Source: https://openjurist.org/369/us/541
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 12:04:40+00:00

Document:
Ever since Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 4 S.Ct. 292, 28 L.Ed. 232 (1884), this Court has consistently held that there is no federal constitutional impediment to dispensing entirely with the grand jury in state prosecutions. The State of Washington abandoned its mandatory grand jury practice some 50 years ago.1 Since that time prosecutions have been instituted on informations filed by the prosecutor, on many occasions without even a prior judicial determination of 'probable cause'—a procedure which has likewise had approval here in such cases as Ocampo v. United States, 234 U.S. 91, 34 S.Ct. 712, 58 L.Ed. 1231 (1914), and Lem Woon v. Oregon, 229 U.S. 586, 33 S.Ct. 783, 57 L.Ed. 1340 (1913). Grand juries in Washington are convened only on special occasions and for specific purposes. The grand jury in this case, the eighth called in King County in 40 years, was summoned primarily to investigate circumstances which had been the subject of the Senate Committee hearings.
In his attempts before trial to have the indictment set aside petitioner did not contend that any particular grand juror was prejudiced or biased. Rather, he asserted that the judge impaneling the grand jury had breached his duty to ascertain on voir dire whether any prospective juror had been influenced by the adverse publicity and that this error had been compounded by his failure to adequately instruct the grand jury concerning bias and prejudice. It may be that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the State, having once resorted to a grand jury procedure, to furnish an unbiased grand jury. Compare Lawn v. United States, 355 U.S. 339, 349—350, 78 S.Ct. 311, 317—318, 2 L.Ed.2d 321 (1958); Costello v. United States, 350 U.S. 359, 363, 76 S.Ct. 406, 408, 100 L.Ed. 397 (1956); Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. 479, 485, 71 S.Ct. 814, 817, 95 L.Ed. 1118 (1951). But we find that it is not necessary for us to determine this question; for even if due process would require a State to furnish an unbiased body once it resorted to grand jury procedure—a question upon which we do not remotely intimate any view—we have concluded that Washington, so far as is shown by the record, did so in this case.
Petitioner's appearance before the Senate Committee was current news of high national interest and quite normally was widely publicized throughout the Nation, including his home city of Seattle and the State of Washington. His answers to and conduct before the Committee disclosed the possibility that he had committed local offenses within the jurisdiction of King County, Washington, against the laws of that State. In the light of those disclosures the King County authorities were duty-bound to investigate and, if the State's laws had been violated, to prosecute the offenders. It appears that documentary evidence—in the hands of petitioner's union—was necessary to a complete investigation. The only method available to secure such documents was by grand jury process, and it was decided therefore to impanel a grand jury. This Washington was free to do.
Secondly, it is said that the Washington statute permitting persons in custody to challenge grand jurors, Revised Code of Washington § 10.28.030, denies equal protection to persons not in custody who are investigated by grand juries. This point is not properly before this Court. Although both opinions of the Washington Supreme Court discuss the interpretation of § 10.28.030, neither considered that question in light of the equal protection argument for that argument was never properly presented to the court in relation to this statute. The Washington Supreme Court has unfailingly refused to consider constitutional attacks upon statutes not made in the trial court, even where the constitutional claims arise from the trial court's interpretation of the challenged statute. E.g., Johnson v. Seattle, 50 Wash.2d 543, 313 P.2d 676 (1957).2 Petitioner's formal attack at the trial court level did not even mention § 10.28.030, much less argue that a restrictive interpretation would be unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.3 That the prosecution and the court viewed petitioner