Court Opinion

ID: 9451308
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:13:26.580076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:39.722002
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge,
with whom WATERMAN, Circuit Judge, joins (dissenting):
The facts giving rise to the issue here1 were stated as follows in the panel opinion of March 31, 1965:
Section 192 of New York’s Code of Criminal Procedure prescribes, so far as here pertinent, that “If an adjournment be had for any cause, the magistrate must commit the defendant for examination,” and § 193 adds that the commitment shall be to the sheriff, save in New York City where it is to be to the commissioner of correction. We were told at the argument that the sheriff of Nassau County does not have a representative available in the arraigning courts and that responsibility for placing committed defendants in his hands rests with the police. After the arraignment but apparently before Stovall was handed over to the sheriff, two detectives took him, handcuffed to one of them, to the hospital where Mrs. Behrendt had undergone extensive surgery, and into her room. Three high police officers and two prosecutors were also there. One of the police officers asked Mrs. Behrendt whether Sto-vall was “the man”; she said he was. *743At some time one of the officers asked Stovall “to say a few words for voice identification”; he did— just what does not appear.
The panel recognized that “the privilege [of the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination] does not invest a defendant with immunity from exposing himself to identification, even if this includes some movement, such as going from the jail to the courtroom for trial or rising, if called upon * * * and it may well be argued that use of the vocal chords, when these are not employed to produce utterances of testimonial value, stands no differently from that of the arm muscles.”2 But this truism does not settle whether Stovall was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel ; although the two rights often overlap, they are not congruent. No one would suppose, for example, that because the Fifth Amendment does not protect a defendant from being compelled to stand up in court and try on a garment found at the scene of the crime, the prosecutor could require defense counsel to absent himself during such an episode. It is beyond dispute that the preliminary hearing was part of a “criminal prosecution,” that Stovall had become an “accused,” and that he was thus entitled “to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” Hamilton v. State of Alabama, 368 U.S. 52, 82 S.Ct. 157, 7 L.Ed.2d 114 (1961); White v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 59, 83 S.Ct. 1050, 10 L.Ed.2d 193 (1963). This distinguishes Kennedy v. United States, 353 F.2d 462 (D.C.Cir. 1965), and other cases of identification during the investigative stage, on which the majority rely. I fail to understand why, in the interval between preliminary hearing and trial, a defendant is not entitled to the assistance of counsel when the state wishes to make use of him to obtain evidence that will have independent testimonial value — particularly when Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964), has obliterated any distinction between judicial and extra-judicial action by the police once the “criminal prosecution” has begun.3
The majority say that after Stovall’s appearance before the state judge he “had to remain in [police] custody” and that his custody was lawful. I see no basis for these statements. New York properly recognizes that, after the preliminary hearing, the prisoner comes under a new legal regime and his lawful custodian is the sheriff, not the police; *744the only thing the police could properly do with Stovall at that time, see § 193 of the New York Code of Criminal Procedure, was to place him in the hands of the custodial authorities just as soon as possible. Those authorities would have been bound not only to prevent Stovall from removing himself but also to prevent his being removed or molested by anyone else. The assumption, implicit in the court’s opinion, that such a prisoner is suject to the beck and call of the police is surely wrong, see Judge Finlet-ter’s fine opinion in Commonwealth v. Brines, 29 Pa.Dist. 1091 (C.P.1920). Once Stovall was in the sheriff’s custody, the latter could not lawfully release him to the police without an order of the court; if the prosecution had sought such an order, counsel could have been appointed and the difficulty that has here arisen Would have been avoided.4
Other arguments advanced by the majority are equally unconvincing. They say the police could have taken Stovall to the hospital for identification before arraignment despite the absence of counsel, so why not thereafter? But many things can be done in the absence of counsel in the investigative stage before the “criminal prosecution” begins, which cannot lawfully be done later, as Mas-siah v. United States, supra, plainly shows. The rhetorical question as to what counsel could have done was answered in the panel opinion many months ago:
He might have persuaded the prosecutor, in the state’s own interest, if not to forego the hospital identification, at least to assure conditions better designed to avoid suggestion. He might have persuaded the judge to direct that Stovall be immediately sent to and then kept in jail pending trial, or be put before Mrs. Behrendt only under fair conditions such as a line-up, or be accompanied by counsel who might question her * * *. Or, as a last resort, he might have advised Stovall to refuse to go, or to remain silent if taken by force.
