Court Opinion

ID: 9454579
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:50:27.522163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:10.453580
License: Public Domain

WATERMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting and concurring):
I concur in affirming the district court order refusing to sustain the writ. I agree with the judge below and with my brothers that appellant intentionally abandoned his right to challenge the validity of his February 1962 conviction for first degree manslaughter even though the conviction was obtained in violation of due process of law. My brothers appear to be holding, however, that appellant waived his constitutional right in four different ways. I would hold that there had been a waiver in only one of them and therefore I consider it necessary for me to set forth my individual views.
Based upon the testimony that was elicited from the state trial judge and from petitioner’s state trial counsel at the evidentiary hearing below the district court found that there had been a breach of a judicial promise made to petitioner in connection with petitioner’s plea of guilty and the judicial acceptance of that plea. It is well-settled that when a plea of guilty is entered in connection with a judge’s promise relative to the imposition of a sentence it violates our concepts of fundamental fairness not to strike off the plea if the promise is not kept. United States ex rel. Elksnis v. Gilligan, 256 F.Supp. 244, 249, 253-254 (S.D.N.Y.1966); see Machibroda v. United States, 368 U.S. 487, 493, 82 S.Ct. 510, 7 L.Ed.2d 473 (1962); Waley v. Johnston, 316 U.S. 101, 104, 62 S.Ct. 964, 86 L.Ed. 1302 (1942); Walker v. Johnston, 312 U.S. 275, 286, 61 S.Ct. 574, 85 L.Ed. 830 (1941); Kercheval v. United States, 274 U.S. 220, 224, 47 S.Ct. 582, 71 L.Ed. 1009 (1927); United States ex rel. McGrath v. LaVallee, 319 F.2d 308, 311, 314 (2 Cir. 1963).
Moreover, it is no less a violation of due process when the judge breaks his promise for some “legitimate” compelling reason, e. g., United States ex rel. Elksnis v. Gilligan, supra, 256 F.Supp. at 249-250. Of course, when new facts are discovered the trial judge is not bound to fulfill a promise he now considers manifestly unjust, but in that event fundamental fairness requires that the judge should not wait for a defense request but should forthwith strike off the guilty plea himself and reinvest the defendant with all the constitutional rights accorded him under our accusatory system of criminal justice. United States ex rel. Elksnis v. Gilligan, supra at 249. It is not enough for the judge to permit the plea to stand and then to say that if the defendant had sought to withdraw his guilty plea after the imposition of a more severe sentence than agreed upon the judge would have granted the request. The burden of insuring that a guilty plea is entirely voluntary is upon the court that has repudiated its prior promise; it is not upon the defendant who has been unfairly induced to enter the plea.
As petitioner’s 1962 conviction has never been set aside as unfairly obtained the sole issue before us is whether this case is one of those relatively rare cases mentioned by the United States Supreme Court in Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963), in which a “suitor’s conduct in relation to the matter at hand may disentitle him to the relief he seeks.”
*1281Fay v. Noia explicitly recognized that a federal judge has a limited discretion to deny any relief to a state prisoner habeas corpus applicant “who has deliberately by-passed the orderly procedure of the state courts and in so doing has forfeited his state court remedies.” 372 U.S. at 438, 83 S.Ct. at 849. This concept of waiver is explained in the following passage from the Court’s opinion:
But we wish to make very clear that this grant of discretion is not to be interpreted as a permission to introduce legal fictions into federal habeas corpus. The classic definition of waiver enunciated in Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464 [58 S.Ct. 1019, 1023, 82 L.Ed. 1461] — “an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege”— furnishes the controlling standard. If a habeas applicant, after consultation with competent counsel or otherwise, understandingly and knowingly forewent the privilege of seeking to vindicate his federal claims in the state courts, whether for strategic, tactical, or any other reasons that can fairly be described as the deliberate by-passing of state procedures, then it is open to the federal court on habeas to deny him all relief if the state courts refused to entertain his federal claims on the merits — though of course only after the federal court has satisfied itself, by holding a hearing or by some other means, of the facts bearing upon the applicant’s default. Cf. Price v. Johnston, 334 U.S. 266, 291 [68 S.Ct. 1049, 1063, 92 L.Ed. 1356], At all events we wish it clearly understood that the standard here put forth depends on the considered choice of the petitioner. * * * 372 U.S. at 439, 83 S.Ct. at 849.
Under this standard the question of whether a habeas applicant has abandoned his right to have a federal court hear his objections to his state detention and to obtain relief depends on the particular facts of his case. 372 U.S. at 440, 83 S.Ct. 822.
Turning to the facts at bar, my colleagues suggest four grounds which they hold provide ample support for the district court’s determination that petitioner deliberately waived available New York state procedural remedies which he could have utilized to challenge the constitutionality of his 1962 conviction. I do not agree with them that their first three grounds, whether individually or collectively considered, constitute effective waivers within the guidelines of Fay v. Noia. First, an effective waiver is suggested because Kenny failed to move to withdraw his guilty plea after he was sentenced, a motion Judge Bar-shay testified at the habeas hearing he would have granted had it been made. As I have already stated, when it appears that a guilty plea may have been induced by a judicial promise which is not to be kept, the burden is on the trial judge to strike off the plea or, at the very least, he must instruct the defendant that his plea may be withdrawn. Here the petitioner was not so instructed and so his failure to make the motion on his own initiative does not disentitle him to federal habeas corpus relief. Second, Kenny’s failure to appeal the 1962 conviction so obtained, although counsel advised him to appeal, does not measure up to the Fay v. Noia standard. If petitioner’s 1962 conviction for manslaughter had been overturned on appeal he could have been charged with first degree murder and tried on that charge. Thus Kenny’s situation was similar to that faced by Noia.1 Neither Noia nor *1282Kenny could relinquish federal habeas corpus rights by failing to appeal. Third, the majority’s position that Kenny’s application to Judge Weinfeld for leave to withdraw his prior habeas corpus petition without prejudice amounted to a strategic abandonment of his constitutional claim is as inadequate a reason to deny Kenny relief as the two other grounds mentioned. The only logical inference that can be drawn from this request, the very inference noted by the district court below in granting the evidentiary hearing he held, is that petitioner was aware of the grave consequences to him, that of having to defend a possible first degree murder charge upon retrial, if he successfully prosecuted the habeas application he asked leave to withdraw. This is the precise dilemma which the Court in Fay v. Noia recognized criminal defendants are sometimes confronted with and which prompted the Court to hold that where the convicted one is faced with a “grisly choice” it is unfair to require him to pursue a state remedy in order to obtain a right to seek federal habeas corpus.2 The injustice of compelling an adjudication of an application for a federal habeas corpus writ by denying the right to a non-prejudicial withdrawal of the application is no less evident. In both situations the risk at a retrial of ultimately receiving a stiffer penalty may lurk in the background of an individual’s decision to forego a challenge to the legality of his detention, and, if so, the remedies of federal habeas corpus must remain open to him should he later decide to expose himself to the risk. Thus petitioner’s present election to chance the consequences to him of a new trial by instituting the within application for a writ of habeas corpus is not foreclosed by his withdrawal of a prior application which sought the same relief. In summary, if the decision of the majority had rested only upon these three grounds I would have been compelled to dissent from affirming the district court’s failure to sustain the writ. I have no reservations, however, in agreeing with my brothers that the fourth ground they rely upon to affirm was a demonstrable intentional abandonment of an available state procedure when petitioner did not have in mind that he had a grisly choice to make.
Pursuant to the requirements of § 1943 of the New York Penal Law Kenny was specifically told when sentenced as a multiple offender in 1965 that he could challenge the validity of his predicate 1962 conviction.3 This he failed to do. The court below found as a fact that the petitioner in his testimony below negated any presumption that he was afraid that if his prior conviction were overturned it would leave him subject to a possible first degree murder trial for he there stated that his reason for not attacking the predicate conviction was that he “just didn’t feel like it at the time.” I agree with my brothers that this statement by petitioner amply supports the *1283district court’s determination that petitioner’s failure to assert his claims in accordance with New York law was a deliberate choice that was not induced by any apprehension of a retrial and a greater penalty.

