Court Opinion

ID: 9466615
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:21:09.155985+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:50.031601
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
Once again this Court in the high name of the Constitution becomes involved by the majority in the most direct way in domestic problems wisely left to the states.1 Not only that, it is done by an order declaring unconstitutional prior decisions of the state’s highest tribunal through the medium of an attack directed against innocent local state trial circuit judges, all of whom — including all other judges high and low in the whole state of Florida — are now categorically directed, without discretion or consideration of real needs, to conform to our edict. Worse, this all comes about because of the possible or likely error one of the judges made in his handling of a single specific case.-
More than that, this has all of the earmarks of a carefully contrived failure to use available Florida procedures for a timely review of that supposed error in the hope— which materialized — that this would set the stage for Federal intrusion.
I think all of the principles of Federalism and the demands of comity are defeated by this action and I therefore dissent from this intrusion. Once we embark on this constitutional quest I concur some relief was justified, but not the blunderbuss which freezes for all time and all Florida judges the procedure which must be followed in handling all such cases.
I concur in the affirmance of the District Court judgment only because I agree that Mrs. Davis should have been appointed counsel at her child’s dependency hearing. However, the strictest rule I would impose on Florida judges concerning the appointment of counsel to indigent parents in state dependency proceedings would be the rule of the Ninth Circuit enunciated in Cleaver v. Wilcox, 499 F.2d 940 (1974) and already adopted by the Florida Supreme Court in Potvin v. Keller, 313 So.2d 703 (Fla.1975).2 The need for counsel should be determined on a case by case basis, considering such factors as the length of potential separation of the parent and child, the presence or *387absence of parental consent or disputed facts, and the parent’s ability to present his or her case, to deal with documents and to examine witnesses. The Judge’s reasons for denial of counsel should be stated in the record to ensure meaningful judicial review. Cleaver, supra, 499 F.2d at 945.
Applying the Cleaver factors to this case, I feel that the State Circuit Court judge who presided over this dependency hearing was wrong in not appointing counsel for Mrs. Davis. The length of potential separation of mother and child was very long; moreover, Mrs. Davis did not even understand that her child could be taken away from her for more than a few weeks. She consented to the taking of her child but this was only because she totally misunderstood the nature of the proceedings and was ignorant of any other options available to her. She was completely intimidated at the proceeding and unable to present her case.
But the mistake was a single incident of abuse of judicial discretion. It does not indicate a system in Florida so flawed that it cannot deal in general with the problem of appointing counsel in child dependency proceedings. In the Interest of R.W.H., 375 So.2d 321 (Fla.App.1979), is a recent Florida decision demonstrating that the case by case method of Cleaver, as used in Florida courts, does work to ensure' parents legal representation when they need it.
My main misgiving about the majority’s holding today concerns what I believe to have been an abuse of discretion on the part of this Court and the District Court, in hearing this case in the first place. In view of all the facts, and traditional notions of comity, it would have been more prudent to leave the ultimate disposition of this case to the Florida State courts.
The Florida Circuit Court order adjudicating Carl Thor Davis a dependent of the state was entered on March 9, 1976. Under Florida law, Mrs. Davis’ proper remedy would have been a direct appeal to the Florida Court of Appeals. Fla.Stat.Ann. § 39.14 (West 1974) (current version at Fla. Stat.Ann. § 39.413 (West Supp.1979)). The Florida Appellate Rules, Rule 3.2(b) provides thirty days from the “rendition of the final decision, order, or judgment” in which to prosecute an appeal. In re Florida Appellate Rules, 211 So.2d 198 (Fla.1968). Although the reviewing court has no jurisdiction to hear a case after the time for appeal has expired, Ramagli Realty Co. v. Craver, 121 So.2d 648 (Fla.1960), opinion conformed to, 123 So.2d 404 (Fla.App.1960), all that is necessary to commence an appeal is the filing of a notice of appeal and the deposit of a filing fee. Rule. 3.2(a). Hall v. Florida State Department of Public Welfare, 226 So.2d 39, 40 (Fla.App.1969) makes it eminently clear that in Florida, habeas corpus is no substitute for a direct appeal from a Juvenile Court adjudication of the dependency of a child, even if the time for appeal has expired.3
Mrs. Davis did not understand at the time the full import of the adjudication of dependency of her child and was not informed of her right to appeal. Yet the Judge pre*388siding at the dependency hearing did tell her to retain counsel and to inform that counsel of what had transpired. If her diligence in trying to obtain counsel before the hearing is any indication of her diligence afterwards, thirty days should have been enough time to find an attorney. Her petition in Federal District Court, however, states that her “counsel ascertained that an order adjudicating the child dependent had already been entered and that the time for appealing the order of March 9, 1976, had lapsed.” I am left with the distinct impression that Mrs. Davis’ attorneys chose the habeas corpus route in state court, as opposed to direct appeal, because it was more likely to give a negative result, thereby giving petitioner the right to claim she had exhausted her state remedies and was entitled to seek Federal habeas corpus relief.
Under no circumstances am I implying that Mrs. Davis had failed legally to exhaust her state judicial remedies. Clearly the time for direct appeal had expired when she filed for Federal habeas corpus. And no matter what tactical maneuvers her attorneys may or may not have been planning, she did not knowingly and deliberately bypass the right to follow the correct state procedures. Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 438-40, 83 S.Ct. 822, 848-849, 9 L.Ed.2d 837, 868-70 (1963).
Nor do I suggest, contrary to Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 165, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961), a general rule of exhaustion of state remedies in order to bring a § 1983 action in Federal Court. However, I believe that since Mrs. Davis was seeking the release from custody of her son, Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), controls to make her only possible remedy in Federal Court habeas corpus, and that claim may well have been moot had she followed the proper state court procedures.
I simply do not think either this Court or the District Court should have entertained this cause which I think was carefully choreographed to force a Federal ruling on the constitutionality of a procedure inherently based on the discretion of the Judges of another sovereign.
Domestic relations is an area of law in which Federal Courts traditionally have deferred to State Courts. Sosna v. State of Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 404, 95 S.Ct. 553, 559, 42 L.Ed.2d 532, 543 (1975); DeSylva v. Ballentine, 351 U.S. 570, 580, 76 S.Ct. 974, 979, 100 L.Ed. 1415, 1427 (1956); Bell v. Bell, 411 F.Supp. 716 (W.D.Wash.1976). Federal Courts have always preferred to abstain from answering questions of law, such as those contained in domestic relations suits, which the states are by nature best equipped to deal with. See Moore v. Sims, 442 U.S. 415, 429-30, 99 S.Ct. 2371, 2380, 2381, 60 L.Ed.2d 994, 1007 (1979); Harris County Commissioners Court v. Moore, 420 U.S. 77, 83-84, 95 S.Ct. 870, 874-875, 43 L.Ed.2d 32, 39 (1975); Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315, 63 S.Ct. 1098, 87 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1942).
In this case, this Court imposes on the state legal system a hard and fast rule. They tell the Florida Circuit Judges that they are not capable of deciding when an indigent parent present at dependency hearing is in need of counsel, and worse, through the medium of local state trial judges, as the target of § 1983, we declare that the Supreme Court of Florida’s rule is unconstitutional for all time and for all circumstances. The state judges have no choice but to appoint counsel in every case.
Although Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455, 62 S.Ct. 1252, 86 L.Ed. 1595 (1941) was overruled by Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), I do not think that the notion of deference to state courts in the interpretation of their own laws, expressed in Betts, 316 U.S. at 472, 62 S.Ct. at 1261, 86 L.Ed.2d at 1607, has ever been dismissed as no longer important. In Gideon, the Supreme Court decided, not that comity was an insignificant concern for Federal Courts, but that it was outweighed by a more powerful Federal concern in that case, the fundamental right to counsel in a state criminal prosecution, guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Every case on which the majority today relies in support of its holding of an absolute right to counsel for parents in a child dependency proceeding, is a criminal case *389involving the Sixth Amendment, or at least a case involving the potential confinement of the person to whom the absolute right to counsel is granted. I cannot disagree that the right of a parent to retain custody of his children is one of the most important rights implicitly recognized by the Constitution. But it is not quite of the same constitutional dimensions as an individual’s right to his own liberty. It is not an interest which can outweigh the concerns of federalism and of state and federal comity. Therefore, I cannot agree with the holding of the majority — that an indigent parent has an absolute constitutional right to an attorney in a juvenile dependency proceeding.4

