Opinion ID: 770890
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Unified Sovereign Authority Under Article IV, S 3

Text: 28 In analyzing whether the Territorial Court had jurisdiction for petitions brought under the Virgin Islands habeas statute, the District Court gave priority to the institutional separation between the two courts that S 1613 of the Revised Organic Act requires, rather than to the jurisdictional separation required by the Revised Organic Act's S 1612. This priority, however, is mistaken. Because both the Territorial Court and the District Court derive their power from the same sovereign, i.e., the U.S. Congress, the institutional separation is administrative rather than constitutional. Consequently, this separation does not prevent the Territorial Court from reviewing prior decisions made by the District Court in cases in which the District Court sat as a local court. 29 Because the separation is administrative rather than constitutional, when the jurisdiction of these courts is changed, as was accomplished by S 1612, there is no bar to the Territorial Court exercising its revised jurisdiction to review a judgment of the District Court made under territorial law. The jurisdictional separation discussed above indeed requires that the divesting of the District Court of its jurisdiction for local civil actions also strips it of jurisdiction for local habeas petitions from territorial prisoners like Parrott, even though the District Court sentenced those prisoners. 30 Under our earlier reasoning in Brow and Moravian Sch. Advisory Bd., the Territorial Court possesses jurisdiction over local habeas provisions from prisoners it tried and sentenced. See Walker, slip opinion at 3-4 (3d Cir. Oct. 13, 2000) (citing Callwood v. Enos, 230 F.3d 632 (3d Cir. Oct. 13, 2000)); Parrott, 56 F. Supp. 2d at 596 n.10. The District Court, nevertheless, concluded that our decision in Joseph v. DeCastro, 805 F. Supp. 1242 (D.V.I. 1992), aff'd, 995 F.2d 217 (3d Cir. 1993) (affirming without opinion), and the newly established federal-state relationship between the two courts, which the Revised Organic Act's S 1613 codified, prevented the Territorial Court from reviewing the District Court's earlier convictions. Were it to relinquish this jurisdiction, the District Court reasoned, prisoners such as Parrott would be deprived of habeas relief because territorial courts, like state courts, cannot review a federal District Court decision. See Parrott, 56 F. Supp. 2d at 596. This denial would in turn violate the Virgin Islands Bill of Rights, which guarantees that [a]ll persons shall have the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and the same shall not be suspended except as herein expressly provided. 48 U.S.C. S 1561 (West 1987 & Supp. 2000); see also Parrott, 56 F. Supp. 2d at 596. We are not persuaded, however, that this is the correct interpretation of the Revised Organic Act's revised jurisdictional scheme. 31 First, the decision in Joseph, which concluded that the District Court is the more appropriate forum for review of local habeas petitions, can be distinguished because at the time Joseph was decided, the District Court retained original jurisdiction over many local criminal actions. Moreover, the court in Joseph recognized that its conclusion would change at such time as jurisdiction over local crimes was vested in the local judicial system. Joseph, 805 F. Supp. at 1252. As of 1994, however, when the Virgin Islands Legislature vested jurisdiction for all local crimes with the Territorial Court, that jurisdictional obstacle was removed. See 4 V.I. Code Ann. S 76(b)(1) & (c) (1997). 8 Thus, the District Court now lacks the concurrent jurisdiction over local criminal actions that it shared with the Territorial Court at the time of Joseph. 9 The elimination of concurrent jurisdiction does not prevent the Territorial Court from reviewing District Court decisions before 1994 that were based on local law. It does, however, preclude the local court's review, under the local habeas law, of any District Court criminal convictions decided after 1994. The Territorial Court can only exercise habeas review of cases in which it is the successor court to the District Court of the District Court's now-terminated territorial jurisdiction. 10 32 The District Court was reluctant to construe the Territorial Court's habeas jurisdiction to parallel our reasoning in Brow and Moravian Sch. Advisory Bd. because it wished to avoid having the Territorial Court review the decision of a federal court. This purported federalism concern is, however, a red herring: The restructuring of the relationship between the District Court and the Territorial Court in SS 1612 and 1613 of the Revised Organic Act requires the opposite conclusion. 33 The District Court's power originates under Article IV, S 3, which authorizes Congress to regulate the various U.S. territories. See Binns v. United States, 194 U.S. 486, 491 (1904) (recognizing Congress's plenary power to define institutional relationships in territories). Congress exercises this authority through the Revised Organic Act, which serves as the Virgin Islands constitution. See 48 U.S.C. SS 1541-1645 (West 1987 & Supp. 2000); Brow, 994 F.2d at 1032. As such, the Revised Organic Act is also the source of authority for the Virgin Islands Legislature. See 48 U.S.C. S 1574(a). It is through the Revised Organic Act that Congress authorizes the local legislature to grant the Territorial Court its jurisdiction. See 48 U.S.C. S1611(b). Consequently, both the Territorial Court and the District Court derive their respective jurisdictional grants from the same sovereign -- namely, Congress, exercising its authority under Article IV, S 3. 