as outside the scope of § 10.28.030 was brought home to him in the course of the trial court proceedings on his grand jury attack. But even then petitioner did not suggest that constitutional considerations might compel a different result. The failure to inject the equal protection contention into the case was carried forward to the proceedings before the Washington Supreme Court when petitioner failed to comply with that court's rule prescribing the manner in which contentions are to be brought to its attention. Rule 43 of the Rules on Appeal, Revised Code of Washington, provides that '(n)o alleged error of the superior court will be considered by this court unless the same be definitely pointed out in the 'assignments of error' in appellant's brief.' Mere generalized attacks upon the validity of the holding below as petitioner made in his 'assignments of error'4 are not considered by reason of this rule sufficient to invoke review of the underlying contentions. See, e.g., Washington v. Tanzymore, 54 Wash.2d 290, 292, 340 P.2d 178, 179 (1959); Fowles v. Sweeney, 41 Wash.2d 182, 188, 248 P.2d 400, 403, (1952). Nor will the Washington Supreme Court search through the brief proper to find specific contentions which should have been listed within the 'assignments of error.' See Washington ex rel. Linden v. Bunge, 192 Wash. 245, 251, 73 P.2d 516, 518—519 (1937). Moreover, the failure of petitioner to argue the constitutional contention in his brief, as opposed to merely setting it forth as he did in one sentence of his 125-page brief, is considered by the Washington Supreme Court to be an abandonment or waiver of such contention. E.g., Martin v. J. C. Penney Co., 50 Wash.2d 560, 565, 313 P.2d 689, 693, 80 A.L.R.2d 697 (1957); Washington v. Williams, 49 Wash.2d 354, 356—357, 301 P.2d 769, 770 (1956). Nor was the equal protection contention made at all in the petitions for rehearing filed after the Supreme Court had agreed with the lower court's interpretation of the statute to exclude petitioner. Assuming arguendo that for the purposes of our jurisdiction the question would have been timely if raised in a petition for rehearing, not having been raised there or elsewhere or actually decided by the Washington Supreme Court, the argument cannot be entertained here under an unbroken line of precedent. E.g., Ferguson v. Georgia, 365 U.S. 570, 572, 81 S.Ct. 756, 758, 5 L.Ed.2d 783 (1961); Capital City Dairy Co. v. Ohio, 183 U.S. 238, 248, 22 S.Ct. 120, 124, 46 L.Ed. 171 (1902). Furthermore, it was not within the scope of the questions to which the writ of certiorari in this case was specifically limited, 365 U.S. 866, 81 S.Ct. 900, 5 L.Ed.2d 858, and for this additional reason cannot now be presented.
The final argument under the Equal Protection Clause is that Washington has singled out petitioner for special treatment by denying him the procedural safeguards the law affords others to insure an unbiased grand jury. But this reasoning proceeds on the wholly unsupported assumption that such procedures have been required in Washington in all other cases.5 Moreover, it is contrary to the underlying finding of the Superior Court, in denying the motion to dismiss the indictment, that the grand jurors were lawfully selected and instructed. And even if we were to assume that Washington law requires such procedural safeguards, the petitioner's argument here comes down to a contention that Washington law was misapplied. Such misapplication cannot be shown to be an invidious discrimination. We have said time and again that the Fourteenth Amendment does not 'assure uniformity of judicial decisions * * * (or) immunity from judicial error * * *.' Milwaukee Electric Ry. & Light Co. v. Wisconsin ex rel. Milwaukee, 252 U.S. 100, 106, 40 S.Ct. 306, 309, 64 L.Ed. 476 (1920). Were it otherwise, every alleged misapplication of state law would constitute a federal constitutional question. Finally, were we to vacate this conviction because of a failure to follow certain procedures although it has not been shown that their ultimate end—a fair grand jury proceeding—was not obtained, we would be exalting form over substance contrary to our previous application of the Equal Protection Clause, e.g., Graham v. West Virginia, 224 U.S. 616, 630, 32 S.Ct. 583, 588, 56 L.Ed. 917 (1912).
