Court Opinion

ID: 9475027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:15:17.075257+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:28.125043
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Senior Circuit Judge:
In the Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Virginia, a jury found Renzi guilty of possession of phencyclidine (PCP) and specified his punishment to be twenty years imprisonment and a fine of $1,000.
After a direct appeal proved unavailing, Renzi sought a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. That court granted the writ upon a finding that Renzi’s trial *157had been so unfair as to amount to a deprivation of due process.
I.
On October 7, 1982, Fletcher, a confidential informant, arranged a meeting between Kreitzer, a police official working undercover, and Renzi so that Kreitzer could buy PCP from Renzi.
According to Kreitzer, Fletcher drove into a High’s parking lot with Renzi in the front passenger seat. Kreitzer got into the back, and Fletcher drove off. Renzi had a plastic bag containing a green plant-like material, and Renzi and Kreitzer negotiated for the sale of two “cans” of PCP by Renzi to Kreitzer. Renzi measured the requested amount, placed it in another plastic bag, and gave it to Kreitzer. In return, Kreitzer paid Renzi $100 as Renzi assured him that the PCP was of excellent quality.
The entire transaction took no more than two minutes, after which Kreitzer was let out at the parking lot and Fletcher and Renzi drove off.
Renzi took the stand in his own defense and told a very different story. Renzi testified that he had been called by Fletcher and offered a job as a painter. Fletcher picked him up for the purpose, Renzi thought, of taking him to the job site. Fletcher made a stop at a house that was unfamiliar to Renzi, went inside and returned with a container which he placed beneath the driver’s seat. Fletcher then told Renzi that they had to pick up another painter. The third person, of course, was Kreitzer.
Renzi’s testimony was in general agreement with Kreitzer’s about the meeting in the parking lot and the taking of a two minute ride after which Kreitzer was returned to the parking lot. His version of what happened during that ride, however, differed markedly from Kreitzer’s. He testified that the sale of the two cans of PCP was effected by Fletcher. Renzi’s version was that Fletcher negotiated the sale. Fletcher then reached beneath the driver’s seat and passed a plastic bag to Renzi with instructions to measure out two cans of the vegetable material for Kreitzer. Renzi did that and received $100 from Kreitzer but immediately passed the money on to Fletcher. Thus, according to Renzi, he was not the principal; he only supplied requested manual assistance to Fletcher.
Renzi testified that Fletcher never performed his promise of painting employment.
II.
During a discovery hearing, Renzi moved to require the Commonwealth to produce the name and address of its confidential informant. The Commonwealth’s Attorney responded that if any confidential informant had been present at the drug buy, he would be “put under subpoena to appear.” Renzi’s lawyer requested that the informant be produced before trial so that he might be interviewed before testifying. The judge responded to that, expressing confidence that the Commonwealth’s Attorney “can work something out to get him here early that morning sometime so you can talk to him. You’ll have plenty of time to talk to him.”
The Commonwealth did not subpoena Fletcher, but, six days before trial, the Commonwealth gave Renzi’s lawyer Fletcher’s name and an address. Renzi promptly arranged for the issuance of a subpoena, but, on the morning that the trial was to begin, found that the subpoena had been returned marked “Not Found.” Renzi elected to proceed with the trial despite Fletcher’s absence. The lawyer now says that he thought the Commonwealth would still produce Fletcher for examination and cross-examination. He was not produced, and, on hearsay grounds, Renzi was not permitted to testify as to any statements made to him by Fletcher.
At a post-trial hearing upon Renzi’s motion for a new trial based upon after discovered evidence, it appeared that Fletcher had been in the drug business. He had experienced a religious conversion and wished to make amends for some of his past transgressions. He became a confi*158dential informant and arranged transactions resulting in the arrest of approximately thirty drug dealers.
At the post-trial hearing, Kreitzer testified that when he gave the address to the Commonwealth’s Attorney he thought Fletcher was no longer there; he thought Fletcher had left the area, which well might have been the case, but the address he supplied was the last one he had.
III.
The Commonwealth first contends that Renzi has not adequately exhausted his state remedies, and that the petition for a federal writ of habeas corpus is premature for that reason. It points to the fact that Renzi’s petition for a writ of error charged that the trial court erred in denying a motion for a new trial based upon after discovered evidence. It contends that the identical federal question sought to be presented here was not first presented to the Supreme Court of Virginia.
The contention rests too narrowly upon the caption of the argument presented to the Supreme Court of Virginia and neglects a critical part of its substance. The after discovered evidence that was the foundation of the motion was said to have been the fact that the Commonwealth failed to produce Fletcher during the trial as it had promised, and that it misled Renzi as to Fletcher’s whereabouts. The brief stated all of the relevant facts upon which Renzi relies here. It specifically contended that Renzi “was denied his due process rights by his inability to get ... [Fletcher’s] testimony.” Finally, there was a citation to Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53, 77 S.Ct. 623, 1 L.Ed.2d 639 (1957), in which the Supreme Court had held that when an undercover informer was a participant in, or witness to, a crime and the testimony of the informer would be of substantial help to the defendant, the privilege to withhold disclosure of his identity must give way and a trial without this testimony was so unfair as to amount to a deprivation of due process. Id. at 64-65, 77 S.Ct. at 629-30. Renzi’s contention was substantially the same as that made in Roviaro. Citation of that case to the Supreme Court of Virginia, coupled with the explicit claim of deprivation of due process, was a sufficient presentation of the federal claim to the state court.
