Court Opinion

ID: 9461743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:23:42.787801+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:14.648548
License: Public Domain

ROBB, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The majority concludes that 23 D.C. Code § 110(g) (1973) is merely an exhaustion of remedies requirement and was not intended by Congress to affect the habeas corpus jurisdiction of the federal courts. I am unable to accept this conclusion. Subsection (g) of section 110 provides that “[a]n application for a writ of habeas corpus . . . shall not be entertained ... by any Federal court if it appears that the applicant has failed to make a motion for relief under this section or that the Superior Court has denied him relief, unless it also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to *1315test the legality of his detention.” [Emphasis supplied.] Without laboring the point, I think this plain language means exactly what it says.
Since I reject the premise upon which the majority avoids what it considers to be difficult constitutional questions I turn briefly to those questions.
The majority suggests that there may be merit in the argument “that section 110 is not exactly commensurate to ha-beas corpus both because it is inadequate to protect the interests which mandate ultimate article III review of questions involving constitutional liberty and because it entrusts that task to judges who do not possess the tenure and salary protections which lie at the heart of the independence of the federal judiciary.” I note that the relief available in the Superior Court under 23 D.C.Code § 110 (1973) is the equivalent of that available in a federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 2255; and the Supreme Court has held that the scope of 28 U.S.C. § 2255 is “exactly commensurate” with the scope of federal habeas corpus. Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1, 13-14, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 10 L.Ed.2d 148 (1963); Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 427, 82 S.Ct. 468, 7 L.Ed.2d 417 (1962). See United States v. Hayman, 342 U.S. 205, 209, 72 S.Ct. 263, 96 L.Ed. 232 (1952). The relief defined in section 110, therefore, is the equivalent of federal habeas corpus relief. Consequently, the basis for the argument that “section 110 is not exactly commensurate to habeas corpus” is reduced to the difference in the tenure and salary protections accorded District Court and Superior Court judges.
I think the argument suggested by the majority is answered in principle by Palmore v. United States, 411 U.S. 389, 93 S.Ct. 1670, 36 L.Ed.2d 342 (1973). In that case the Supreme Court held that a defendant charged with a felony under the District of Columbia Code may be tried by a judge who does not have tenure and salary protection under Article 111 of the Constitution; that “under its Art. I, § 8, cl. 17, power to legislate for the District of Columbia, Congress may provide for trying local criminal cases before judges who, in accordance with the District of Columbia Code, are not accorded life tenure and protection against reduction .in salary.” 411 U.S. at 390, 93 S.Ct. at 1672. If without the dilution of his constitutional rights a man may be tried and sentenced to the penitentiary by an Article I judge of the Superior Court, I see no reason why he may not be limited to that same court when applying for collateral post-conviction relief. A prisoner’s constitutional rights are no more diluted and he is no more disadvantaged in the one case than in the other. In both cases review may be had in the United States Supreme Court. The Article I courts held competent to administer the District of Columbia’s criminal justice system exclusive of Article III courts are perforce competent to dispense collateral post-conviction relief exclusive of the habeas corpus jurisdiction of Article III courts.
The majority also suggests that section 110(g), as construed by the government, may deny a prisoner convicted in the District of Columbia court equal protection of the law by prohibiting collateral review in an Article III court, a remedy available to all prisoners convicted in state courts. Once more I think Palmore v. United States, 411 U.S. at 410, 93 S.Ct. 1670, answers the argument. As the Palmore decision establishes, there is no invidious discrimination when a person in the District of Columbia is tried in an Article I court for a violation of an act of Congress, applicable only within the District, although elsewhere in the United States he would be tried in an Article III court for any violation of a general federal statute. I think it follows that it is not a denial of equal protection when that person is required to present his application for collateral relief to an Article I District of Columbia court. Again, equal protection is denied no more in the one case than in the other. United States v. Thompson, 147 U.S.App.D.C. 1, 452 F.2d 1333 (1971), cert. denied, 405 U.S. 998, 92 *1316S.Ct. 1251, 31 L.Ed.2d 467 (1972), relied upon by the appellant, does not require a contrary conclusion. In that case, as the majority here notes, the standards for release on bail under the District of Columbia statute were harsher than those of the Federal Bail Reform Act. In the case before us however the District of Columbia courts will be governed by the same standards applicable in federal Article III courts; and any improper deviation from such standards will be subject to correction by the Supreme Court of the United States.
I dissent.