Court Opinion

ID: 9455674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:29:25.026173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:41.326028
License: Public Domain

*1185WATERMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I cannot agree with my brothers that the court below properly assumed jurisdiction in this case. Meadows, a federal prisoner incarcerated in the penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, brought his petition for habeas corpus to the federal district court for the Northern District of Georgia. His petition challenges not the federal conviction which resulted in the imposition of the sentence he is now serving, but rather a prior New York conviction which, because his federal crimes broke the conditions of his parole subsequent to that conviction, has resulted in the lodgment of a parole detainer against him in Georgia. Unless Meadows’s habeas petition prevails, he will be returned to New York at the end of his present sentence to face the prospect of further imprisonment there.
Judge Edenfield in Georgia, to whom Meadows’s petition was presented, transferred the case to the Eastern District of New York, the federal court having territorial jurisdiction over the place where Meadows was convicted and sentenced for his state crime. Judge Eden-field effected this transfer on his own motion pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241(d).1 My brothers and I agree that this statute permits a transfer from the district of , imprisonment to the district having jurisdiction over the place of conviction only if these two districts are located within the same state.2 My brothers, however, feel that the Georgia court’s transfer can be saved under either 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) 3 or 28 U.S.C. § 1406 (a).4 Both of the sections by their express terms require that the petition be transferred to a given judicial district only if the prisoner could have brought the petition in that district as an original matter. See Hoffman v. Blaski, 363 U.S. 335, 80 S.Ct. 1084, 4 L.Ed.2d 1254 (1960). I have no hesitancy in holding, contrary to the belief of my brothers, *1186that Meadows, confined in Georgia, cannot bring a habeas corpus petition in a New York federal district court. Therefore, I do not believe that his petition can be transferred there under either § 1404(a) or § 1406(a). I believe that Ahrens v. Clark, 335 U.S. 188, 68 S.Ct. 1443, 92 L.Ed. 1898 (1948) continues to require that a petition for a writ of habeas corpus can be brought only in the district where the prisoner is physically incarcerated.
I share the view of the majority that it would seem that judicial and prosecutorial convenience, and frequently the convenience of the prisoner, would be served by permitting the prisoner to file his habeas corpus petition in a federal district court in the state which has imposed the sentence and detainer challenged in the petition instead of limiting him to filing it in a court in the state of his incarceration. However, I believe that stare decisis prevents us from reaching the result my brothers reach.
As the majority opinion points out, Ahrens v. Clark involved German nationals, held at Ellis Island in New York, who petitioned for habeas corpus in the District Court for the District of Columbia, where their custodian, the United States Attorney General, was to be found. The Court held that they could not do so, for two reasons. First, the Court, speaking through Justice Douglas, stated that the creators of federal habeas corpus contemplated that the petitioner should be brought physically before the judge who granted the writ, and that policy considerations militated against transporting prisoners long distances to a hearing: such a procedure would be costly and administratively burdensome and would present opportunities for escape. Second, the opinion cites the justification given in legislative debate for limiting the power of courts to the granting of writs of habeas only “within their respective jurisdictions.” This justification was that otherwise a court in Florida, for example, could compel production of a prisoner from as far away as Vermont or from more distant states. To prevent this result, the Court concluded that a federal district court could grant a writ only to persons physically within its district.
The majority in the instant case conclude that the wrong policies were served by the Ahrens opinion and seek to distinguish that case from the one here in several ways, none of which I find convincing. The opinion points out that whereas the petitioners in Ahrens were challenging a present sentence, the present petitioner is challenging a future sentence. The opinion then suggests several factors which might make this difference into a viable distinction.
First, the majority suggest that were the jurisdiction of the court below in this case denied and if petitioner were therefore relegated to the district court in Georgia, the result would be analogous to the fear cited in Ahrens that a Florida court might hear the petition of a man convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned in Vermont. This suggestion mistakes the import of the Florida-Vermont reference in Ahrens. The controlling fear there was that a man imprisoned in one state (Vermont) would have-to be transported to another state (Florida) for trial. To avoid this possibility, Ahrens permitted a prisoner convicted and sentenced by a federal court in one state to file for habeas corpus in the federal district court within the state of his imprisonment. This result was entirely commonplace under Ahrens, as federal prisoners brought their petitions solely in the district where their prisons were located. See United States v. Hayman, 342 U.S. 205, 213-214, 72 S.Ct. 263, 96 L.Ed. 232 (1952).
The majority opinion suggests a second reason for treating the instant petitioner differently from those in Ahrens v. Clark, namely, that the Court itself has found the Ahrens policies untenable and has compromised them. However, it is not within the province of a court *1187of appeals to overrule a Supreme Court precedent because it believes the policies served by the precedent to be undesirable, or even because it suspects that the original ease would be overruled by the Court were the Court to reexamine it. Ahrens v. Clark has not been overruled. United States v. Hayman, supra at 220, 72 S.Ct. 263, expressly pointed out that Ahrens was not overruled by 28 U.S.C. § 2255, nor did Hayman itself overrule Ahrens. Nor do the other cases cited by the majority undermine Ahrens or raise any doubt that Ahrens continues to be the law. Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236, 83 S.Ct. 373, 9 L.Ed.2d 285 (1963), merely reiterates the rule originally set forth in Ex parte Mitsuye En-do, 323 U.S. 283, 65 S.Ct. 208, 89 L.Ed. 243 (1944), cited and rationalized by Justice Douglas in the Ahrens majority opinion. Hirota v. MacArthur, 338 U.S. 197, 69 S.Ct. 197, 93 L.Ed. 1902 (1948) which holds that a person not confined within the physical jurisdiction of any federal district court may nonetheless bring a habeas petition, does not purport to overrule Ahrens.
Finally, the majority argues that the most convincing rationale for Ahrens is that the court best situated to grant the relief a habeas petitioner seeks should hear the petitioner’s case. With deference, Ahrens does not purport to serve that goal, or if it does, it does so by holding that the identity of such a court is to be determined by the place where the petitioner is incarcerated. This final argument of the majority, once again, does not draw a meaningful distinction between the petitioner here and the petitioners in Ahrens, but is an attempt to reweigh the same considerations already weighed in that case and to reach a different result.