The process of selecting a jury began with the exclusion from the panel of all persons summoned as prospective jurors in the November 12 trial of Dave Beck, Jr. In addition, all persons were excused who were in the courtroom at any time during the trial of that case. Next, the members were examined by the court and counsel at length. Of the 52 so examined, only eight admitted bias or a preformed opinion as to petitioner's guilt and six others suggested they might be biased or might have formed an opinion—all of whom were excused. Every juror challenged for cause by petitioner's counsel was excused; in addition petitioner was given six peremptory challenges, all of which were exercised. Although most of the persons thus selected for the trial jury had been exposed to some of the publicity related above, each indicated that he was not biased, that he had formed no opinion as to petitioner's guilt which would require evidence to remove, and that he would enter the trial with an open mind disregarding anything he had read on the case.
We cannot say the pretrial publicity was so intensive and extensive or the examination of the entire panel revealed such prejudice that a court could not believe the answers of the jurors and would be compelled to find bias or preformed opinion as a matter of law. Compare Irvin v. Dowd, supra, at 723—728, 81 S.Ct. at 1642—1645, where sensational publicity adverse to the accused permeated the small town in which he ws tried, the voir dire examination indicated that 90% of 370 prospective jurors and two-thirds of those seated on the jury had an opinion as to guilt, and the accused unsuccessfully challenged for cause several persons accepted on the jury. The fact that petitioner did not challenge for cause any of the jurors so selected is strong evidence that he was convinced the jurors were not biased and had not formed any opinions as to his guilt. In addition, we note that while the Washington Supreme Court was divided on the question of the right of an accused to an impartial grand jury, the denial of the petitioner's motions based on the bias and prejudice of the petit jury did not raise a single dissenting voice.
That this state policy for impartial grand juries has been generally accepted as the settled law of Washington is demonstrated, not only by the statements of the four judges who voted to reverse this conviction,4 but also by the current practice cited to us of other Washington trial courts.5 Indeed, the presiding judge who impaneled the Beck grand jury made sufficient inquiries to insure that grand jurors would not be biased against the State in its investigation of Beck.
The Court, however, finds that the Murphy and Guthrie cases have no relation to the guarantee of a fair and impartial grand jury but are 'concerned only with whether the members of the grand jury had been selected by chance.' But even the State has taken no such position, either before the Washington Supreme Court or here. In its brief before the Washington Supreme Court the State acknowledged that the Washington statute as interpreted by the Murphy and Guthrie cases set out a 'well-recognized rule' that state 'grand juries should be impartial and unprejudiced.'6 And even in this Court the State does not repudiate this acknowledgment but says only that because the Washington Supreme Court was equally divided 'the meaning of Washington statutes in regard to grand juries cannot be determined at this point.' But of course we must decide what the Washington law is in order to pass upon Beck's claim that Washington has denied him the equal protection of the law.
This question is not that which the Court treats as crucial, whether there is proof in the record that some individual grand juror was actually prejudiced against Beck, but rather the quite different question of whether the judge who impaneled the grand jury took the precautions required by the statute and its controlling judicial interpretation to insure a grand jury that would not be tainted by prejudice against Beck. I think that the record in this case shows beyond doubt that the presiding judge failed to do what the state law required him to do—try to keep prejudiced persons off the grand jury. This failure was particularly serious here because of the extraordinary opportunity for prejudgment and prejudice created by the saturation of the Seattle area with publicity hostile and adverse to Beck in the months preceding and during the grand jury hearing.
