Court Opinion

ID: 9425216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:04.707959+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.049717
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Brennan, and Mr. Justice Stewart concur,
dissenting.
Although I am in complete disagreement with this Court’s per curiam decision herein, I see no reason to set *696this case for oral argument in light of the majority’s firmly held views.
I cannot accept the Court’s holding that both the District Court and the Court of Appeals improperly concluded that the voluntariness of respondent’s confessions was not adequately resolved by the state trial court, thereby relieving respondent of the obligation to establish “by convincing evidence that the factual determination by the State court was erroneous,” 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (d). The Court does not deny that the state trial court judge, after summarizing the record evidence and respondent’s testimony on the question of voluntariness, utterly failed to explain the basis for his conclusion that “considering the totality of circumstances . . . the respective confessions to the police and district attorney were, in all respects, voluntary and legally admissible in evidence at the trial. . . .” Despite this absence of any reasoned explanation for the state court’s action, the Court now assures us that “it can scarcely be doubted from its written opinion that respondent’s factual contentions were resolved against him.” Ante, at 692. I could not disagree more, and therefore I must respectfully dissent.
Foremost, the Court’s certainty as to the basis for the state court’s action rests upon the fact that it is clear the state court “applied” the correct legal standard in evaluating the voluntariness of respondent’s confession. Without question, the state court in this case ritualistically recited the standard of “totality of the circumstances” which governs the determination of vol-untariness with respect to these 1963 confessions. See, e. g., Clewis v. Texas, 386 U. S. 707, 708 (1967). But this recitation in itself provided the courts below with no guarantee that the state court had not erroneously applied this standard to the facts of this case, perhaps accepting respondent’s version of the circumstances sur*697rounding the confession, rather than rejecting respondent’s version as incredible. Thus, the able District Judge noted that “[t]his court cannot be 'reasonably certain’ what facts of possibly coercive or stressful impact the trial judge found from the disputed testimony” introduced before him. 342 F. Supp. 567, 570.
The Court, however, places heavy reliance upon our prior statement in Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293, 314-315 (1963), the source of the test set forth in § 2254 (d) (1), that “the district judge may, in the ordinary case in which there has-been no articulation, properly assume that the state trier of fact applied correct standards of federal law to the facts, in the absence of evidence . . . that there is reason to suspect that an incorrect standard was in fact applied. Thus, if third-degree methods of obtaining a confession are alleged and the state court refused to exclude the confession from evidence, the district judge may assume that the state trier of fact found the facts against the petitioner, the law being, of course, that third-degree methods necessarily produce a coerced confession.” 1 But this is hardly the limit of the inquiry — contemplated by Townsend and § 2254 (d)— *698into whether a state court has adequately resolved the factual issues presented by the constitutional claim.
“[E]ven if it is clear that the state trier of fact utilized the proper standard, a hearing is sometimes required if his decision presents a situation in which the ‘so-called facts and their constitutional significance [are] ... so blended that they cannot be severed in consideration.’ . . . Unless the district judge can be reasonably certain that the state trier would have granted relief if he had believed petitioner’s allegations, he cannot be sure that the state trier in denying relief disbelieved these allegations. If any combination of the facts alleged would prove a violation of constitutional rights and the issue of law on those facts presents a difficult or novel problem for decision, any hypothesis as to the relevant factual determinations of the state trier involves the purest speculation. The federal court cannot exclude the possibility that the trial judge believed facts which showed a deprivation of constitutional rights and yet (erroneously) concluded that relief should be denied. Under these circumstances it is impossible for the federal court to reconstruct the facts, and a hearing must be held.” Townsend v. Sain, supra, at 315-316 (emphasis added).
The precise problem encountered by the courts below in evaluating the state court’s conclusion — a problem which the Court now effectively ignores — is that the issue of voluntariness in this case presents just the sort of “difficult” mixed question of law and fact which Townsend recognized would make federal court speculation concerning the basis for unreasoned state court action wholly inappropriate. To be sure, where, for instance, a defendant alleges simply that a confession was extracted from him by means of a physical beating administered by the police, *699it is obvious that if the defendant’s story is believed, the confession would be involuntary. Thus, even if a state court holds the defendant’s confession to be voluntary without articulating any reasons, a federal district court may safely assume that in such an uncomplicated situation the state court’s determination resulted from a rejection of the defendant’s factual allegations. But it can hardly be argued that this case involves allegations of the type of straightforward police “third-degree methods of obtaining a confession” which the Townsend Court suggested would entail little possibility of misapplication of the relevant legal standard so that a district court might, with reasonable confidence, assume that an unexplained state court finding of voluntariness rests upon a rejection of the defendant’s version of the interrogation, not upon constitutional error. For a review of the state court’s opinion following the “Huntley” hearing reveals that here the state court was confronted, not with an allegation of a single coercive incident which, if believed, would clearly have resulted in a finding of involuntariness, but rather with allegations of a series of coercive police actions applied to a particularly susceptible suspect.
Respondent claimed that he was held and interrogated, apparently without rest, from 5 p. m. on the day of the murder until sometime early the next morning. Throughout this time, respondent purportedly was suffering pain due to a serious back ailment and was undoubtedly handicapped by his lack of facility with the English language. Meanwhile, without any warnings as to his constitutional rights, he was questioned repeatedly by police officers, questioning which allegedly included physical threats if he refused to confess. During this process, respondent was compelled by the police to reenact the alleged murder of his wife complete with his hand being forced by a police officer into the torn seat *700back which was wet with his wife’s blood. Then the police offered to take respondent on what the District Court properly described as a “macabre” visit to the morgue to see his dead wife’s body. There the police obtained the first confession. Subsequently, further questioning by an assistant district attorney produced a second confession at about 6 a. m. A defense psychiatrist testified at trial that respondent was, in his opinion, so exhausted from his long ordeal at the hands of the police that “he would say yes if you asked him if the moon were made of green cheese.”
It is possible, of course, that the state court rejected all of respondent’s testimony as incredible and therefore properly held the confessions voluntary. On the other hand, if the state court had believed all of respondent’s contentions, it would undoubtedly have found the confessions involuntary. There remains, however, the third possibility that the state court believed some of respondent’s contentions and rejected others. It is this last possibility that makes for substantial uncertainty in a factually complex case such as this as to whether the state court correctly applied the abstract legal standard and did not, instead, commit constitutional error. Due to the unrevealing nature of the state court’s decision, it is impossible to say that that court may not have credited a sufficient portion of respondent’s story to establish, under the controlling standard, the involuntariness of his confessions and nevertheless have reached an erroneous conclusion of voluntariness because the question may have been a close one on the facts that it accepted. It is this inherent uncertainty as to what the state court may have believed or disbelieved that justified the action of the District Court and the Court of Appeals in this case. To conclude otherwise, I believe, ignores the full import of this Court’s reasoning in Townsend v. Sain, supra, concerning those limited situations in *701which a federal district court on habeas corpus may reasonably assume that an unexplained state court determination rests merely upon a rejection of testimony rather than upon constitutional error.
Consequently, in my view, the courts below properly held the State not entitled in this case to the presumption of correctness and the special burden of proof set forth in §2254 (d).2 As for the merits, I see no basis for this Court to set aside the District Court’s finding of involuntariness, a finding sustained by the Court of Appeals as not “clearly erroneous” under Fed, Rule Civ. Proc. 52 (a). Cf. Neil v. Biggers, 409 U. S. 188, 201 (1972) (opinion of Brennan, J.).