In sum, the distinction between the Ahrens case, and our case where petitioner challenges a state sentence to be served in the future, is a distinction without a difference. It may be true that, as the majority assert, petitioner here is “in custody” of the New York authorities pursuant to Peyton v. Rowe, 391 U.S. 54, 88 S.Ct. 1549, 20 L.Ed.2d 426 (1968),5 but in Ahrens the prisoners were also found to be “in custody” of the United States Attorney General in Washington — a fact which did not prevent the denial of habeas corpus jurisdiction to the District of Columbia courts. The fact that state law and not federal law underlies the sentence Meadows seeks to set aside makes little difference. The questions of law presented to the federal courts in a federal habeas corpus proceeding are still federal questions. The policy considerations are essentially unchanged: on one hand it is desirable not to have to transport prisoners to hearings; on the other hand it is desirable to conduct the trial where witnesses, records, and the original prosecutorial officers are to be found. Ahrens v. Clark resolved these issues conclusively; it is not the business of this court to overrule the Supreme Court.
In addition to stare decisis, one further argument militates against the result reached by the majority. 28 U.S.C. § 2241(d) (Supp. IY 1969) 6 provides that a state prisoner confined in a state which contains more than one federal judicial district may bring his petition for a writ of habeas corpus to the district having territorial jurisdiction over the place of his confinement, or, alternatively, in the district having jurisdiction over the courtroom in which he was convicted. If we were to agree with the majority’s holding, that the right of transfer exists between states, we would render meaningless that portion of Section 2241(d) which permits a choice between the district of confinement and the *1188district of conviction only when both districts are within the same state. See footnote 2 supra. We should not interpret the law to render part of an unambiguous statute meaningless, even when the alternative is to further policies which may be undesirable policies to perpetuate.
The majority of the Courts of Appeals which have considered the question before us have resolved it as I would resolve it. In Ünited States ex rel. Van Scoten v. Pennsylvania, 404 F.2d 767 (3 Cir. 1968), appellant, who was “serving a prison sentence in the New Jersey State Prison at Trenton, New Jersey, imposed by a New Jersey state court, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, challenging the validity of a sentence imposed upon him by a Pennsylvania state court, the service of which [was] to commence upon completion of his New Jersey imprisonment.” Id. at 767. The Third Circuit held that the District Court in Pennsylvania
“ * * * Was without territorial jurisdiction to entertain Van Scoten’s petition and should have dismissed it for that reason since at the time it was filed Van Scoten was incarcerated in a New Jersey jail which is outside the territorial jurisdiction of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. As subsequently developed, it is settled law that a federal district court is without jurisdiction to issue a habeas corpus writ if the person detained is not within its territorial jurisdiction when his petition for the writ is filed.” Id. at 768.
The Ninth Circuit in George v. Nelson, 410 F.2d 1179 (9 Cir.), cert. granted, 396 U.S. 955, 90 S.Ct. 433, 24 L.Ed.2d 419 (1969) held that a California prisoner serving a California-imposed sentence properly challenged the validity of a North Carolina conviction by bringing his application for the issuance of the habeas writ to the federal district court in California having territorial jurisdiction over the San Quentin prison in which the prisoner was confined. And in Ashley v. Washington, 394 F.2d 125 (9 Cir. 1968) that court arrived at the result the Third Circuit reached in Van Scoten and held that a Florida prisoner in Florida custody after a Florida conviction, faced with a detainer filed by the State of Washington, could not challenge the Washington conviction upon which the detainer was based, by applying for the issuance of' a habeas corpus writ to a federal district court in Washington.
On the other hand, in Word v. North Carolina, 406 F.2d 352 (1969) the Fourth Circuit, in banc, considered the applications of three Virginia prisoners against whom North Carolina detainers had been filed and who claimed constitutional infirmities in their North Carolina convictions. Two of the appellant prisoners filed applications in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the court having territorial jurisdiction over them, and one prisoner filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the court having jurisdiction over the attorney general of North Carolina who had filed the detainer. All three applications were dismissed by the district courts for lack of jurisdiction. Chief Judge Haynsworth, writing for the Fourth Circuit majority, held that the dismissal of the applications filed in Virginia, the state having physical custody of the petitioners, should be affirmed and the application filed in the demanding state, North Carolina, was properly filed there though the petitioner was physically present in Virginia.
In the face of this conflict within the circuits I should point out that the problems posed by these cases existed within the federal system until Congress passed the Act in 1948 which has now become 28 U.S.C. § 2255. See United States v. Hayman, 342 U.S. 205, 72 S.Ct. 263, 96 L.Ed. 232 (1952).
*1189Pursuant to that section a federal prisoner at the Atlanta penitentiary may bring his petition attacking the federal sentence he is serving or a federal sentence consecutively to be served to the sentencing court, wherever that court may happen to be. By passing this remedial legislation Congress indicated that post-conviction review of sentences is best conducted in the sentencing court instead of in the court having jurisdiction over the place of the prisoner’s confinement.
A similar amendment would clear up the problems posed here. As I have stated above, I would hold that the Northern District of Georgia had jurisdiction over the Meadows application. I would also hold that only by judicial legislation in an area where Congress has effectively legislated in the past can we support a decision that the Georgia judge properly transferred this case to the Eastern District of New York, so that jurisdiction in the New York court was created. I agree with the Third and Ninth Circuits, and with the approach of the Fourth Circuit’s dissenting judge.
Of course it seems to be a hardship upon Meadows and the State of' New York to require that the issues raised by the habeas corpus petition be adjudicated outside of the boundaries of New York, but we of the Second Circuit have regularly adjudicated the validity of out-of-state convictions. See, for example, U. S. ex rel. Turpin v. Snyder, 183 F.2d 742 (2 Cir. 1950) (A. N. Hand); U. S. ex rel. Durocher v. LaVallee, 330 F.2d 303 (2 Cir. 1964) (Kaufman, in banc).
Accordingly, I would hold that this petition filed by Meadows in the federal district court having jurisdiction of the place of his confinement is not only not transferable under 28 U.S.C. § 2241(d) to any federal district court in the State of New York but also is not transferable under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) or § 1406(a) to the federal district court in New York having territorial jurisdiction over the place where he was tried and sentenced.