34 As a result, the District Court does not derive its jurisdiction, as do other federal courts, from Article III. See United States v. George, 625 F.2d 1081, 1088-89 (3d Cir. 1980). 11 Nor has the District Court previously been treated as a court of the United States or, as we say more commonly, as an Article III court. See generally United States v. Kennings, 861 F.2d 381 (3d Cir. 1988). In Kennings, we applied the federal anti-bribery statute to proceedings in the District Court of the Virgin Islands because the statute covered the solicitation of bribes before any court, not just to bribery attempts by witnesses appearing before courts of the United States. Id. at 388-89. Indeed, the District Court continues, even after the 1984 amendments, to classify itself as territorial, rather than federal, in a constitutional sense. See 35 Acres Assoc. v. Adams, 962 F. Supp. 687, 690 (D.V.I. 1997). 35 Thus, while Congress has elected, for administrative purposes, to treat the Virgin Islands as a separate sovereign, see Government of Virgin Islands v. Schneider, 893 F. Supp. 490, 495 (D.V.I. 1995), the constitutional relationship between the territories and the federal government remains unified: 36 [I]n a federal Territory and the Nation, as in a city and a State, [t]here is but one system of government, or of laws operating within [its] limits. City and State, or Territory and Nation, are not two separate sovereigns to whom the citizen owes separate allegiance in any meaningful sense, but one alone. 37 United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313, 321 (1978) (internal citations omitted). Moreover, vesting a territorial court with jurisdiction similar to that vested in the District Courts of the United States does not make it a `District Court of the United States.'  Mookini v. United States, 303 U.S. 201, 205 (1938). See also Barnard v. Thorstenn, 489 U.S. 546, 551-52 (1989) (holding that Supreme Court lacked supervisory power over District Court of the Virgin Islands because that court was not an Article III federal district court). Before the 1984 amendments, the District Court considered itself a local court, see George, 625 F.2d at 1088, so that, for the purposes of Parrott's trial, the District Court sat as a local court. Federalism concerns, therefore, are not implicated in matters where the District Court, in the past, reviewed questions of local law sitting as a territorial court and exercising its general jurisdiction. See Spink v. General Accident Ins. Co. of Puerto Rico, Ltd., 36 F. Supp. 2d 689, 691 n.6 (D.V.I. 1999). 38 Until 1994, the District Court and the Territorial Court had concurrent jurisdiction over most criminal actions and thus shared power over these local actions. Now, that jurisdiction lies solely in the Territorial Court. In this sense, the Territorial Court's authority to review certain District Court criminal convictions under local law is akin to that of a successor court's power to review the decisions of its predecessor in jurisdiction. See Excavation Constr., Inc. No. One Contracting Corp. v. Quinn, 673 F.2d 78, 80 (3d Cir. 1982) (recognizing territorial court's successor jurisdiction to municipal court). Cf. Beck v. Beck, 432 A.2d 63, 65 (N.J. Sup. Ct. 1981) (recognizing its successor jurisdiction from former Court of Chancery); Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. v. Pennsylvania Pub. Util. Comm'n, 311 A.2d 151, 154 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 1973) (recognizing its successor jurisdiction from former Superior Court); Schiller v. Flatbush Message Bureau, Inc., 108 N.Y.S.2d 828, 830 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1951) (recognizing its successor jurisdiction from courts of colony of New York). 39 Treating the Territorial Court as a successor court, moreover, is consistent with Congress's objective to eliminate the situation in which the District Court and the Territorial Court share jurisdiction over purely local matters. It also unifies in a single tribunal the review of habeas petitions initiated under territorial law for territorial law convictions. By contrast, the District Court's approach would bifurcate this review so that prisoners sentenced under local law by the District Court would have to submit their local law petitions to that court, while all other territorial prisoners would submit their petitions for review by the Territorial Court. 40 Finally, S 1613's administrative separation of the two courts does not implicitly deprive prisoners like Parrott of their guaranteed right to habeas relief under the Revised Organic Act's S 1561. No federalism concerns are implicated when the two courts share, as products of Congress's authority under Article IV, S 3, the same sovereign as the source of their jurisdiction. For that reason, the restrictions placed on the District Court's original jurisdiction by S 1612 properly limit review of local habeas petitions to the Territorial Court.