Petitioner Beck is a long-time resident of Seattle, well known to the community as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and as a former president of the Western Conference of Teamsters. Beginning in March 1957, he became the target of a number of extremely serious charges of crime and corruption by the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field and its staff. These charges were given unprecedented circulation in the Seattle area.7 On March 22 23, banner headlines proclaimed the Committee's charge that Beck had used $270,000 in Teamsters funds for his own benefit. When Beck appeared before the Committee several days later and refused to answer questions regarding the charges, he again drew headline coverage in the Seattle press: 'BECK TAKES 5TH AMENDMENT.' One television station went so far as to run a 9 3/4-hour telecast of the proceedings. On May 3, the headlines announced the fact that Beck had been indicted for federal tax evasion and that a former mayor of Seattle had received a special appointment to prosecute further charges before a state grand jury. On May 9, 15 and 16, other front-page, page-wide headlines appeared, the last charging that Beck had misused his position of union trust no less than 52 different times. On May 17, a three-column front-page story recounted the fact that Beck had pleaded the Fifth Amendment 60 times to questions from the Senate Committee. And on May 20, the day the grand jury was impaneled, headlines announced Beck's expulsion from his AFL—CIO post on the ground that 'Dave Beck was found 'guilty as charged' by the A.F. of L.C.I.O. executive council,' and that same paper also carried a charge by Senator McClellan that Beck 'has committed many criminal offenses.' All the while radio, television, the national news magazines and the press in lesser front-page and backup stories published charges of a similar nature. This flood of intense public accusation of crime and breach of trust by prominent and highly placed persons, coupled with publicity resulting from Beck's refusal on grounds of possible self-incrimination to answer questions before the Senate Committee as to the charges made, imposed a very heavy duty on the presiding judge under Washington law to protect Beck from a biased and prejudiced grand jury.
This failure of the judge denies petitioner a protection which Washington has provided to similarly situated defendants over the years and which, so far as now foreseeable, Washington will continue to provide to all Washington defendants in the future. This failure would be cast in a different light if the Washington Legislature had repealed its law or if its Supreme Court had altered its interpretation and set out a general rule abrogating the right to have judges take affirmative action to insure an unbiased grand jury. But without any change in the prior law or any sure indication that Beck's 'law' is the law of the future, the State of Washington in convicting Beck applies special and unfair treatment to him. For only Beck, a single individual out of all the people charged with crime by indictment in Washington, is denied his clearly defined right under the law to have the state judicial system insure his indictment by 'impartial grand jurors.' Through the device of an equally divided vote in the Washington Supreme Court he goes to prison for 15 years. I think that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids such an invidious picking out of one individual to bear legal burdens that are not imposed upon others similarly situated.10 I cannot agree with the Court that such a gross discrimination against a single individual with such disastrous consequences can be treated as a mere trial error. For a judicial decision which sends a man to prison by refusing to apply settled law which always has been and so far as appears will continue to be applied to all other defendants similarly situated is far more than a mere misapplication of state law.11 It is a denial of equal protection of the law and a State should no more be allowed to deny a defendant protection of its laws through its judicial branch than through its legislative or executive branch.
I think that petitioner was denied equal protection of the law for still another reason. The four Washington judges who voted to affirm the conviction below, and whose views have therefore determined the outcome of Beck's case, agreed that those 'in custody or held (on bail) to answer for an offense,' the '(p)ersons for whose benefit that statute was enacted,' are entitled to grand jurors without bias or prejudice.12 This divides all persons suspected of larceny by embezzlement, as petitioner was, into two classes: (1) those persons in custody or on bail, and (2) those persons who are only under investigation by grand jury. The first class is entitled to have an impartial and unbiased grand jury; the second is not. The four judges who wanted to reverse this conviction could see no reason, nor can I, for saying that one charged with crime and in jail or on bail should be entitled to an unprejudiced grand jury but one who happened not to be already held for grand jury action could validly be indicted by a biased and prejudiced grand jury. So far as the need to be free from prosecution by a prejudiced grand jury is concerned, there can be no rational distinction between the need of the man who is not yet in custody and the need of the man who is in jail or on bail,13 particularly where as here the grand jury was called for the specific purpose of examining into petitioner's activities and was so instructed. No doubt the clearest evidence of the lack of rationality in such a distinction is the fact that for 108 years the State of Washington has itself made no such distinction. For even though the statute on its face applies only to those in custody or on bail, it has always been interpreted to guarantee an impartial grand jury to all.