 Insofar as the Court relies upon this language from Townsend in interpreting §2254 (d)(1), the Court effectively ignores the discretionary character of the decision lodged with the district judge who is faced with a question as to the adequacy of unexplained state court findings. Townsend indicates that “the district judge may, in the ordinary ease in which there has been no articulation, 'properly assume” that the state court reached a constitutionally permissible conclusion. (Emphasis added.) Today, however, the Court effectively indicates that the district court often must assume in such cases that the proper standard was applied. Such a rigid standard seems to me wholly improper and unworkable where the question whether the defendant’s testimony was simply rejected and the proper standard applied is essentially one of judgment dependent upon the facts of each particular case. These matters are properly left largely to the discretion of the district judge. And here, certainly, it cannot be said such discretion was abused.

 The Court, of course, does not hold that the District Court erred in holding a de novo evidentiary hearing on the voluntariness of respondent’s confession. That is a question distinct from the presumption of validity and the special burden of proof established by 28 IT. S. C. § 2254 (d). Section 2254 (d) says nothing concerning when a district judge may hold an evidentiary hearing — as opposed to acting simply on the state court record — in considering a state prisoner’s petition for federal habeas corpus. So far as I understand, the question whether such a hearing is appropriate on federal habeas corpus continues to be controlled exclusively by our decision in Townsend v. Sain even after the enactment of § 2254 (d). See Developments in the Law — Federal Habeas Corpus, 83 Harv. L. Rev. 1038, 1141 (1970). And, Townsend explicitly recognizes that, apart from the six specific instances described in that opinion as mandating an evidentiary hearing, “[i]n all other cases where the material facts are in dispute, the holding of ... a hearing is in the discretion of the district judge. ... In every case he has the power, constrained only by his sound discretion, to receive evidence bearing upon the applicant’s constitutional claim.” 372 U. S., at 318.