Court Opinion

ID: 9452278
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:35:30.140969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:08.957231
License: Public Domain

ALBERT V. BRYAN, Circuit Judge, with whom HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, joins,
dissenting:
The release nisi of Walker now ordered by the court rests wholly on its speculation of what might have happened in the prosecution. His counsel might have moved for a change of venue; he might have asked for another judge; he might have asked for a jury; or the judge might have been prejudiced. “We can only speculate” concedes the majority, but nevertheless decision goes against the State on this basis. Strangely, it is not speculated that Walker’s counsel might have preferred to proceed as he did. Above all, Walker does not even now, tell us that he desired a jury.
I had thought a petitioner for habeas corpus had the burden to prove Constitutional infirmity in his trial. Now, however, the court presumes error. But if the speculation is to be employed, its present application is faulty.
The ineffective assistance of counsel found by the District Judge does not rest upon the circumstance that the judge who took the plea also tried the case. The ruling was put exclusively on the State judge’s failure to enter the original plea of record, and to advise trial counsel of “what had been said and done at the arraignment”.
The arraignment-judge was not per se ineligible to be the trial judge. This also was the opinion of the District Judge. *354Indeed, the universal rule that a judge is empowered, and frequently is obligated, to reject a plea of guilty recognizes that he need not recuse himself after the plea of not guilty is substituted. Any other rule of practice would contravene unquestioned procedure. Besides, here every judge who should sit in the case thereafter would be affected with knowledge of the first plea, if it had been entered on the docket as required. No contrary view may be gleaned from White v. State of Maryland, 373 U.S. 59, 83 S.Ct. 1050, 10 L.Ed.2d 193 (1963) cited by the majority. The decision was grounded on the lack of counsel at the preliminary hearing and the subsequent use of his uncounseled plea as substantive evidence of guilt. Again speculation is employed by this court — to read into White what is not written there.
Of course, it would have been preferable for the criminal court to have stopped the arraignment proceeding immediately upon learning of Walker’s lack of counsel, and so prevented any incriminating utterance by the accused. However, while this was a procedural omission, it was certainly not a fatal infirmity in the ensuing trial. Absence of counsel at that moment was not an absence at a critical stage, for the error was correctable and at once corrected.
No merit lies behind the point suggested by the majority that a change of venue or a jury might have been requested had defense counsel been aware of the original plea. On a transfer of the case elsewhere, the same judge could have presided. Obviously, there was no denial of a jury; it was obtainable for the asking, as counsel knew. Had Walker’s counsel known of the initial plea, his jury waiver would still have been unexceptionable. See Hensley v. United States, 108 U.S.App.D.C. 242, 281 F.2d 605, 609 (1960). No injury is manifest or presumable in electing the judge instead of a jury to be his trier. Nevertheless, only because the first plea was known by the trial judge but not to counsel, we are asked to set aside a murder conviction almost ten years old.
The grounds given for Walker’s release are too hypothetical and tenuous to sustain a charge of Constitutional invalidity. They raise no substantial question of due process. See Snider v. Cunningham, 292 F.2d 683, 686 (4 Cir. 1961). As Justice Frankfurter so patly said for the Court in Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U.S. 269, 281, 63 S.Ct. 236, 242, 87 L.Ed. 268 (1942) :
“If the result of the adjudicatory process is not to be set at naught, it is not asking too much that the burden of showing essential unfairness be sustained by him who claims such injustice and seeks to have the result set aside, and that it be sustained not as a matter of speculation but as a demonstrable reality.”
The order for the retrial or release of the appellant should be vacated.