Opinion ID: 1452825
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: petitioner was convicted under due process of law

Text: The trial record, I believe, establishes that petitioner was convicted under the highest and most vigorously applied standards of due process of law, and that the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming. On the night of December 10, 1964, he murdered Frederick Walch, age 16, and Frederick's sister, Bonnie Lee Walch, age 17. He beat Frederick in the head with a hammer as the boy lay on his bed in a basement area, fracturing his skull in at least four places. Then, since death was not immediate, Hawkins caused his victim's death by slitting his throat so that the youth died from drowning in his own blood. He pulled the bed covers over the dead boy so that the body was not exposed. On count 1, charging the murder of Frederick Walch, the jury returned a special verdict that Hawkins committed the crime; that he was mentally irresponsible or insane at the time of its commission; that the mental irresponsibility or insanity did not continue to exist at the time of trial; but that there was such a likelihood of a relapse or recurrence of the insanity or mental irresponsibility that petitioner was unsafe to be at large. This finding of temporary insanity is consistent with the evidence that he may have murdered the youth while under the brief effect of some drug, or while caught up in a sudden violent reaction of anger to the remarks which the boy made. Hawkins killed Bonnie Lee some time later, striking her in the head with a hammer and then stabbing her through the heart with a knife. From evidence of Hawkins' actions and conduct following the killing of Frederick, the jury found that he had recovered his sanity when he attacked Bonnie Lee and that he killed her by design and with premeditation. In his statements to police officers, Hawkins showed good mental recall of his actions and events after he had killed the boy. He remembered that Frederick and Bonnie Lee had quarreled with him for living off their mother. He told the officers that he followed Freddie to the basement, saw the boy sit on the bed and remove his shoes, and that he then hit him with the hammer. He then went back upstairs and sat down to have a cup of coffee. Thus, the record bears out that, during a substantial time interval between the first and second murders, Hawkins changed his clothes and drank coffee for a while. There was evidence that Bonnie Lee, unaware of the murder of her brother, talked to Hawkins and upbraided him again for living in their house and shortly thereafter that she then went to her bedroom in the basement. Hawkins followed her there. When she turned on the bedroom light, he hit her in the head with a hammer. Psychiatric testimony and other evidence enabled the jury to find that, during the lapse of time between the first killing and the second, and while he changed clothes and drank coffee, the toxic effects of whatever drugs Hawkins claimed to have taken or the temporary insanity possessing him when he murdered the boy, had worn off. Carol Walch, mother of the two children, returned home sometime after 1 a.m., December 11, 1964. She went first into the kitchen and then into her bedroom where she lay down across the foot of the bed. Hawkins followed her and said, `I guess you don't want me around here anymore?' She acknowledged this to be true and told him that his presence caused too much trouble with the children. She testified that he replied to the effect that they would not bother her any more and then he stood up and said, `You better call the police,' and, according to her testimony, He walked to the living room, grabbed his coat, and went out the front door. Alarmed at this remark and his demeanor, Mrs. Walch went to the children's rooms, found her children dead and ran to the neighbors', who called the police at about 1:30 a.m. From proof of defendant's actions after the killings, the jury had further evidence from which to find him mentally responsible when he murdered the girl. There was evidence that he stole a car, drove north in it and abandoned it south of Chehalis. He had a rational conversation with a service station operator there and then hitched a ride on a beer truck to Seattle. Later that evening, en route out of the country to Canada, a border patrol officer, acting on a circulated police bulletin, intercepted and apprehended him. He was taken from Blaine to the Whatcom County jail at Bellingham and put in custody of an officer from the Vancouver Police Department. This court affirmed the judgment and sentence. State v. Hawkins, 70 Wn.2d 697, 425 P.2d 390 (1967), and the Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari, 390 U.S. 912, 19 L.Ed.2d 883, 88 S.Ct. 840, by order of January 22, 1968. One would think that the denial of certiorari would end the matter except for possible executive clemency. Neither during trial nor on appeal to this court did the defendant complain of or assign error to the manner and method in which the jury which tried him had been drawn and impaneled, or intimate that the jury had been unfairly examined, selected or constituted. He used only 7 of the 12 peremptory challenges available to him. The entire 153 pages of the statement of facts devoted to the voir dire examination of the jury are completely free of error; they contain no challenges to the array nor any objections whatever to the venire, the method of selecting a jury, or even a suggestion that the accused considered any phase of impaneling