The exhaustion requirement exists, as a matter of comity, to give the state court the first opportunity to adjudicate alleged constitutional defects in its own criminal prosecutions. See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 518, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 1203, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982), citing Duckworth v. Serrano, 454 U.S. 1, 3, 102 S.Ct. 18, 19, 70 L.Ed.2d 1 (1981) (per curiam). State remedies are sufficiently exhausted when the state court is given a “ ‘fair opportunity’ to apply controlling legal principles to the facts bearing upon ... [a] constitutional claim” by fair presentation of the “substance” of the federal claim. Anderson v. Harless, 459 U.S. 4, 6, 103 S.Ct. 276, 277, 74 L.Ed.2d. 3, quoting Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 275-78, 92 S.Ct. 509, 512-13, 30 L.Ed.2d 438 (1971).
The Commonwealth relies upon a narrow reading of Harless. In Harless, the Supreme Court held that state remedies had not been exhausted, though all of the facts underlying the federal constitutional claim had been disclosed, because the petitioner had failed to identify any federal constitutional principle that might be implicated. This case is different, for in addition to disclosure of the facts underlying the federal claim, there was the specific claim of a deprivation of due process and a citation to Roviaro.
We think Renzi sufficiently disclosed his federal claim. He did substantially more than state the bare underlying facts. The claim of a deprivation of due process, coupled with a citation to Roviaro, in which the court held that there had been a denial of federally guaranteed due process upon strikingly similar facts, was enough to have given the state court warning that a federal constitutional claim was being presented. See Graham v. Solem, 728 F.2d 1533, 1535-36 (8th Cir.1984) (en banc).
*159IV.
We reach the merits and affirm the district court’s award of the writ, though with some modification.
At the outset, we may recognize that Renzi’s claim of an expectation that Fletcher would support his version of the events seems incredible. Fletcher was engaged in setting up drug dealers for arrest and prosecution. For his cooperation with the authorities, he had immunity from prosecution for his own earlier violations of Virginia’s drug laws, but that immunity would not protect him from a new offense. Moreover, if Renzi is to be believed, Kreitzer, the law enforcement official, was actively engaged with Fletcher in setting up innocent people for arrest and prosecution upon substantially false charges. A serious charge of that nature, though conceivable, is unlikely to be true.
We, however, are not the fact finders, and this appeal should not be resolved on the basis of our supposition that one set of facts is more probable than another.
The district court accepted the lawyer’s representation that he confidently expected some corroboration of Renzi by Fletcher, corroboration which might be found if Fletcher declined to answer certain relevant questions on the ground of the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. The district court also accepted the lawyer’s representation that when he went to trial knowing that Fletcher was not to be found at the address he had been given, he was nevertheless relying upon the production of Fletcher that the Commonwealth’s Attorney and the trial judge seemingly collectively had promised.* When the trial opened, the lawyer knew that Fletcher had not been found at the address he had been given, but he did not know that the Commonwealth did not have better information or had made no other arrangements for Fletcher’s production.
The Commonwealth’s Attorney had promised to place Fletcher under subpoena. He did not attempt to do so. The promise was ill kept by giving to defense counsel, six days before trial, Fletcher’s name and an address which Kreitzer knew or thought incorrect. Had defense counsel been told that it was likely that Fletcher had left the area and that the Commonwealth had no information about his whereabouts, he could have initiated his own search for Fletcher. After having procured the arrest and prosecution of so many drug offenders, Fletcher may well have gone into hiding, but the defense was at least entitled to a reasonable opportunity to search for him. The district court reasonably concluded that the conduct of the prosecution deprived the defense of an opportunity to search for Fletcher with the possibility that he might be found and produced.
In giving defense counsel what purported to be Fletcher’s address, the defense was misled, and the misleading was intentional, at least on the part of the law enforcement official. The resulting loss of an opportunity to find and produce Fletcher was such unfairness as to amount to deprivation of due process, as the Supreme Court held in Roviaro. See United States v. Pnce, 783 F.2d 1132, 1137 (4th Cir.1986); McLawhorn v. North Carolina, 484 F.2d 1, 6 (4th Cir.1973).
V.
The district court conditioned issuance of the writ only upon a retrial of Renzi. In that we think it went too far. If Fletcher is an unavailable witness, Renzi *160has been fairly tried once and should not be tried again. We think that issuance of the writ should be conditioned upon a retrial only if, after reasonable opportunity is afforded and cooperation by the Commonwealth provided, the defense is able to locate and produce Fletcher. The decree should be modified to that extent.
With that modification, the judgment is affirmed.
AFFIRMED.

 United States v. Bonilla, 615 F.2d 1262, 1264 (9th Cir.1980), is a similar, though distinguishable, case. There the court found no error under Roviaro in the Government’s failure to produce a confidential informant at trial, but it was noted that the defendant never requested that the informant be produced at trial and his presence was not promised. We agree that the Government bears the obligation to exert "reasonable efforts" to produce an informant "only when ‘his presence had been properly requested by the defendant,’ ” id., quoting United States v. Hart, 546 F.2d 798, 799 (9th Cir.1976), and that there is no general obligation to corral these government agents. In the instant case, however, reasonable efforts were not exerted and the presence of the witness at trial had been promised.