The other four judges did say: 'There is no showing of bias or prejudice,' but gave not the slightest evidentiary or even argumentative support to show the correctness of this offhand statement.17 In these circumstances where there has been no finding by the trial court and where the highest court of the State has divided evenly so that there is no finding there either, our ordinary 'solemn duty to make independent inquiry and determination of the disputed facts'18 upon which the question of denial of equal protection of the law turns becomes particularly pointed. Considering the overwhelming evidence to support the four judges who thought that petitioner had made a showing of prejudice, it seems inconceivable to me that it can fairly be said that no showing of prejudice was made.
(b) The Court says: 'That the prosecution and the court viewed petitioner as outside the scope of § 10.28.030 was brought home to him in the course of the trial court proceedings on his grand jury attack.' I cannot agree that the trial court construed § 10.28.030 as denying Beck the right to an impartial and unprejudiced grand jury or informed him to that effect. While it is true that the State's counsel argued and the trial court agreed that petitioner could not question the method of impaneling the grand jury by a 'Challenge to Grand Jury,' the trial court never even intimated that § 10.28.030 limited its assurance of an impartial and unprejudiced grand jury only to those who were indicted while they were in jail or out on bond. On the contrary, the trial court admitted, even though it ultimately denied petitioner's motion without further comment, that petitioner could attack the grand jury—'incidentally on a motion to set aside that indictment'—precisely the kind of motion the petitioner actually made under § 10.40.070, which motion is set out in note 3 of the Court's opinion.
(d) Another ground for this Court's refusal to rule on Beck's claim is that: 'The Washington Supreme Court has unfailingly refused to consider constitutional attacks upon statutes not made in the trial court * * *.' But even a casual investigation of the opinions of that court shows that it has not 'unfailingly' followed any such practice.20 Moreover, no Washington case or any other has been cited to prove that a question of equal protection of the law must be raised in the trial court even though that court does not itself ever make a ruling which denies equal protection of the law. And I would think that this Court would not tolerate use of such a state device to bar correction of constitutional violations.
(f) The Court also goes so far as to say that Beck's constitutional question was not included among those questions presented which our writ of certiorari was granted to review. I disagree. In the questions presented in the petition for certiorari and in the brief supporting that petition, counsel for Beck repeatedly asserted that in the manner of selecting this grand jury Beck had been denied the equal protection of the law. The core of all these claims is discrimination growing out of the manner of the selection of the grand jury. The particular classification claim which the Court seeks to avoid passing on is also a claimed discrimination with reference to the manner of selection of the grand jury. Since all these contentions are inextricably intertwined, under our decision of last term in Boynton v. Virginia25 I see no more reason for refusing to pass on one than another. That case held a statutory claim of discrimination to have been sufficiently raised where discrimination generally was 'the core of the * * * broad constitutional questions presented.' Moreover, I agree with Mr. Justice DOUGLAS that under Rule 23 which prohibits 'unnecessary detail' and which deems a question presented 'to include every subsidiary question fairly comprised therein' even the most general claim of equal protection would have been sufficient to raise petitioner's claim.
The net result of what has taken place in the Washington Supreme Court and here is to leave Beck in this predicament: the State Supreme Court considered his contention, tried to decide it but could not because it was equally divided; this Court on the contrary refuses to decide it at all on the ground that Beck has never raised such a question anywhere. The practical consequence of this predicament is to accept the argument of the State that if Beck's constitutional rights are to be protected he must depend upon 'the Washington legislature and not the United States Supreme Court,'26 For this Court to accept such a consequence seems to me to be an abandonment of its solemn responsibility to protect the constitutional rights of the people.