the jury unfair or prejudicial. Now, after all avenues of appeal have been exhausted and certiorari denied by the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 6 years after the commission of the two murders, this court  in a collateral proceeding, acting under what I consider to be the most vague and illusory notions of stare decisis  not only grants one half a new trial, but exceeding, I think, its constitutional powers, improvises a novel procedure in doing so. The petitioner, I think, has no true remedy left him but to seek executive clemency, and I therefore dissent both to granting petitioner a new trial and also to the kind of half trial authorized. Neither the rationale of Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 20 L.Ed.2d 776, 88 S.Ct. 1770 (1968), nor Boulden v. Holman, 394 U.S. 478, 22 L.Ed.2d 433, 89 S.Ct. 1138 (1969), upon which the court depends, in my opinion warrants a granting of the petition at all, much less supports a remand for what is now unhappily becoming known by the curious name of bifurcated trial, i.e., a retrial on the sole issue of the death penalty. The statutes and procedures governing the selection and impaneling of juries in those cases differ so markedly from the statutes of this state and the procedures followed in selecting the Hawkins jury that those cases can hardly be regarded as supporting this court's present course. As cited in Witherspoon, the Illinois statute, [3] unlike those controlling selection of the Hawkins jury, provided that a juror could be challenged for cause and dismissed merely if he said (1) that he had conscientious scruples against capital punishment or (2) simply that he was opposed to capital punishment. The Supreme Court, as I understand its opinion, decided to reverse in Witherspoon on the premise that, in picking the jury according to that statute, the deck not only could be but in fact had been stacked against the accused. It emphasized that the tone was set when the trial judge said early in the voir dire, `Let's get these conscientious objectors out of the way, without wasting any time on them.' [391 U.S., at 514] It reports that in rapid succession 47 veniremen were successfully challenged for cause and dismissed on the basis of their indeterminate attitudes against the death penalty. Not more than four of the 47 explicitly stated that under no circumstances would they vote to impose capital punishment, yet all 47 were, nonetheless, excused. Only one venireman, admitting to a religious or conscientious scruple against the death penalty, was examined at length; she finally was ruled disqualified and told by the court to step aside. But despite what appears in Witherspoon to be a summary discharge of jurors based frequently on only vague and indefinitely expressed ideas against the death penalty, the court, in commenting on the propensity of some jurors to inflict the death penalty, said, at page 518: In light of the presently available information, we are not prepared to announce a per se constitutional rule requiring the reversal of every conviction returned by a jury selected as this one was. (Italics mine.) The Witherspoon opinion thus turns upon the stated conclusion reached by the Supreme Court that the state of Illinois has stacked the deck against the defendant. Having reached that conclusion, the court had no choice but to grant the accused a new trial. No such bizarre conclusion, however, could possibly be drawn from the Hawkins trial record  a record showing in detail a careful, circumspect and conscientious effort to select a fair and impartial jury. Witherspoon thus supplies a most unsubstantial basis for granting a new trial. It is of equally doubtful authority on the question of limiting the new trial to the issue of punishment. The Supreme Court, both in the rationale and in the decree, set forth in the opinion a categorical judgment of reversal and directed a new trial. Were it not for an annexed footnote comment, [4] the case, in the ordinary course of procedure, would have gone back to the trial court for a new trial on all issues. Thus, it is not the ruling of Witherspoon  but rather a footnote stating that the opinion did not in that or any other case render invalid the conviction, as distinguished from the actual sentence  which suggests the pattern now adopted by this court. Without that footnote, the opinion contains no authority  nor in the absence of statute does one exist generally in constitutional law  empowering this court to ordain a separate jury and separate trial on the issue of the death penalty. The other case relied upon by the court, Boulden v. Holman, 394 U.S. 478, 22 L.Ed.2d 433, 89 S.Ct. 1138 (1969), does not, in my view, warrant the novel course on which the court now embarks. Although the court concluded in Boulden that the sentence of death could not constitutionally stand, it acknowledged, at page 484: We do not, however, finally decide that question here, for several reasons. First, the Witherspoon issue was not raised in the District Court, in the Court of Appeals, or in the petition for certiorari filed in this Court. A further hearing directed to the issue might conceivably modify in some fashion the conclusion so strongly suggested by the record now before us. Further, it is not clear whether the petitioner has exhausted his state remedies with respect to this issue. Finally, in the event it turns out, as now appears, that relief from this death sentence must be ordered, a local federal court will be far better equipped than are we to frame an appropriate decree with due regard to available Alabama procedures. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded to the District Court, where the issue that has belatedly been brought to our attention may be properly and fully considered. (Footnote omitted. Italics mine.) How a local federal court would be far better equipped to frame a decree more appropriate to available Alabama procedures than would be the Supreme Court by its mandate is not specified, but, in making the observation, the Supreme Court can scarcely be claimed to state a principle of constitutional law upon which this court can rest its instant decision. Boulden followed the currently tortuous path. After judgment and sentence imposing the death penalty had been affirmed by the Alabama Supreme Court, Boulden v. State, 278 Ala. 437, 179 So.2d 20 (1965), the case then moved over into the federal system on a petition for habeas corpus, where retrial was denied. Boulden v. Holman, 257 F. Supp. 1013 (N.D. Ala. 1966). The Court of Appeals affirmed, Boulden v. Holman, 385 F.2d 102 (5th Cir.1967), and denied rehearing, 393 F.2d 932, 395 F.2d 169 (1968). Certiorari was thereupon granted by the Supreme Court, 393 U.S. 822, 21 L.Ed.2d 93, 89 S.Ct. 224 (1968), subsequent to Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 20 L.Ed.2d 776, 88 S.Ct. 1770 (1968). The Alabama statute applied in Boulden reads as follows: On the trial for any offense which may be punished capitally ... it is a good cause of challenge by the state that the person has a fixed opinion against capital ... [punishment] ... Ala. Code, Tit. 30, § 57. At page 481, speaking of that statute, the Boulden opinion observes that: That statutory standard has been construed by the Alabama Supreme Court to authorize the exclusion of potential jurors who, although opposed to capital punishment, ... would hang some men. In applying the Alabama jury statutes, the trial court and counsel in Boulden examined the veniremen no deeper than to elicit a statement that I don't believe in capital punishment, or to show a similarly vague disapproval of it. In this fashion, 15 prospective jurors were virtually summarily discharged under the statute. But even if court and counsel had conducted inquiries of a more penetrating nature, the Boulden decision would probably have been the same, for in it the Supreme Court extended its Witherspoon holding to reach a conclusion that the Boulden trial record, under the statute as construed, constituted a systematic exclusion of all veniremen who had shown any opposition whatever to the death penalty. Boulden thus turns on a record which indicated that many veniremen were summarily excused by the court on state challenges, without argument or further inquiry, because they merely answered that they either had fixed opinions against capital punishment or did not believe in it. In essence, then, the Boulden holding is directed against the systematic exclusion of certain kinds of jurors. The Hawkins trial record, however, shows no systematic exclusion whatever of any kind, class or type of juror. In following what it perceives to be the Boulden rationale, this court now departs from the fundamental rule that discretionary power to try challenges is vested in the trial court. Exalting form above substance, the court seems to be looking for a sort of stylized dialogue as a basis for affirming or reversing the trial court's judgment rather than determining whether, from the entire record, the court manifestly abused its discretion. Neither Boulden, Witherspoon, nor this court, however, prescribes the catechism expected to be found in the voir dire record and they leave unclear how a trial judge can apply the Boulden rationale either as written or in the extension of it now adopted. If a prospective juror categorically answers that he would never inflict the death penalty or that he does not believe in capital punishment, and defendant, withholding all objections, is satisfied with these answers, has the trial judge a duty to press the prospective juror sua sponte for more detailed answers? Ought the court on its own initiative probe the juror's psyche when the defendant does not wish to inquire further? Neither Boulden nor this court's opinion contemplates the possibility that overexamination of prospective jurors  the interminable courtroom palaver so frequently characterizing juror selection in this country  may instill sub rosa in the venireman's mind more prejudices than it will elicit, nor the likelihood that the practice of pressing veniremen too far is more likely to produce a prejudiced jury than a fair one. The Washington statute, differing from the cited statutes of Illinois and Alabama, reads as follows: No person whose opinions are such as to preclude him from finding any defendant guilty of an offense punishable with death shall be compelled or allowed to serve as a juror on the trial of any indictment or information for such an offense. RCW 10.49.050. It is aimed primarily at prospective jurors, who, because of conscientious scruples against the death penalty, would violate their oath to decide the case upon the evidence. State v. Riley, 126 Wash. 256, 218 P. 238 (1923); State v. Mahoney, 120 Wash. 633, 208 P. 37 (1922). It has been applied to exclude not only jurors who would be precluded from a finding of guilt, but also those who would automatically find against the imposition of the death penalty. State v. Smith, 74 Wn.2d 744, 779, 446 P.2d 571 (1968). We examined this statute recently in a collateral proceeding brought under Witherspoon