Court Opinion

ID: 9527854
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:34:55.941393+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:15.023316
License: Public Domain

LAWSON, Justice
(dissenting).
The holding of the court is in direct conflict on this federal question with the holdings of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Wiman, 304 F.2d 53, certiorari denied by the United States Supreme Court, 372 U.S. 915, 83 S.Ct. 717, 9 L.Ed.2d 722, and in United States ex rel. Goldsby v. Harpole, 5 Cir., 263 F.2d 71, and, in effect, overrules our recent case of Ex parte Howard, ante, p. 59, 151 So.2d 790.
It is true that under our former holdings the failure to timely file motions to quash an indictment and the petit jury constituted a waiver to raise those questions in a post-conviction proceeding.— Johnson v. Williams, 244 Ala. 391, 13 So.2d 683, and cases cited; Ex parte Taylor, 249 Ala. 667, 32 So.2d 659; Seals v. State, 271 Ala. 622, 126 So.2d 474.
In Ex parte Howard, supra, we in effect recognized that our holdings in the cases last cited above had been vitiated by the Harpole Case and the Wiman Case.
In Seals v. State, supra, we were confronted with a petition for leave to file in the trial court a petition for writ of error coram nobis by Seals, a Negro, whose conviction of rape had been affirmed by this court.—Seals v. State, 271 Ala. 142, 122 So.2d 513. The right to file the petition was grounded on averments to the effect that Negroes had been systematically excluded from the grand jury which indicted Seals and the petit jury which tried him. We denied the petition on the ground that no matter involving irregularities of either the grand jury or petit jury was presented in Seals’ trial for rape. We quoted at length from Johnson v. Williams, supra. Certiorari was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States without prejudice to an application for a writ of habeas corpus in the appropriate United States District Court.—Seals v. Alabama, 366 U.S. 954, 81 S.Ct. 1909, 6 L.Ed.2d 1246.
In accordance with the suggestion made by the Supreme Court of the United States, Seals filed an application for habeas corpus, in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, where a judgment was entered denying the application. Seals appealed to the United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, which reversed the judgment of the District Court and ins doing so said as follows:
“Left for decision is the question of whether the objection to the grand jury or to the petit jury or to both on the ground of systematic exclusion of Negroes remains open for consideration in this habeas corpus proceeding. The Alabama Supreme Court was of the opinion that Seals had waived his constitutional rights to insist that members of his race not be systematically excluded because of racé from both grand jury and petit jury service when he and his attorney did not make the objection on his trial nor on motion for new trial. Ex parte Seals, 1961, 271 Ala. 622, 126 So.2d 474, 475. We do not agree.” (Emphasis supplied)—United States v. Wiman, 5 Cir., 304 F.2d 68.
The court in the instant opinion has seen fit to perpetuate our holdings in Johnson v. Williams, supra; Ex parte Taylor, supra; and Seals v. State, supra, irrespective of the fact that under the holdings of the two. cases cited above from the Fifth Circuit *382it" follows that the petitioner, Aaron, in ahabeas corpus proceeding in a federal district court will be able to attack the composition of the grand jury which indicted him and the petit jury which tried him.
It seems to me that we should not, in an effort to perpetuate our own decisions, force these cases which involve the composition of our juries into the federal courts, and that is the inevitable result of the court’s holding in this case. These questions should be decided in the state courts with the right of review, of course, in the United States Supreme Court. I would grant leave to file the petition for writ of error coram nobis in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County.
SIMPSON, J., cbncurs in the foregoing views.