Although, according to Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 4 S.Ct. 111, 28 L.Ed. 232, Washington need not use the grand jury in order to bring criminal charges against persons, it occasionally does use one; and a grand jury was impaneled in this case. It is well settled that when either the Federal Government or a State uses a grand jury, the accused in entitled to those procedures which will insure, so far as possible, that the grand jury selected is fair and impartial.1 That is the reason why the systematic exclusion of Negroes from grand jury service infects the accusatory process. See Pierre v. Louisiana, 306 U.S. 354, 59 S.Ct. 536, 83 L.Ed. 757; Cassell v. Texas, 339 U.S. 282, 70 S.Ct. 629, 94 L.Ed. 839. The same principle was applied in Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 74 S.Ct. 667, 98 L.Ed. 866, when Mexicans were systematically excluded from duty as grand and petit jurors. The same principle would also apply 'if a law should be passed excluding all naturalized Celtic Irishmen' from grand jury duty. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 308, 25 L.Ed. 664.
"Senate Probe Lifts Lid on Beck Beer Business—Use of Union Money Related.' Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 9, 1957.
'The amount, intensity, and derogatory nature of the publicity received by appellant during this period is without precedent in the state of Washington. A Seattle newspaper carried a news item reporting that the switchboard of a local radio station that had broadcast the committee proceedings on the preceding day was jammed with calls, and that the officials of the station characterized the response to the broadcast on the part of the public as 'astounding,' and that such response was greater than that resulting from any other broadcast ever aired by them. The serious accusations made by United States senators in the committee hearings are generally regarded by laymen as being official charges (which appellant had refused to answer), and thus the impression was created among the general public that appellant had been found guilty of a crime.' 56 Wash.2d 474, 510—512, 349 P.2d 387, 408.
Revised Code of Washington § 10.28.030. The bracketed portion is from § 10.28.010, a companion section relating to challenges to the entire grand jury panel. These provisions were §§ 45—46 of the original 1854 Act, Washington Territory Acts, p. 110.
82 Wash. 284, 286, 144 P. 32, 32—33.
These four judges were of the opinion that the above-cited statute and cases required this case to be decided on the 'premise that * * * (Beck), as a matter of law, was entitled to an impartial and unprejudiced grand jury,' and that the 'failure of the court to interrogate the jurors for the existence of possible bias and prejudice against the officers of the teamsters' union constituted prejudicial error.' State v. Beck, 56 Wash.2d 474, 519, 520, 349 P.2d 387, 412, 413, 353 P.2d 429. Judge Hunter in a separate opinion stated that the requirement of impartiality 'was announced as essential to a grand jury proceeding by both the legislature and the supreme court of this state, in the statutes and decisions * * *.' 56 Wash.2d, at 537, 349 P.2d, at 423—424.
"Q—Would there be anything in your acquaintanceship with Mr. Schuster that would in any way tend to affect your decisions in this Grand Jury investigation?
"Q—In other words, you wouldn't have any hatred or malice or fear or favor or anything of that nature so far as your deliberating would be concerned in connection with this investigation?
"Q—From what you have heard, and I don't believe you live in a vacuum any more than the rest of us, is there anything you have read or that has been suggested by the court in these proceedings that would suggest to you why you couldn't be fair, impartial and objective in making an examination into law enforcement in this county?
See Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. Co. v. Matthews, 174 U.S. 96, 104—105, 19 S.Ct. 609, 612—613, 43 L.Ed. 909. Cf. McFarland v. American Sugar Refining Co., 241 U.S. 79, 86, 36 S.Ct. 498, 501, 60 L.Ed. 899.
'(T)he law works unequally by allowing one class of persons to object to the competency of the grand jury, whilst another class has no such privilege. This cannot be. The law furnishes the same security to all, and the same principle which gives to a prisoner in court the right to challenge, gives to one who is not in court the right to accomplish the same end by plea . . ..' See also Hardin v. State, 22 Ind. 347, 351—352; Crowley v. United States, 194 U.S. 461, 469—470, 24 S.Ct. 731, 734—735, 48 L.Ed. 1075.
82 Wash. 284, 287—288, 144 P. 32, 33.

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