Court Opinion

ID: 9445757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:37:43.43947+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:23.942447
License: Public Domain

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
The order of the District Court was, in pertinent part:
“This cause having come on for consideration upon a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the rule to show cause why a writ of habeas corpus should not issue, the respondents’ motion to dismiss and evidentiary exhibits attached thereto, and oral argument having been had thereon in open Court, and it appearing that the Court lacks jurisdiction to issue the Writ of Habeas Corpus it is by the Court this 9th day of September, 1954,
“Ordered, that the respondents’ motion to dismiss be and it is hereby granted, that the order to show cause be discharged, and the petition be dismissed, * *
The “evidentiary exhibits” attached to the motion to dismiss included the order of the convening authority directing the trial and confinement, the record of the trial before the court-martial, the review by the Staff Judge Advocate, various motions ancillary to the proceeding, the pleadings, briefs and motions before and the decision of the Court of Military Appeals and its denial of a rehearing, correspondence between counsel, the brief filed for consideration of the President, the consequent letter of the Secretary of the Army, and the action of the President approving the conviction and sentence. In other words the District Court had before it the whole record of the military proceeding, from the charges, the trial, the various reviews, up to and including the proceedings before the Court of Military Appeals and the President of the United States. The court said that upon consideration of all that record it appeared the court lacked “jurisdiction to issue the Writ”. I think it meant that upon the basis of the record it lacked power to issue the writ. It did not say it lacked jurisdiction to entertain the petition. It did not forthwith dismiss the petition, as it would have done if it had meant to hold that it lacked territorial jurisdiction to entertain the petition. On the contrary it considered the whole record of the military proceedings and upon that basis concluded it had no “jurisdiction” to issue a writ. And that is indubitably so. Perhaps the word “jurisdiction” might be considered inept; the court should have said “power”. But what the court did is clear enough, and we often use “jurisdiction” to mean either power to entertain a complaint or power to enter a *63judgment. We say we have “jurisdiction to determine [our] jurisdiction”, as the Supreme Court said in Land v. Dollar.1 But “jurisdiction” ordinarily means power to enter judgment, as the cases collected by our late Chief Judge Stephens in his opinion in West Coast Exploration Co. v. McKay 2 clearly show.
The power of a civil court to issue a writ of habeas corpus in a military case is severely limited. The matter is of insurmountable practical difficulty, involving crimes committed all over the world. Moreover the lack of power is a lack of constitutional power. The Constitution itself specifically puts the regulation of the armed forces in the Congress,3 and, when Congress has provided a court-martial procedure and its rules are followed, a civil court thereafter lacks constitutional power in the premises. The Supreme Court said in In re Yamashita4 and repeated in part in Johnson v. Eisentrager:5
“The courts may inquire whether the detention complained of is within the authority of those detaining the petitioner. If the military tribunals have lawful authority to hear, decide and condemn, their action is not subject to judicial review merely because they have made a wrong decision on disputed facts. Correction of their errors of decision is not for the courts but for the military authorities which are alone authorized to review their decisions.”
We went through all this in Burns v. Lovett,6 and the Supreme Court, admonishing us against examining into the factual phases of these proceedings, affirmed our judgment.7 In that case the Supreme Court said:
“The District Court dismissed the applications without hearing evidence, and without further review, after satisfying itself that the courts-martial which tried petitioners had jurisdiction over their persons at the time of the trial and jurisdiction over the crimes with which they were charged as well as jurisdiction to impose the sentences which petitioners received.” 8
The Supreme Court also said:
“We think that although the Court of Appeals may have erred in reweighing each item of relevant evidence in the trial record, it certainly did not err in holding that there was no need for a further hearing in the District Court.” 9
The narrow limit of civil court power in military matters is also spelled out in In re Grimley10 and in Hiatt v. Brown.11
The papers now before us do not suggest any basis upon which the District Court had power or authority to issue a writ of habeas corpus. It correctly entertained the petition for the writ, reviewed the record of the military proceedings, and concluded it had no “jurisdiction” to issue the writ. No point within the compass of civil court jurisdiction is shown. Its judgment ought to be affirmed.
I might add that my position that the judgment of the District Court ought to be affirmed is made doubly certain, in *64my mind at least, by the fact that this appellant has already had one complete civil court consideration of his claim to habeas corpus in the Tenth Circuit.12 The present proceeding is a second full-scale civil court review of his claim to error in the military proceeding.

. 1947, 330 U.S. 731, 739, 67 S.Ct. 1009, 1013, 91 L.Ed. 1209.

. 1954, 93 U.S.App.D.C. 307, 213 F.2d 582, certiorari denied 1954, 347 U.S. 989, 74 S.Ct. 850, 98 L.Ed. 1123.

. Art. I, § 8, cl. 14.

. 1946, 327 U.S. 1, 8, 66 S.Ct. 340, 344, 90 L.Ed. 499.

. 1950, 339 U.S. 763, 786, 70 S.Ct. 936, 94 L.Ed. 1255.

. 1952, 91 U.S.App.D.C. 208, 202 F.2d 335.

. Burns v. Wilson, 1953, 346 U.S. 137, 73 S.Ct. 1045, 97 L.Bd. 1508.

. Id., 346 U.S. at pages 138-139, 73 S.Ct. at page 1047.

. Id., 346 U.S. at page 146, 73 S.Ct. at page 1051.

. 1890, 137 U.S. 147, 150, 11 S.Ct. 54, 34 L.Ed. 636.

. 1950, 339 U.S. 103, 111, 70 S.Ct. 495, 94 L.Ed. 691.

. Day v. Davis, 1956, 235 F.2d 379, certiorari denied 1956, 352 U.S. 881, 77 S.Ct. 104, 1 L.Ed.2d 81.