in State v. Aiken, 75 Wn.2d 421, 452 P.2d 232 (1969), and held that neither the statute nor Witherspoon required formalistic dialogue. We said that there was sufficient basis for excusing a juror if the venireman indicated that his opposition to the death penalty was honest, unyielding and irrevocable. I think this to be a sound principle, well stated and fully consonant with all ideals of due process of law. Now the court seems to have abandoned this principle and appears to be looking for a kind of formalistic dialogue or catechism as the ultimate test of the Witherspoon and Boulden decisions. When the prospective juror says, in effect, that his opposition to the death penalty is honest, unyielding and irrevocable, has he passed the new test or must he be pressed further? Discretion to seat or exclude a juror has always rested with the trial court  where it logically belongs. If a trial judge on the basis of a prospective juror's attitudes toward the death penalty excuses him, that exercise of discretion is  and of course should be  subject to review, but unless the ruling is manifestly an abuse of discretion the error is not reversible. RCW 10.49.040; White v. Territory of Washington, 3 Wash. Terr. 397, 19 P. 37 (1888). Judicial discretion has been described as a sound judgment which is not exercised arbitrarily but with regard to what is right and equitable. State ex rel. Clark v. Hogan, 49 Wn.2d 457, 303 P.2d 290 (1956). Not all rulings rest on the trial court's discretion; discretion is reserved for questions to which no strict rule of law is applicable. Where there is a clearly-defined and well-settled applicable rule of law, the courts are bound to enforce the rule, and discretion in the matter does not exist. Trunk v. Hertz Corp., 32 Ohio Op.2d 264, 200 N.E.2d 894 (1964). If the law provides no strict and explicit rule, however, the decision necessarily rests on the court's discretion. In the very nature of things, there can be no rigid and explicit rules for determination of jury challenges. Except to vest in the trial court a sound discretion, where else can the discretion to try challenges sensibly be placed? Other than ordaining an appellate contrived catechism and looking for formalistic answers to formalistic questions, how else can trial of challenges be reviewed? Except to search the record for a manifest abuse of discretion in the trial of challenges, what other tests are available to a reviewing appellate court? What will a reviewing court do when some prospective jurors, in seeking an easy way to avoid an unpleasant task, early in the voir dire divine that a categorical statement against the death penalty will result in their release from the panel? Who is to decide the bona fides of their answers  the appellate court on review or the trial court at the trial? Contrast the jury selection procedure as reported in Witherspoon and Boulden with the careful and painstaking methods employed in picking the Hawkins jury. First, the court informed the Hawkins veniremen that the jury might have to consider imposing the death penalty. As a preliminary inquiry, it asked if there were any in the prospective jury that does not believe in, or who we'll say believes against capital punishment? The court then asked one of the prospective jurors, a Mrs. Wolfenbarger, and you'd feel that even though it is the law that you could not follow this law, is that correct, Mrs. Wolfenbarger? Similar questions were put to two other veniremen. Petitioner apparently approved of these queries and answers in the selection of a fair and impartial jury panel, for when defense counsel was asked by the court if he wished to interrogate Mrs. Wolfenbarger, he answered, No, your Honor. He made no objection or contrary indication with respect to the other two jurors. What should the trial court have done at that juncture? Was it under a duty to conduct an independent inquiry when the answers appeared satisfactory to both defense and prosecution, and the court too? It is quite possible that the defendant, for reasons not appearing of record, welcomed the exclusion of these jurors from his case. He said nothing to convey the slightest dissatisfaction with their being excused. Is silence to be taken now as an objection? Are appellate courts to be held equipped to divine the nonstated objection or challenge? Or, should they continue to go by the record? Of 13 assignments of error, none was directed to the selection of the jury when the Hawkins judgment and sentence was appealed to this court. State v. Hawkins, 70 Wn.2d 697, 425 P.2d 390 (1967). Nor was there any claim of error asserted concerning the drawing, examining and impaneling of the jury when the accused petitioned for certiorari and it was denied. Hawkins v. Washington, 390 U.S. 912, 19 L.Ed.2d 883, 88 S.Ct. 840 (1968). Our statutes place the trial of challenges where it belongs  before the trial judge. The court's decision seems to place that function now in the appellate courts. How will appellate courts decide those challenges where prospective jurors say one thing one moment and another a few moments later? How will appellate courts resolve the predicament of those jurors who have a genuine difficulty in understanding what court and counsel are driving at in their interrogation? With discretion no longer the test, what will be done with the venireman who in one breath says he cannot under any circumstances vote to impose the death penalty, but in the next says that he can conceive of a case bad enough to induce him to inflict it, and then, during a