. In Fay v. Noia the Court stated:
* * * Under no reasonable view can the State’s version of Noia’s reason for not appealing support an inference of deliberate by-passing of the state court system. For Noia to have appealed in 1942 would have been to run a substantial risk of electrocution. His was the grisly choice whether to sit content with life imprisonment or to travel the uncertain avenue of appeal which, if successful, might well have led to a retrial and death sentence. See, e. g., Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 58 S.Ct. *1282149, 82 L.Ed. 288. He declined to play Russian roulette in this fashion. This was a choice by Noia not to appeal, hut under the circumstances it cannot realistically be deemed a merely tactical or strategic litigation step, or in any way a deliberate circumvention of state procedures. * * * 372 U.S. at 439-440, 83 S.Ct. at 849.

. See note 1, supra.

. Section 1943 of the New York Penal Law, as amended April 10, 1964, provides in pertinent part:
* * * * *
An objection that a previous conviction was unconstitutionally obtained may be raised at this time [when defendant is informed by the court of the allegations of an information accusing him of such prior conviction] and the court shall so inform the person accused. Such an objection shall be entered in the record and shall be determined by the court * * *. The failure of the person accused to challenge the previous conviction in the manner provided herein shall constitute a waiver on his part of any allegation of unconstitutionality unless good cause he shown for his failure to make timely challenge. * * * (Emphasis supplied.)