Court Opinion

ID: 9456882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:04:57.413554+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:07.897915
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
Here is presented an extraordinary example of “justice” dispensed by the federal courts. Stubbs, the appellant, released from a Texas penitentiary in June 1954, a few days later kidnapped at gunpoint in Tennessee a Mr. and Mrs. Holm and forced them to accompany him in their car. While on the road he murdered Mrs. Holm apparently “in cold blood” and attempted to murder Mr. Holm, wounding him twice. Stubbs was apprehended shortly thereafter at a roadblock. He tried to explain the blood on his clothing by attributing it to an accident while fishing. Stubbs was taken to the hospital to which Holm had been taken. There, in the presence of police officers and a doctor, Holm identified Stubbs as “the man that killed my wife and shot me.”
Stubbs was indicted in the Criminal Court in Tennessee on July 8, 1954 and arraigned the next day, July 9, 1954. The Trial Judge immediately appointed three members of the County Bar to represent Stubbs. Although counsel moved for a continuance for additional time to prepare a defense (a practice not unusual for defense counsel), the trial was set for, and proceeded on, July 12, 1954.
In addition to other witnesses, Holm testified to the facts of the kidnapping, the murder of his wife and his own wounding. There is no indication in the record that Stubbs' counsel did not have a full opportunity to cross-examine Holm. The jury convicted Stubbs on four indictments, murder in the first degree, assault with intent to murder and two counts of kidnapping. He was sentenced to concurrent terms of 99 years and 21 years.
Ten years passed. Stubbs by habeas corpus petition then advanced the claim in a federal court in Tennessee that his *5651954 conviction should be set aside. The federal judge, in my opinion quite erroneously, granted the petition on the ground that “the petitioner was denied effective representation by counsel” in that “Court-appointed counsel did not have adequate and sufficient time within which to prepare the necessary defense prior to going to trial” and, declaring the first trial “null and void,” remanded Stubbs for further prosecution.
On the second trial in 1964 the State called fifteen (15) witnesses, including the three (3) Highway Patrolmen and a Police Investigator who were present in Holm’s hospital room on June 11, 1954 and who testified to Holm’s identification of Stubbs as the murderer and assailant. The testimony of another eyewitness who had died in the ten-year interval was introduced from the transcript. Holm had returned to Sweden where he was in residence. His 1954 testimony was also introduced from the transcript.
Again Stubbs was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to twenty years and one day. The Supreme Court of Tennessee reviewed and affirmed the conviction. In an opinion by the Chief Justice, the court considered and ruled upon with approval the introduction of the Holm testimony from the transcript. There was, however, a modification of the sentence. Stubbs urged that he was entitled to a credit of his pre-trial imprisonment since 1954 and with this claim the court agreed.
How and why Stubbs was released from Tennessee is not revealed but 1966 finds him in New York State pursuing his calling and convicted in Monroe County of first degree assault and possession of a gun. Sentences (as a first offender) could have been imposed of sixteen to seventeen years. However, because of the 1964 Tennessee conviction, Stubbs was a second felony offender and, under New York Penal Law, § 1941 (then, and to this case on remand, currently, applicable), was subject to the sentence actually imposed of thirty-two to thirty-four years. Parenthetically, although not mentioned below, I see no reason why the County Court should not be able to consider the Texas conviction as a predicate to second offender treatment on any re-sentence.
All this background material, although not irrelevant to the issue before us, has caused the majority to divert its attention to Tennessee instead of to New York. Stubbs is not seeking relief from his Tennessee conviction as such but simply from its use to support a longer sentence for his subsequent New York conviction. The attack now made on the Tennessee conviction is purely collateral. On the merits I would hold that we should respect the decision of the Tennessee Supreme Court on the subject of the admission of Holm’s 1954 testimony via the transcript.
Adverting momentarily to the merits of admitting Holm’s transcript testimony, the facts definitely show, in contrast to widely differing facts in cases cited, that Holm was beyond the jurisdiction of the Tennessee courts even with federal aid. See Barber v. Page, 390 U.S. 719, 88 S.Ct. 1318, 20 L.Ed.2d 255 (1908). Therefore, I do not find it necessary to restrict the permissive categories to death and connivance. Enough flexibility should exist in the law to consider the facts of each case in relation to availability and importance.
All of Stubbs’ present arguments about lack of confrontation are but a smoke-screen. He and his counsel confronted Holm; his counsel cross-examined Holm; the issues and facts were not complex. More important, however, is the fact that on the 1964 trial, many eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses testified. Stubbs undoubtedly would have been convicted without the use of Holm’s testimony. Of course it was important as an ingredient but so is almost all testimony placed in the category of harmless error. If harmless error be a factor on direct appeals, how much the more so should it be on collateral attacks!
*566In my opinion the able argument advanced by Stubbs’ counsel has sought to divert us (and succeeded as to the majority) into paths of constitutional and hackneyed generalities. We all recognize the rights of confrontation and cross-examination. However, the many cases cited based on other and different facts are not dispositive here.
I would affirm the denial of the writ but at the very least would have the majority give more explicit instructions to the County Court on the possibility of regarding the Texas conviction as a predicate for the potential new sentence under § 1941 of the New York Penal Law.