rehabilitative voir dire, concludes both ways again? In whom should discretion be vested to determine the juror's state of mind  an appellate court reviewing the answers from a typed record, or the trial court who sees the juror and hears his answers? It is a universal rule that, where the decision of the trial court is a matter of discretion, reversal will lie only upon a showing of abuse of that discretion. MacKay v. MacKay, 55 Wn.2d 344, 347 P.2d 1062 (1959). Abuse of discretion means something more than a mere error of judgment. Abuse of discretion is not shown unless the court's discretion was manifestly unreasonable or on untenable legal grounds. State ex rel. Nielsen v. Superior Court, 7 Wn.2d 562, 110 P.2d 645, 115 P.2d 142 (1941); State ex rel. Beffa v. Superior Court, 3 Wn.2d 184, 100 P.2d 6 (1940). I find nowhere in this record of trial that the court was unreasonable in balancing the interests of the state and the accused in a fair and impartial jury. Except for the three prospective jurors in the Hawkins venire excused by the court on the basis of their early responses  and to which no objection or comment was made by the defense  the record of 153 pages of voir dire examination shows a most scrupulous and painstaking effort by court and counsel to impanel a fair and impartial jury. At the outset, the trial court told the Hawkins veniremen that one accused of crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and any juror who had reached some conclusions or had preconceived ideas as to the guilt or innocence of the accused would be disqualified. Four jurors, Mrs. Luehrs, Mr. Byers, Mrs. Green and Mr. Johnson, with the consent of the accused, were excused by the court because they had indicated they had in one degree or another formed an impression as to the accused's guilt or innocence. These dismissals were not charged against any of the peremptory challenges. Each prospective juror was carefully examined in detail. So manifestly fair was the voir dire that no issue whatever arose concerning the fair-mindedness and impartiality of the jury ultimately sworn to try the case. After the panel had been questioned and passed for cause by both prosecution and defendant, the defendant exercised only seven peremptory challenges. During the entire course of the voir dire, according to my calculations, 36 veniremen were examined as possible principal jurors (not including alternates). Of these 36, 15 were excused for cause, and 7 were excused under the defendant's peremptory challenges. The defendant thus had five unused peremptories available. Of the 15 excused for cause, 6 expressed bias on the merits and 1 was excused for family reasons. Eight were excused for bias against capital punishment. Detailed examination of the Hawkins trial record shows a careful, painstaking and prudent effort to select a fair, impartial and unbiased jury, free of prejudice or error or hint of systematic exclusion. The court points to no breach of rules, statutes, principles or precedents governing the selection of juries in capital cases upon which to rest its decision. It finds no abuse of discretion either, but, ruling as though it had, nevertheless reverses. How will this court's extensions of Witherspoon and Boulden operate? It is quite likely that to the existing overlong and argumentive process of jury selection unfortunately now standard in American courts, there will be added new imponderables not yet dreamed of. Panels of veniremen presently subjected to the most exhaustive inquiries, hypotheses, arguments and virtually unrestricted examinations will perforce face new and subtler queries, thus supplying more material for further probings, hypotheses and persuasions. Even the most fair-minded juror, I think, can be badgered by court and counsel into a state of prejudice and intolerance, but the record will not reveal it. The Hawkins jurors were not subjected to this kind of grilling. Although the voir dire was thorough, it so comported with due process and good sense that neither the accused nor the prosecution nor the court saw any issue as to the fair-mindedness and impartiality of the jury. Will this court's new holding engender this same degree of fairness in future capital trials? Counsel and court, in picking the Hawkins jury, avoided what the court's opinion now invites  either a formalistic catechism based on what are divined to be the requirements of Witherspoon and Boulden or, in the alternative, a protracted examination inevitably involving prolonged hypothesizing, badgering and arguing with prospective jurors. Catechistic questions designed to elicit a categorical answer that the juror, under no circumstances, could vote to inflict the death penalty, will invite opposing counsel to rehabilitate the juror by conjuring up hypotheses of a most depraved and vicious crime, compelling the juror despite strong conscientious and moral scruples against capital punishment to concede reluctantly that he could bring himself in a particular case to vote to impose it. This was the kind of badgering and argumentation avoided in picking the Hawkins jury, as shown in a record that is quite free of the kind of interminable voir dire palaver which I believe the court's opinion engenders. As earlier observed, defense counsel at no time voiced any objection whatever to the excusing of any venireman, and he accepted the jury with five peremptory challenges unused. It was the kind of jury, I think, which impartially and without prejudice decided the case and determined the punishment according to the evidence.