Court Opinion

ID: 9527853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:34:55.937551+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:15.012100
License: Public Domain

*379MERRILL, Justice
(concurring).
These remarks contain additional reasons Tor my concurrence in the foregoing opinion.
Petitioner alleges that members of the Negro race are systematically excluded from the jury in Montgomery County and then, to excuse the failure to raise the point earlier, makes this statement:
“Facts on which this petition are based were not known to petitioner at the time of trial, nor could they with reasonable diligence have been ascertained. Said facts however, if known in season, would have prevented rendition of the judgment challenged.”
The petition is signed and sworn to by the defendant.
This is not sufficient in this case. Lawyers are hired by defendants, or appointed by the court when they are unable to employ them, in order that they might represent the defendant and protect the client’s rights, especially as to those legal matters and rights of which the client has no knowledge or experience. Most any defendant could make an affidavit that he did not know the legal effect of many things that went on at his trial, but that cannot mean that knowledge is not imputed to him.
An attorney is the duly authorized agent of his client and his acts are those of his client. The client is, therefore, bound by the acts of his attorney in the course of legal proceedings in the absence of fraud or collusion, McWilliams v. Martin, 237 Ala. 624, 188 So. 677; and knowledge of the attorney is imputed to the client, notwithstanding the client had no actual knowledge or notice of the facts and circumstances. Silvey & Co. v. Cook, 191 Ala. 228, 68 So. 37. The courts have made some exceptions to these rules, but as is subsequently shown in this opinion, the leading case on the question here involved, United States ex rel. Goldsby v. Harpole, 5 Cir., 263 F.2d 71, is quite different from the instant case.
As stated in the opinion of the court, the petitioner was represented by a Negro lawyer of his own choosing in his first trial,' on the appeal here when judgment of conviction was reversed, at the second trial, on the second appeal when judgment was affirmed, on his petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, and by the same lawyer in this proceeding. This lawyer has been in the active practice of the law in Montgomery County, and it is beyond the realm of speculation that any active lawyer, practicing law and residing in Montgomery, could fail to know that the question of exclusion of Negroes from the juries in Montgomery County has been raised in recent years, and has not been raised successfully.
The Montgomery County Board of Jury Supervisors is different from jury commissions of all the other counties in Alabama. In the other sixty-six counties, the members are appointed by the governor. In Montgomery County, certain officials are members, and the law makes the circuit judges of Montgomery County members of the Board. Therefore, whenever the question of systematic exclusion of Negroes from the jury box is raised, the circuit judges must recuse themselves and either a judge from another county is called in to try the case, or the parties agree on a member of the Montgomery bar to act as special judge for the case.
The attendant publicity, especially among the local lawyers, renders it inconceivable that any qualified and active local attorney would not know of the raising of the question because a new judge would have to be selected and serve during the trial.
One of the cases mentioned in the record before us is worthy of mention. The defendant, indicted for rape, was represented by white lawyers. They raised the question of systematic exclusion of Negroes from the juries at the proper time, causing the recusal of the elected circuit judge and the appointment of a member of the local bar upon whom all parties concerned had agreed. The question was tried in circuit *380court, was treated here on appeal, and was argued in the United States Supreme Court where the judgment of conviction was reversed. See Reeves v. State, 260 Ala. 66, 68 So.2d 14, reversed 348 U.S. 891, 75 S.Ct. 214, 99 L.Ed. 700.
The case was retried in circuit court, the same question was raised, this time by Negro attorneys, who were then representing the defendant; it was treated again on appeal to this court where the judgment of conviction was again affirmed; certiorari was granted and then dismissed by the Federal Supreme Court. See Reeves v. State, 264 Ala. 476, 88 So.2d 561, certiorari granted, 352 U.S. 965, 77 S.Ct. 373, 1 L.Ed.2d 321, certiorari dismissed, 355 U.S. 368, 78 S.Ct. 363, 2 L.Ed.2d 352.
The record also shows that another unsuccessful attack, raising the same question, was made in 1960 in a case in which the defendant, Martin Luther King, Jr., was acquitted by the jury. The record also shows that in 1961, the lawyer who represents the petitioner in the instant case raised the same question in a case involving a Negro client.
It cannot be said that the petitioner or his attorney did not have knowledge of the question or that it had been raised and litigated in cases previous to the instant case.
The record also contains the evidence of four of the members of the Board of Jury Supervisors which positively contradicts the charge of systematic exclusion of Negroes from juries.
There is evidence of lawyers and a newspaper reporter that, based upon their judgment and observation, the number of Negroes appearing an jury panels in the circuit court is equal, proportionately, to the number of Negroes appearing on jury panels m Federal District Court in Montgomery.
The record before us negates preponderantly the allegations in the petition that Negroes are systematically excluded from the jury rolls in Montgomery County, and these facts alone justify the denial of the-petition.
The facts here are far different than-those in United States ex rel. Goldsby v. Harpole, 5 Cir., 263 F.2d 71, where it was. said that in ordinary procedural matters, the defendant in a criminal case is bound by the acts or nonaction of his counsel, and that rule might extend to a waiver of the-objection that Negroes were systematically excluded from grand or petit juries. Although the court, in the Harpole case, held the facts there did not constitute a waiver, we think the overwhelming evidence in the-record before us shows that the petitioner’s lawyer knew or should have known that the question had been recently raised, had been litigated fully in the courts, that it had been decided that there was no systematic exclusion of Negroes from the jury rolls in Montgomery County, and that his client could have his case tried by a member of the bar agreed on by him instead of the elected circuit judge in the event he did raise the question at the proper time.
Also in the Harpole case, it was held that had the question been raised, it should have been sustained. But here, the overwhelming evidence is, that had the question been raised, it would not have been sustained.
Again in Harpole, it was suggested that the record should have shown the reasons for the white lawyer’s failure to raise the federal question at the proper time, in view of the fact that his employment ceased after the original trial. Such a procedure would be grossly unfair in the instant case because-the petitioner has been represented by his. present attorney of record since his arraignment, during his two trials and his two appeals to this court and to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In Harpole, the court said:
“ * * * Upon this record, we hold that the appellant’s constitutional right to be tried before a petit jury from which Negroes have not been systematically excluded has not been effectively waived by counsel authorized to make such waiver.”
*381Upon the record before us, we find no allegation of exclusion which is not fully and completely answered by evidence of such preponderance as to show adequately that the petition should be denied. The Supreme Court of the United States has said that this court, “in its supervisory capacity over the enforcement of the law, was called upon to determine also the reasonableness of the allegations made in the petition and the probability or improbability of their truth.” Taylor v. Alabama, 335 U.S. 252, 262, 264, 265, 68 S.Ct. 1415, 1420, 92 L.Ed. 1935.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., and GOODWYN, COLEMAN and HARWOOD, JJ., concur.