put to trial without having been indicted by a Grand Jury."
"[h]e was brought to trial without indictment or presentment in violation of the Fifth Amendment and of the Massachusetts Constitution, . . . [of] the statutory provisions of [the fictitious name statute], and of the rule of the common law that an indictment in a capital case . . . forbids any amendment to such an indictment."
"must be administered in accordance with the principles pertaining to the Grand Jury as established by the law of the land, i.e., in accordance with due process as created by the common law and adopted by our Constitution. . . . In accordance with these principles, since the indictment did not name nor describe [respondent], it was, as to him, a nullity, and remained so after amendment."
"argued indiscriminately on the basis of the statutes and constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as upon federal grounds,"
"that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not make applicable to the states the grand jury requirement of the Fifth Amendment."
"since indictment is the only process provided for the finding of probable cause in Massachusetts prior to trial, its denial in Connor's case alone was undoubtedly a violation of Connor's federal rights not only as to due process, but also equal protection, under the Fourteenth Amendment, as stated by the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court."
Respondent reiterated these contentions in his federal habeas petition. See n 7, supra.
"The question that the Court treats exclusively as one of due process inevitably implicates considerations of both due process and equal protection."
That is likewise true here.
Moreover, a due process point is plainly raised where an accused claims that no grand jury found "probable cause" to indict him, that its only finding concerned someone unknown at the time.
The judges to whom that issue of law is tendered are learned men who we must assume are knowledgeable as to the meaning of due process. A law student who tendered a brief that left due process at large would certainly not be worthy of an "A." But the nicety of analysis which we associate with scholarship has no functional role to play in this area of exhaustion of state remedies. When we go to that extreme, we make a trap out of the exhaustion doctrine which promises to exhaust the litigant and his resources, not the remedies.
I fear that our reluctance to backstop the Court of Appeals in the present case is symptomatic of this Court's trend to sidestep all possible controversies so, as it hopes, to let them disappear. Of course we should remit a litigant to his state tribunal if facts have emerged which were not known at the time of the trial or if intervening decisions have outdated the earlier state decision. No such situation exists here. The facts are simple and uncontested: Connor's name was substituted for John Doe after the indictment was returned. The point of law is clear now, and will be no clearer on the remand. Its vulnerability tested by due process was as obvious when the case was before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts as it now is. I think the Court of Appeals acted responsibly in ruling on it. We should decide the merits here and now. Endless repetitive procedures are encouraged by today's ruling on exhaustion of remedies. I would bring this litigation to an end today by applying the "exhaustion of remedy" rule to terminate, rather than multiply, procedures that now engulf the state-federal regime.
The Court properly says that respondent tendered the validity of Commonwealth v. Gedzium, 259 Mass. 453, 156 N.E. 890, to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. That, however, was in his first assignment of error. But in his third and fourth assignments of error, he alleged that he was prosecuted "in violation of his constitutional right to due process in that he was put to trial without having been indicted by a Grand Jury."
The overlap is, of course, not total. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497, 347 U. S. 499. But the extent to which the two concepts merge has been a subject of debate since Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio, an architect of the Fourteenth Amendment, used the phrases "due process" and "equal protection" interchangeably on the floor of Congress. Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1088-1089. See, e.g., Wilson, The Merging Concepts of Liberty and Equality, 12 Wash. & Lee L.Rev. 182, Antieau, Equal Protection Outside the Clause, 40 Calif.L.Rev. 362, Tussman & tenBroek, The Equal Protection of the Laws, 37 Calif.L.Rev. 341. Compare Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353, and Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12, with Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, and Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45.
There is apparently a similar controversy in India, whose constitution also contains both a due process and equal protection clause. See, e.g., Narain, Equal Protection Guarantee and the Right of Property Under the Indian Constitution, 15 Int. & Comp.L.Q.199.
Dougharty v. Gladden, 257 F.2d 750 (CA9), which the Court cites, is instructive. Daugharty was an indigent state prisoner. He appealed the denial of state habeas corpus to the intermediate state appellate court, but that court dismissed the appeal because Daugharty could not afford to supply an appellate transcript. He then moved the state supreme court for an order requiring that he be supplied a transcript free of charge, and when that motion was denied, sought federal habeas corpus. The District Judge denied the application for a writ on the grounds Daugharty had failed to exhaust state remedies. Despite the fact that Daugharty never even mentioned the Fourteenth Amendment, much less the Equal Protection Clause, the Court of Appeals held that his motion in the state supreme court satisfied the exhaustion requirement.
"In moving the Oregon Supreme Court for an order requiring that a transcript be supplied without expense to him, Daugharty called attention to his inability to pay for such a record. This provided that court with all of the facts necessary to give application to the constitutional principle upon which appellant relies. . . . [E]xhaustion of state remedies is not to be denied because the Fourteenth Amendment was not specifically mentioned."
"Petitioner did not present the constitutional question to the Massachusetts court in the particular focus in which this opinion is directed. We suggested it when the case reached us, and invited the Commonwealth to file a supplemental brief. Not unnaturally, its first contention was to assert that petitioner had not exhausted his state remedy, citing Needel v. Scafati, 1 Cir., 1969, 412 F.2d 761, cert. denied 396 U.S. 861, . . . and Subilosky v. Commonwealth, 1 Cir., 1969, 412 F.2d 691. We find these cases inapposite. This opinion considers neither facts, as in Needel, nor precedent, as in Subilosky, that was not available to the Massachusetts court when petitioner was before it. Petitioner presented the court with 'an opportunity to apply controlling legal principles to the facts bearing upon [his] constitutional claim.' United States ex rel. Kemp v. Pate, 7 Cir., 1966, 359 F.2d 749, 751; cf. Wilbur v. Maine, 1 Cir., 1970, 421 F.2d 1327. That is enough to satisfy the requirements of the exhaustion . . . doctrine. Sullivan v. Scafati, 1 Cir., 1970, 42 F.2d 1023, 1024 n. 1. We therefore turn to the merits."

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