Court Opinion

ID: 9493959
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:24:51.277192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:08.193817
License: Public Domain

RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Mr. Bracken is in custody pursuant to a state trial that did not satisfy the Constitution. There can be little argument on that point. Well-settled Supreme Court precedent establishes that a defendant is entitled to have the trial court make a finding of voluntariness with “unmistakable clarity,” Sims v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 538, 544, 87 S.Ct. 639, 17 L.Ed.2d 593 (1967), before admitting his confession into evidence. Here, the trial judge left it “ambiguous,” *704ante at 700, whether such a finding was made. The Court does not even discuss, much less accept, the State’s position that the finding of voluntariness was constitutionally sufficient. It holds instead that, under the circumstances, the District Court had no authority to order the error corrected. I respectfully disagree.
I.
The Court argues that the Jackson claim was outside the scope of Mr. Bracken’s habeas petition. Two different standards may govern this question. Where a petition is prepared by counsel, a court “should only adjudicate those grounds upon which habeas relief [is] actually sought.” Frey v. Schuetzle, 78 F.3d 359, 361 n. 2 (8th Cir.1996). Relief is “actually sought” upon a given theory only if that theory is “explicitly pled ... as a separate ground for relief in ... [the] petition.” Id. at 361. While there is no strict requirement that the legal basis of relief be articulated, we have endorsed the view that petitions prepared by counsel “should” make that basis clear. See Frey at 361; Jones v. Jerrison, 20 F.3d 849, 853 (8th Cir.1994). But where a petitioner without legal expertise prepares his own pleading, we must construe it “in a broad and remedial manner.” Crooks v. Nix, 872 F.2d 800, 804 (8th Cir.1989). A pro se petition should be “interpreted liberally and ... should be construed to encompass any allegation stating federal relief.” White v. Wyrick, 530 F.2d 818, 819 (8th Cir.1976). As the Tenth Circuit has said, Hall v. Bellmon, 935 F.2d 1106, 1110 (10th Cir.1991); see also Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1, 22-23, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 10 L.Ed.2d 148 (1963) (Brennan, J.) (“The judge is not required to limit his decision on the ... [habeas] motion to the grounds narrowly alleged, or to deny the motion out of hand because the allegations are vague, conclusional, or inartistieally expressed. He is free to adopt any appropriate means for inquiry into the legality of the prisoner’s detention in order to ascertain all possible grounds upon which the prisoner might claim to be entitled to relief.”).
[I]f the court can reasonably read the pleadings to state a valid claim on which the plaintiff could prevail, it should do so despite the plaintiffs failure to cite proper legal authority, his confusion of various legal theories, his poor syntax and sentence construction, or his unfamiliarity with pleading requirements.
A remedial interpretation of this kind often involves supplying legal or factual statements that the petition should contain, or relaxing the rule that requires such statements, where it reasonably appears that they were omitted merely for lack of legal know-how. This follows naturally from the Supreme Court’s statement in Haines v. Kerner that a pro se habeas petition should be held to “less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers .... ” 404 U.S. 519, 520, 92 S.Ct. 594, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1972). Although in Haines it was the petitioner’s factual allegations that fell short of normal standards of pleading, the interpretive principle invoked there applies as well to cases in which a pro se litigant fails to make clear the legal theory under which relief is sought. For example, in Hughes v. Rowe, 449 U.S. 5, 101 S.Ct. 173, 66 L.Ed.2d 163 (1980), the petitioner did not make explicit whether he sought relief under the Eighth Amendment or under the Due Process Clause, but he did allege, inter alia, that he had been placed in solitary confinement and that he had been given no hearing on the disciplinary charges for which he received that punishment. See 449 U.S. at 10 n. 8, 101 S.Ct. 173. The Supreme Court reversed the dis*705missal of his petition. See 449 U.S. at 10, 101 S.Ct. 173.
A similar situation is presented when a misunderstanding of the law causes a pro se petitioner to advance a claim upon which no relief can be granted, instead of a closely related claim that has a possibility of success. White v. Wyrick, supra, is a good example.3 In White, the petitioner requested relief on a basis not then cognizable in federal habeas proceedings, namely that the evidence against him was insufficient to support a verdict as a matter of state law. Applying the liberal-construction rule, we instructed the District Court to treat that part of the petition as stating the federal due-process claim that the record contained no credible evidence to support the conviction. See 530 F.2d at 819.
