Court Opinion

ID: 9452553
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:44:01.904007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:15.731481
License: Public Domain

MATHES,* Senior District Judge
(concurring specially).
I agree unqualifiedly that the order of the District Court should be reversed; but would advance as the first ground for reversal that the State-court hearing in 1950 — two years after the crime — was “full, fair, and adequate” [see Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963)]; and since the fullness, fairness, and adequacy of the 1950 State-court hearing have not been challenged, and more particularly were not challenged at the 1965 District-court hearing, it was an abuse of “sound discretion” for the District Court in 1965 to hold an evidentiary hearing and assume to make findings of fact contrary to those which had been made by the State court on like evidence some fifteen years before. [Townsend v. Sain, supra, 372 U.S. at 318, 83 S.Ct. at 760; see Note, State Criminal Procedure and Federal Habeas Corpus, 80 Harv.L.Rev. 422 (1966).]
Secondly, I would invoke the 1966 amendment to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 [Public Law 89-711 (1966)] wherein the Congress decreed that State-court findings of fact made, as here, after “full, fair, and adequate hearing”, must be presumed by the Federal courts to be correct.
This Congressional mandate is too clear to be doubted or disregarded. [See Senate Rept. No. 1797, U.S.Code Cong, and Adm. News (89th Cong.2d Sess.), pp. 3663-3672 (November 20, 1966).]
Lastly, I would concur in all the majority say in demonstrating that the findings of fact of the District Court were, in any event, clearly erroneous.

 William C. Mathes, Senior District Judge of the Southern District of California, sitting by designation.