Court Opinion

ID: 9462117
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:32:29.960781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:24.905939
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part):
With the majority, I agree that the record in this case discloses that Georgia and Louisiana have denied Norris’s right to a speedy trial, and that the district court correctly so decided and properly ordered North Carolina to disregard the detainers filed by those states. But I cannot agree that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order Georgia and Louisiana to give effect to that ruling and that it had jurisdiction only to require North Carolina to disregard, for North Carolina’s purposes, the two detainers. In my view, this result which the majority reaches is supported neither by precedent nor by principles of sound judicial administration. Moreover, if North Carolina should be ordered to disregard the detainers for North Carolina’s purposes, it should also be specifically ordered not to give Georgia and Louisiana the notice of Norris’s release date which they require. In these particulars, I respectfully dissent.
I.
The facts are set forth fully in the two opinions of the district court. Norris v. State of Georgia, 357 F.Supp. 1200 (W.D. N.C.1973); opinion of September 24, 1973 (unreported). Since the panel is in agreement as to the merits of Norris’s claims — at least to the extent of North Carolina’s obligation to disregard the demands of Georgia and Louisiana, except possibly for notice1 — -I will not repeat them nor discuss why I think the district court’s conclusions were eminently correct. Rather, I will turn directly to the question of the district court’s jurisdiction to quash the Georgia and Louisiana prosecutions for denial of Norris’s constitutional rights. As the majority correctly perceives, the question of jurisdiction is one of in personam jurisdiction— whether Georgia and Louisiana were properly before the district court because service had been obtained on them.
Service was accomplished, as it usually is in habeas cases, by the issuance of a *1015show cause order from the district court to the Attorney General of the state whose authorities had the prisoner in custody — in this case, the Attorney General of North Carolina. The initial show cause order was issued November 22, 1972. In its order of April 6, 1973, holding that it had jurisdiction of the case and that Norris had alleged a meritorious cause of action, the district court directed defendants, including Georgia and Louisiana, to show cause why the Georgia and Louisiana detainers should not be stricken and “why the prosecuting authorities of Georgia and Louisiana should not be permanently restrained from prosecution . . . because of illegal delay . . . .” The order did not provide how it was to be served, but the docket entries show that copies were mailed to the Attorneys General of North Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana, presumably at the instance of the clerk of the district court.
I would conclude that Norris’s custodians in North Carolina — whether the warden or his representative, the Attorney General — became the agents of the states of Georgia and Louisiana by receiving and regarding as valid the detainers filed by those states. Therefore, service on the North Carolina Attorney General of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus attacking the detainers, their effects, and the validity of the pending proceedings out of which they were issued, sufficed to establish in personam jurisdiction over the appropriate custodial authorities of all three states.
II.
Before our decision in Word v. North Carolina, 406 F.2d 352 (4 Cir. 1969), and the subsequent Supreme Court holding in Braden v. Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky, 410 U.S. 484, 93 S.Ct. 1123, 35 L.Ed.2d 443 (1973), which modified Word by adopting the views set forth by Judge Sobeloff in his separate opinion in Word, 406 F.2d at 364—66, there could be little question that Norris, if he desired to question the validity of the detainers, could seek a writ of habeas corpus only in North Carolina. This was so because Ahrens v. Clark, 335 U.S. 188, 68 S.Ct. 1443, 92 L.Ed. 1898 (1948), held flatly that habeas corpus could be sought only in the district of confinement. In Word, the majority of this court sought to discard Ahrens; but in Braden the Supreme Court reaffirmed the vitality of Ahrens, although it modified the Ahrens holding to permit a prisoner, confined in one state, to seek habeas corpus in another state which had lodged a detainer against him in the state of his confinement on the ground that the former had denied him the right to a speedy trial. It is thus clear that, prior to Word and Braden, Norris’s only forum would have been North Carolina, his place of confinement. Under that state of the law, to conclude that Norris could not have litigated his rights, unless by some fortuity he might have served an official of the states lodging the detainer who was physically present in North Carolina, would for practical purposes have denied him any remedy even for a case of overwhelming merit.
Under Braden, which superseded Word, Norris’s right is established to seek habeas corpus in North Carolina on the one hand, or Georgia and Louisiana on the other hand, subject, of course, to the right of the district court in North Carolina to transfer any case filed there to either Georgia or Louisiana on the theory of forum non conveniens.2 The *1016majority, however, concludes that he should be denied full relief in any of the three possible forums. I think this illogical.3