. See Drummond v. Fulton County Dept. of Family and Children’s Services, 563 F.2d 1200, 1212 (5th Cir. 1977) (en banc) (Brown, C. J., concurring).

. The Supreme Court has even more recently decided to require the appointment of counsel in all cases where indigent parents are threatened with permanent loss of custody or when criminal charges may arise from the proceeding. In all other cases, however, the Florida Supreme Court expressly refused to follow the Federal District Court holding in Davis v. Page and adopts Cleaver v. Wilcox. In the Interest of: D. B. and D. S., No. 56,237 (May 16, 1980).

. Mrs. Davis’ counsel rely on a footnote in Potvin v. Keller, supra, in which the Florida Supreme Court declines to follow Hall:
2. While habeas corpus is not available as a substitute for an appeal of the juvenile court’s order. Hall v. Florida Dep't of Pub. Welfare, 226 So.2d 39 (4th Dist.Ct.App.Fla.1969), it is available as a remedy if the trial court’s adjudication of dependency was unconstitutional. Richardson v. State ex rel. Milton, 219 So.2d 77 (3d Dist.Ct.App.Fla.1969).
To take this footnote literally would lead to circuitous reasoning which would put undue emphasis on the ultimate outcome of the petition for habeas corpus. This remedy would be proper, and the failure to make a timely appeal irrelevant, only if the petitioned Court found a constitutional violation to exist. If no constitutional violation were found to justify the granting of a writ of habeas corpus, a petitioner who relied exclusively on this footnote, ignoring the Hall admonition to make a timely appeal, would be out of luck. Only hindsight is twenty-twenty.
Mrs. Davis does not propose that the above interpretation of the footnote, a kind of Russian roulette, is the correct interpretation. Her interpretation goes to the other extreme to accommodate the latecomer to the Florida Court of Appeals. She argues that any time a habeas corpus petitioner waves the constitutional violation flag — and this will be almost every time such a petition is filed — the rule of Hall is inapplicable. I do not believe the Supreme Court of Florida meant essentially to overrule Hall in a footnote.

. Although 1 agree with the majority that the issue of liability of the state court judge for attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C.A. § 1988 should not be decided until we hear what the Supreme Court has to say in Supreme Court of Virginia v. Consumer’s Union, 1 make one comment. I do not see how a judge, whose absolute immunity to liability always has been accepted at common law, should be liable — in this case where he was acting in good faith, in his judicial capacity, and in accordance with the most recent decision of his State’s Supreme Court, Potvin v. Keller, supra. It matters not to me what great principles the Supreme Court announces in Consumers Union. Under no circumstance should these judges (or in a derivative sense the state of Florida) be compelled to pay monetary penalties for what, at most, was a judicial error. To shield the judges by saying that the state, not they, will pay still means that civil penalty is imposed on the judges, or the state judiciary because their judicial pronouncements do not jibe with that of a single federal judge, affirmed by two more.