Court Opinion

ID: 9445391
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:27:44.896682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:14.849187
License: Public Domain

DENMAN, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent from the denial of the petition for rehearing.
This is clearly a case where the court first finds that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies for all appeals created by state law and then in this appeal, a matter of life or death to the appellant, says that it is inapplicable to a trial to determine the text of the record upon which the death sentence is to be determined as valid or invalid.
On Denial Of Petition For Rehearing.
LEMMON, Circuit Judge.
In view of Chief Judge Denman’s insistence that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the personal appearance of the defendant at settlement proceedings to determine the accuracy of a transcript, I deem it desirable that I should give my reasons for concurring with Judge Hamley in denying Chessman’s petition for a rehearing.
Chief Judge Denman persists in ignoring the opinion of the Supreme Court in 350 U.S. 3, 4, 76 S.Ct. 34, 35, which is not only the chart by which we must plot our course, but which marks the extreme limits of our jurisdiction in this cause.
Although the Supreme Court’s opinion is quoted in part by Judge Hamley in his able opinion of October 18,1956, in which I unreservedly and heartily concur, in view of Chief Judge Denman’s persistent ignoring of our limited jurisdiction in this case, I believe that it might be helpful to enlarge the quotation.
Speaking Per Curiam, the Supreme Court said:
“The official court reporter had died before completing the transcription of his stenographic notes of the trial, and petitioner alleges that the prosecuting attorney and the substitute reporter selected by *222him had, by corrupt arrangement, prepared the fraudulent transcript. On the record before us, there is no denial of petitioner’s allegations. The District Court, without issuing the writ or an order to show cause, dismissed the application as not stating a cause of action. 128 F. Supp. 600. The Court of Appeals affirmed the order of the District Court. 9 Cir., 221 F.2d 276. The charges of fraud as such set forth a denial of due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U.S. 103, 55 S.Ct. 340, 79 L.Ed. 791. 'Without intimating any opinion regarding the validity of the claim, we hold that in the circumstances disclosed by the record before us the application should not have been summarily dismissed. Accordingly, the petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded to the District Court for a hearing.” [Emphasis supplied.]
If the English language means any-ihing at all, the opinion of the Supreme ■Court conveyed a command to the District ■Court that it inquire into Chessman’s ■charges of “fraud” and “corrupt arrangement”, and nothing more. Beyond that, neither the District Court nor this Court Fas a particle of jurisdiction.
As the main opinion states, pursuant to this mandate of the Supreme Court, a writ of habeas corpus was issued by the District Court, a hearing consuming :seven days was had, and the District ■Court filed an opinion, findings of fact, and conclusions of law, to the effect that ■Chessman had failed to support the allegations of his application. From the District Court’s judgment discharging the writ, the present appeal was taken.
As Judge Hamley states in the majority opinion herein, although the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits fraud at .any stage of litigation, it does not follow that it guarantees the personal appearance of the defendant in proceedings to ■settle the record on appeal.
The majority opinion goes further and points out that the District Court found that there was no factual basis for Chessman’s allegation that the transcript on appeal had been fraudulently prepared, and also states that Chessman does not directly challenge any of those findings.
With the above findings and holdings, the jurisdiction of the District Court and of this Court ends. Ex industria, however, the majority opinion holds that appellant was not constitutionally entitled to appear in person and to participate on the settlement of the transcript.
The matter should end there.
It has been said that the substantive criminal law is for the protection of the public, and the procedural criminal law is for the protection of the innocent. Nowhere does Chessman claim that he is innocent.
In this connection, I might advert to the fact that the House of Representatives of the United States on January 19, 1956, passed H.R. 5649, which provides that “A Justice of the Supreme Court, a circuit judge or a district court or judge shall entertain an application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to a judgment of a State court, only on a ground which presents a substantial Federal constitutional question (1) which was not theretofore raised and determined, (2) which there was no fair and adequate opportunity theretofore to raise and have determined, and (3) which cannot thereafter be raised and determined in a proceeding in the State court, by an order or judgment subject to review by the Supreme Court of the United States on writ of certiorari.”