While Braden unquestionably gives Norris the right to seek habeas corpus in Georgia and Louisiana, it is significant that Braden does not require Norris to file in the latter states. The Court said in Braden, with regard to the basic jurisdictional statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2241(a):
Read literally, the language of § 2241(a) requires nothing more than that the court issuing the writ have jurisdiction over the custodian. So long as the custodian can be reached by service of process, the court can issue a writ “within its jurisdiction” requiring that the prisoner be brought before the court for hearing on his claim, or requiring that he be released outright from custody . . .. 410 U.S. at 495, 93 S.Ct. at 1130.
In the instant case, Norris’s immediate custodian was the North Carolina warden, and he does not question that service on the Attorney General of North Carolina was in effect service on him.
Braden also expressed the concept which reinforces my view that service on the North Carolina warden alone gave the district court in personam jurisdiction over Georgia and Louisiana. The concept is one of agency. In a fact situation differing from the instant case only in that Braden sought habeas corpus in the state from which the detainer issued, while Norris sought habeas corpus in the state of confinement, the Court said:
The overruling of McNally v. Hill made it possible for prisoners in custody under one sentence to attack a sentence which they had not yet begun to serve. And it also enabled a petitioner held in one State to attack a detainer lodged against him by another State. In such a case, the State holding the prisoner in immediate confinement acts as agent for the demanding State, . . .. (Emphasis added.) (Citation and footnote omitted.) 410 U.S. at 498-99, 93 S.Ct. at 1131.
I have little doubt but that the detaining North Carolina authority acted as agent for the two other states. He kept custody of Norris for them as well as for North Carolina.4 Exacerbated conditions of confinement were inflicted on Norris because of their detainers. Whether or not Georgia and Louisiana intended that effect of their detainers is immaterial. The fact is that by lodging the detainers the two states had continuing and not one-time effects on Norris. The North Carolina custodian did not cause these effects; he was the medium through which they reached Norris. He was, in short, the agent of the states which, through lodging the detainers, affected Norris.
Treatment of the North Carolina custodian as agent for Georgia and Louisiana, including their agent for service of process, finds additional support in Strait v. Laird, 406 U.S. 341, 92 S.Ct. 1693, 32 L.Ed.2d 141 (1972). There, an Army reservist, not on active duty, who was residing in California and attending school there, sought a writ of habeas corpus to *1017effect his discharge as a conscientious objector. Strait’s military records and commanding officer were in Indiana, but Strait sought the writ in California where he was given an administrative hearing. The Court sustained his right to sue in California and to obtain there an adjudication of the merits of his case. The Court pointed out that all face-to-face contact between Strait and the military took place in California. It concluded that “to say that Strait’s custodian is amenable to process only in Indiana — or wherever the Army chooses to locate its recordkeeping center . . . —would be to exalt fiction over reality.” 406 U.S. at 344, 92 S.Ct. at 1695.
If Strait’s actual custodian was in Indiana, jurisdiction over him could have been obtained only on the theory that the custodian’s agents were present in California, and service on these agents was service on the custodian.5 No less, it seems to me, were Georgia and Louisiana present in North Carolina in the instant case. By analogy, if service on the local representative in Strait gave the California district court in personam jurisdiction, no less should service on the North Carolina custodian accomplish the same result for the North Carolina district court.
In addition to rejecting the agency theory that I would apply, the majority asserts that the district court’s exercise of jurisdiction over the states of Georgia and Louisiana was legally objectionable on the dual grounds that the Eleventh Amendment precludes joinder of the states themselves, and that the attempted joinder of the Attorneys General of Georgia and Louisiana was a legal nullity because they are not the prosecuting officials of the two states in charge of prosecuting Norris.
I see no Eleventh Amendment problem. Of course Norris, like many habeas corpus petitioners in the district courts throughout this circuit, joined as respondents the states whose actions contributed to his custody. The district court properly afforded the pro se pleading a liberal construction and appropriately treated as named defendants the prosecuting authorities of Georgia and Louisiana. Such construction obviated any Eleventh Amendment problem. Since Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908), it has been well settled that the Eleventh Amendment does not bar the exercise of federal jurisdiction to enjoin state officers from carrying out unconstitutional acts. Indeed, in that case it was said:
This supreme authority [federal jurisdiction to enjoin state officers from carrying out unconstitutional acts] which arises from the specific provisions of the Constitution itself, is nowhere more fully illustrated than in the series of decisions under the Federal habeas corpus statute in some of which cases persons in the custody of state officers for alleged crimes against the state have been taken from that custody and discharged by a Federal court or judge, because the imprisonment was adjudged to be in violation of the Federal Constitution. The right to so discharge has not been doubted by this court, and it has never been supposed that there was any suit against the state by reason of serving the writ upon one of the officers of the state in whose custody the person was found. (Emphasis supplied.) 209 U.S. at 167— 68, 28 S.Ct. at 457.
Nor do I see any problem about the validity of service on the Attorneys General of Georgia and Louisiana, or lack of service on local prosecuting officials. *1018Unquestionably it was a courtesy for the district court (or its clerk) to mail a copy of the district court’s April 6, 1973, order to the Attorneys General to insure that they, as the ranking legal officers of the states, had actual knowledge of what the district court had decided and the order it had entered against each state. But actual service on them, or the governors of the two states, or other prosecuting officials of the two states, was not a legal necessity. Service on Norris’s current custodian was a legal necessity. It was accomplished by service on his representative, the Attorney General of North Carolina, and the validity of that service is unquestioned. It matters not that, in responding to the suit, the North Carolina custodian did not concede that he acted as agent for the other two states, as well as for himself and North Carolina. Under the facts and law, he was the agent of the prosecuting officials, and in personam jurisdiction was obtained over them by service on him.
III.
I think that Braden is both a decision on jurisdiction and on venue. It decides only that the district court in the state issuing a detainer has habeas corpus jurisdiction to decide the validity of the detainer even though the prisoner is not confined within that court’s territorial jurisdiction. Braden also indicates that the most convenient forum in which to litigate the validity of the detainer is usually the state from which the detain-er issued. But that is not invariably true. And when it is not true, Braden recognizes, both jurisdiction and venue may lie in the state of confinement.
Such a rule is eminently logical because it is rarely possible in the state of confinement to adjudicate the validity of the effect of the detainer without litigating the validity of the detainer. Only in the exceptional case where a prisoner claims some irregularity in the processes by which the state of confinement gives effect to the detainer would the validity of the detainer not be in issue. Ordinarily, as in the case at bar, any complaint about the effect of the detainer stems from an attack on its underlying validity. Braden contemplates deciding the appropriate venue for such attacks according to the principle of forum non conveniens. By its failure to recognize this aspect of Braden, the majority freezes venue considerations into inflexible jurisdictional requirements and destroys the very flexibility that Braden envisions.
In the instant case, I think that the district court should be affirmed in declining to transfer the case to Georgia or Louisiana or to. insist upon the institution of new litigation there. Louisiana did not ask for a change of venue. Georgia advanced no compelling reason for a change of venue, such that denial of a transfer constituted an abuse of discretion.
IV.
Nelson v. George, 399 U.S. 224, 90 S.Ct. 1963, 26 L.Ed.2d 578 (1970), does not authorize the dichotomy that the majority erects between an attack on the effect of the detainer and the validity of a detainer. As I have said, I think the distinction illogical; the lack of judicial efficiency in requiring two trials in the usual case (three in the instant case) is also manifest. More importantly, I think that Nelson v. George was correctly characterized by Mr. Justice Harlan in his concurring opinion in the case:
I do not understand the Court to suggest that respondent’s failure to exhaust state remedies with respect to his claim that California is giving a constitutionally impermissible effect to his North Carolina conviction, rendered it improper for the federal courts to consider his challenge to the validity of the North Carolina conviction to the extent that he had exhausted North Carolina remedies with respect thereto.
399 U.S. at 230, 90 S.Ct. at 1967. Of course Nelson required an allegation that the North Carolina conviction affected confinement in California for the California district court to have jurisdiction, but it did not limit the exercise of juris*1019diction by the California court when state remedies were exhausted. I think that those courts which construe Nelson as supporting a limitation of the exercise of jurisdiction by a court of the state of confinement are in error; Shelton v. Meier, 485 F.2d 1177 (9 Cir. 1973), supports my construction.6
In sum, I think that service of process on the North Carolina official in charge of Norris’s immediate custody was service on Georgia and Louisiana since the North Carolina official restrained Norris, in part, at their request and thus was their agent for purposes of service of process in an action attacking the validity of their acts. For the same reason, Georgia and Louisiana were “present” within the geographical jurisdiction of the district court. Therefore the district court had jurisdiction to require them to comply with its conclusion that Norris had been denied his right to speedy trials by those states.