. The statute, approved Sept. 19, 1986, reads as follows:
§ 2241. Power to grant writ.
(d) Where an application for a writ of habeas corpus is made by a person in custody under the judgment and sentence of a State court of a State which contains two or more Federal judicial districts, the application may be filed in the district court for the district wherein such person is in custody or in the district court for the district within which the State court was held which convicted and sentenced him and each of such district courts shall have concurrent jurisdiction to entertain the application. The district court for the district wherein such an application is filed in the exercise of its discretion and in furtherance of justice may transfer the application to the other district court for hearing and determination.

. The statute applies only to persons convicted by a state court in a “State which contains two or more Federal judicial districts * * Were we to interpret the statute otherwise than we all do, the Georgia federal court here could transfer the petition of a prisoner challenging a New York detainer, since that state has two or more federal judicial districts, but not the petition of a prisoner challenging a Connecticut or Vermont detainer, since these states have but one federal judicial district. The statute’s legislative history also makes it clear that Section 2241(d) was designed to facilitate transfers between districts of imprisonment and districts having jurisdiction over the place of conviction only when both districts are within the same state. See S.Rep. 1502, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 89th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 2968-2978 (1966).

. Section 1404 provides as follows:
§ 1404. Change of venue
(a) For the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought.

. Section 1406 provides:
§ 1406. Cure or waiver of defects
(a) The district court of a district in which is filed a case laying venue in the wrong division or district shall dismiss, or if it be in the interest of justice, transfer such case to any district or division in which it could have been brought.

. As has been pointed out by the majority, Peyton v. Rowe did not deal with an interstate detainer. That case only decided that a Virginia prisoner serving in Virginia the first of consecutive sentences imposed by Virginia courts was in Virginia’s custody not only for a sentence being served but also for those yet to be served.

. See footnote 1, supra.