Of course, a pro se pleading is not a magic hat out of which a court may pull any claim it thinks should have been advanced. As the Tenth Circuit cautions, it is not the place of a district court to act as the petitioner’s advocate. See Hall, supra, at 1110. We have adopted a somewhat more specific restriction, holding that “federal courts should not grant habeas relief to a petitioner based upon a legal theory that involves an entirely different analysis and legal standards than the theory actually alleged by the petitioner.” Frey, 78 F.3d at 361. Yet while this general rule does set a limit to liberal construction of the kind found in White, that limit dictates a reversal only where the claim on which relief is granted shares no legal elements with any claim actually alleged in the petition. In a pro se case presenting such a claim, the favored course is to allow an amendment. Compare Frey, 78 F.3d at 361 (“On remand, Frey of course may seek permission from the district court to amend his petition .... ”), with Sanders, 373 U.S. at 19, 83 S.Ct. 1068 (prior to Haines; stating that a court had the power to deny a habeas motion for conclusory allegations, but that “the better course might have been to direct petitioner to amend his motion ....”); Platsky v. C.I.A., 953 F.2d 26, 28 (2d Cir.1991) (In light of Haines, “[i]nstead of simply dismissing the complaints for naming federal agencies as the defendants, it would have been appropriate for the district judge to explain the correct form to the pro se plaintiff so that Platsky could have amended his pleadings accordingly.”); Rotolo v. Borough of Charleroi 532 F.2d 920, 923 (3d Cir.1976) (discussing application of Haines standard to pro se civil rights complaint; holding that, while District Court correctly held that the complaint failed to state a claim, plaintiff should have been allowed an opportunity for amendment).
What the District Court did here is like what we did in White. Although Mr. Bracken’s Ground Seven did not clearly set forth the claim on which he was ultimately granted relief, it did clearly allege a violation of his right against self-incrimination, and it did the job of getting the District Court to examine whether that right was violated in the part of the trial in which the confession was admitted. Upon looking there, the District Court found an error of that very kind, and construed the petition’s allegations as encompassing that error. This was within the rule of Frey, because the claim actually pleaded was not *706“entirely different” from the claim on which relief was granted. See 78 F.3d at 361. Although there is a clear distinction between a coerced-confession claim and a procedural-right claim grounded in Jackson and Sims, the two claims do share a common root in the Constitution’s guarantee against coerced self-incrimination. While a grant of leave to amend would also have been reasonable, I do not believe that the District Court erred in taking the course that it did.
Neither White nor Frey holds that a District Court may always grant relief on any ground that shares some legal element in common with a claim actually asserted in the petition. But although a narrower restriction may be appropriate in some cases, it is not appropriate here. Like the right to counsel at the stages of trial and direct appeal, our duty of liberally interpreting pro se habeas pleadings is founded on the concern that a layman may have legal rights that he is not reasonably able to discover and defend, or even to understand, without professional guidance. “That which is simple, orderly and necessary to the lawyer, to the untrained layman may appear intricate, complex and mysterious.” Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 463, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938). This concern has particular force when, as here, the understanding of a right requires a layman to grasp a somewhat technical point about the criminal trial process. If it were proved that Mr. Bracken understood his Jackson claim, but deliberately abandoned it, the equities would be different. See, e.g., Wong Doo v. United States, 265 U.S. 239, 44 S.Ct. 524, 68 L.Ed. 999 (1924). But that inference is not sufficiently supported by the fact that he failed to copy the argument from his former lawyer’s brief.
It appears unlikely that pro se litigants will be more careful in their pleadings because of the Court’s holding today, because as a class they are generally untrained in the law. If, on the other hand, we affirmed the District Court, the State would merely bear the expense of correcting a clear constitutional error. That is part of the cost a state undertakes in operating a system of courts. Under circumstances such as these, if we find the case a close one, the weight that tips the scales should be our solicitude to uphold the Constitution.
II.
I believe that the District Court was authorized to reach the Jackson claim. In holding to the contrary, the Court adopts an overly narrow interpretation of a court’s duty liberally to construe pro se habeas petitions. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. Contrary to the Court's view, ante at 703, there is no indication that White was a case in which a petitioner's factual allegations needed only to be fitted out with a federal legal theory. See White, 530 F.2d at 819-20 (Webster, J., dissenting) (“The factual allegations contained in petitioner's section 2254 petition state no more than that Judge Statler, the state trial judge, would support by opinion testimony his belief that there was insufficient evidence to support the conviction.”).