. The position of the majority on the question of whether North Carolina is obliged to meet the notice requirements of Georgia and Louisiana detainers is obscure. It makes no specific mention of the problem, but it relies on Wingo v. Ciccone, 507 F.2d 354 (8 Cir. 1974), and Baity v. Ciccone, 379 F.Supp. 552 (W.D.Mo. 1974), in which both courts indicated that a detainer could be effective for “notice purposes” without being effective generally. I would think it illogical to say that North Carolina may not give the detainers here the usual effect which it gives detainers, but that it should give the detainers effect to the extent of giving Georgia and Louisiana notice of the date of Norris’s planned release. Thus, if I were to join in the majority’s holding, I would be specific in saying that North Carolina was prohibited from giving effect to the “notice purposes” of the detainers.

. Footnote 15 in Braden, 410 U.S. at 499, 93 S.Ct. at 1131, says as much:
Nothing in this opinion should be taken to preclude the exercise of concurrent habeas corpus jurisdiction over the petitioner’s claim by a federal district court in the district of confinement. But as we have made clear above, that forum will not in the ordinary case prove as convenient as the district court in the State which has lodged the detainer. Where a prisoner brings an action in the district of confinement attacking a detainer lodged by another State, the court can, of course, transfer the suit to a more convenient forum. 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) [28 *1016U.S.C.A. § 1404(a) ]. Hoffman v. Blaski, 363 U.S. 335, 80 S.Ct. 1084, 4 L.Ed.2d 1254 (1960).
The reverse, i. e., transfer of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed in the state of detainer to the state of confinement, is also permissible. In Braden, 410 U.S. at 500, 93 S.Ct. at 1132, the Court stated, “in many instances, the district in which petitioners are held will be the most convenient forum for the litigation of their claims.”

. Of course, under the majority’s holding, Norris could require Georgia and Louisiana to quash their respective prosecutions and withdraw their detainers if he proceeds successfully in each of those places. But I would assume that under the majority’s holding he would be required to proceed also in North Carolina in the event that North Carolina should decline to give effect to the withdrawal.

. The North Carolina authority also acts as agent for New York which has lodged a concurrent commitment order with him. The validity of this order, however, was not attacked.

. Indeed, the Court said, “[t]he concepts of ‘custody’ and ‘custodian’ are sufficiently broad to allow us to say that the commanding officer in Indiana, operating through officers in California in processing petitioner’s claim, is in California for the limited purposes of habeas corpus jurisdiction.” 406 U.S. at 345-46, 92 S.Ct. at 1696.
In a footnote, the Court also said:
Strait’s commanding officer is “present” in California through his contacts in that State; he is therefore “within reach” of the federal court in which Strait filed his petition. 406 U.S. at 345 n. 2, 92 S.Ct. at 1695 n. 2.

. See also Dillworth v. Barker, 465 F.2d 1338, 1341 (5 Cir. 1972), in which the court said that the district court in the receiving state of a parolee, whose parole was granted by another state, has jurisdiction over his habeas petition since he was physically present in the receiving state. This situation is analogous to Norris’s; as I would hold in instant case, the Dill-worth court suggested that the “exercise of this jurisdiction may be withheld . . . for reasons of forum non conveniensbut did not dispute the district court’s power to exercise jurisdiction.