I am in hearty accord with the spirit of this bill, which I understand has not yet been passed by the United States Senate. Even in the absence of such a law, however, I am of the firm conviction that no United States Court should, in the absence of cogent Constitutional reasons wholly absent in this case, interfere with the lawful process of the courts of any State.
*223Chessman’s case has been before the courts of California and of the United States for many years. The “law’s delay” in this case has become a national scandal. The details of that delay are carefully spelled out in the majority opinion, and it would be a work of supererogation for me to trace it further.
There remains only one more step to be taken in the case of the State of California versus Caryl Chessman. That step will be to carry out one of the two sentences of death entered against Chessman eight and a half years ago.
Chessman has been accorded all due process except the long overdue process of his execution. By such execution, perhaps, the blot upon the California’s juristic escutcheon will be, if not wholly erased, at least partly dimmed.
DENMAN, Chief Judge.
No better illustration could be had of -the aphorism “hard cases make bad law,” than Judge Lemmon’s opinion in denying Chessman’s petition for rehearing in this case. After first concurring in Judge Hamley’s opinion considering the two denials of due process claimed by Chessman, in this opinion on the requested rehearing he asserts that the Supreme Court’s decision in 350 U.S. 3, 75 S.Ct. 34 made one of the contentions, so decided in Judge Hamley’s opinion, beyond this court’s jurisdiction.
In stating that Chessman has been deprived of the right so recognized by Judge Hamley, Judge Lemmon appears to be moved by the fact, as he states it, that “Chessman’s case has been before the courts of California and of the United States for many years. The ‘law’s delay’ in this case has become a national scandal.”
I do not agree with the contention that the same question of law is to be decided in one way if considered at the beginning of a prosecution, and in a different way if it is for consideration after seven ye'ars of prosecution of the same case. Equally unfair to Judge Hamley is Judge Lemmon’s criticism that he gave consideration to Chessman’s second contention, when the court had no jurisdiction so to act.
Nor do I agree with Judge Lemmon that a litigant’s claim to a constitutional right in an instant case, is to be construed one way if he has no prior convictions and the opposite way if he has a dozen priors.
Two different claims of denial of due process were presented by Chessman’s-application to the district court. One is the contention of “fraud” on Chessman by the preparation of a false transcript, of the proceedings at the trial as a result of which were omitted rulings and statements of the trial judge which, if true, would warrant a reversal. The second such denial of due process is the denial of Chessman’s requested right to participate in the proceeding in which, on account of the death of the reporter, 2000' pages of the record had to be made up on the testimony of witnesses, who should have been subject to his cross-examination. Further, had he been present in Los Angeles he would have been able to-produce evidence from the jurors and others present in the courtroom to sustain his contention respecting the claimed omitted rulings.
The difference between the two kinds-of denial of due process is so obvious that, as seen, Judge Hamley gave it a separate consideration in his opinion. That the Supreme Court passed only on the fraud contention is apparent from the quoted matter in Judge Lemmon’s-opinion. Nowhere does it deny the District Court the jurisdiction to consider the second contention presented in Chessman’s application for the writ.
Though it may well be a matter of life- or death to Chessman, Judge Lemmon-would have it that the Supreme Court in its opinion overruled, sub silentio, its-several holdings that any important appellate proceeding is a part of the due-*224process of the Fourteenth Amendment.1 Here the making up of 2000 pages of testimony for the appeal, largely by the testimony of witnesses as to what they heard, is of vital importance and hence that Chessman should have participated in. it,
- ' In neither our opinion in Chessman v. Teets, 9 Cir., 221 F.2d 276, nor in the Supreme Court opinion in 1955, 350 U.S. 3, 75 S.Ct. 34, is mentioned, much less disposed of, Chessman’s contention. It is absurd to argue in any case, that the Supreme Court, by mere silence on a contention not presented to it, decides that contention adversely to the party making it. A fortiori is the absurdity of such a contention in a capital case.

. Cole v. Arkansas, 333 U.S. 196, 201, 68 S.Ct. 514, 92 L.Ed. 644; In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 273, 68 S.Ct. 499, 92 L. Ed. 682 and in Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 322, 35 S.Ct. 582, 59 L.Ed. 969, more fully considered in Chessman v. Teets, 9 Cir., 239 F.2d 219.