Court Opinion

ID: 9454174
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:38:27.672979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:00.114095
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
Although I acquiesce in the remand to Judge Foley, I do so only on the theory that all court decisions should be based upon as full and accurate factual foundations as possible. Referring to the hospital room incident, Judge Foley himself said: “This incident may need further legal exploration and explanation.”
As Judge Foley has said: “In the past we [the district court] reviewed the original trial record to fulfill the duty of independent examination of the involuntariness claim.” His fear that “now there will be necessity to canvass and examine both the trial record and the post conviction hearing record” is probably well-founded.
Judge Foley’s thought “that the State Courts should have first chance to review alleged errors under new rulings, and the opportunity to recanvass in the interests of comity should be afforded even if there is doubt reconsideration will be entertained” is in accord with my views. And were it assured that federal courts would evidence that respect for the decisions of the highest State courts that comity should command, I would follow Judge Foley’s “without prejudice” decision and affirm. However, as he so well knows, there would be no finality were this course pursued and he would only be faced with the same problem at a later date.
I do not agree with my colleagues’ suppositions as to the proof. From the present record, I find no basis for the assumption that Hughes did not understand what he was being asked or as to what was the common police practice of instructing prisoners.
Finally, since the whole point of the remand is to develop the facts and permit the judge to decide the question of voluntariness in the light of such facts, I do not concur in the majority’s inferences as to what Hughes might or might not have thought under the' circumstances. Hughes may have been “young,” “uneducated,” the town may have been “strange,” silence warnings may not have been given, and his long-distance phone call request been denied, but these facts per se do not “require a conclusion that a confession was involuntary” or negate voluntariness. As to the incident in the hospital room, I do not give it the significance which my colleagues seem to attach to it. Even as to this incident they say that there was no force or threat and that Sparcino “used words of request and not of command.” These, of course, are factors to be considered but again by the trial court on remand — not by us.