The case thus bears no resemblance to the recent decision in Rigney v. Hendricks, 355 F.2d 710 (3 Cir. 1965), with which I am in accord, where counsel were notified of the intention to place an accused prisoner in a line-up held under scrupulously fair conditions and with counsel present. We have been told in no uncertain terms that, in dealing with a capital charge, as Stovall’s was at the time, we are not to speculate on whether prejudice resulted -from the absence of counsel, Hamilton v. State of Alabama, supra, 368 U.S. at 55, 82 S.Ct. 157, at 159, here, as there, “the degree of prejudice can never be known.”
My brothers also intimate that the police and the prosecutor were confronted with an emergency and that they may have thought the visit to the hospital to be in Stovall’s own interest. The latter argument ignores the huge amount of circumstantial identification the excellent police investigation had produced; moreover, if the state officials were motivated by such solicitude, the natural course would have been to ask Stovall whether he wanted to go. The emergency argument fails both on the facts and on the law. Grievous as Mrs. Behr-endt’s injuries had been, nothing in the record indicates that her life was any longer considered to be in peril when Stovall was brought before her; the presence of five police officers and prosecutors in her hospital room would argue to the contrary — and also tends to negate the suggestion that Stovall had to be brought in alone. If Mrs. Behrendt’s condition had been as serious as my brothers suppose, nothing prevented the *745prosecutor from informing the state district judge at the preliminary hearing that Stovall had to be taken immediately before her, and suggesting that counsel be assigned forthwith for the limited purpose of advising him in that regard— rather than standing silent when Stovall told the judge of his desire to have counsel and then carting him off to a confrontation by the victim which counsel might have done something to mitigate.
My brothers also assert that in any event admission of the hospital identification was cumulative and therefore not prejudicial to Stovall, although they do not altogether agree on the grounds. Addressing itself to this point the panel said:
The statement was inculpatory on the central question of his presence on the occasion of the crime; indeed, Mrs. Behrendt’s was the only identification that was testimonial rather than circumstantial, and the jury asked that all her testimony be reread. A claim of harmless error as to a conviction must surmount an exceedingly high hurdle, even on collateral attack, when the error was constitutional and the punishment is death. See Bruno v. United States, 308 U.S. 287 [60 S.Ct. 198, 84 L.Ed. 257] (1939); Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764-65 [66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557] (1946); Stewart v. United States, 366 U.S. 1, 9-10 [81 S.Ct. 941, 6 L.Ed.2d 84] (1961); Hamilton v. State of Alabama, supra, 368 U.S. 52 [82 S.Ct. 157], The hurdle is too high for this case.
Despite the labored attempt to prove the contrary, the hospital identification, featured in the prosecutor’s opening, must have had a far greater effect on the jury than the identification in court some months later; common sense supports Dean Wigmore’s observation, “After all that has intervened, it would seldom happen that the witness would not have come to believe in the person’s identity.” 4 Evidence § 1130 at 208 (3d ed. 1940). The self-created dilemma of the concurring opinion, that exclusion of the hospital identification would prevent identification at the trial, is illusory; exclusion of the former would simply have required the prosecutor to rest on Mrs. Behrendt’s memory of the might of the dreadful crime and on her courtroom identification. If, in this posture, defense counsel had brought out the hospital identification, as no experienced counsel would, he would have had only himself to blame.
Although there can assuredly be a waiver of the right to counsel between arraignment and trial, no one has seriously suggested that we could find that, when, without any previous discussion, this Negro, of low mental capacity, was taken to the hospital by a detective to whom he was handcuffed. I scarcely regard Stovall as a sympathetic character, and I am glad that the crime was recent enough to permit an effective retrial. But I continue to believe that, in the absence of overriding necessity or consent, a man who has been brought before a judge on a charge of a capital crime, and has expressed his desire for counsel, is entitled under the Constitution to be let alone until he gets one. That is all Judge Marshall and I decided last March, and I adhere to it.

. The statement of the majority that this claim was “not even presented to the court below” is not wholly accurate. As the panel opinion explained, it was raised in Stovall’s hand-written petition but was not considered by Judge Wyatt since in the district court counsel had relied entirely on the point dealt with in the final paragraphs of this court’s opinion. The panel opinion also noted that the Assistant District Attorney commendably had not relied on the failure of Stovall’s counsel to argue the point to Judge Wyatt and sought disposition by us on the merits.

. The reference to moving the arm muscles was followed' by citation of Mr. Justice Holmes’ well-known opinion in Holt v. United States, 218 U.S. 245, 252, 81 S.Ct. 2, 54 L.Ed. 1021 (1910).

. I see no basis for Chief Judge Lum-bard’s “wonder whether the right to counsel doctrines of Escobedo v. Illinois and Massiah v. United States apply to circumstances which do not ultimately involve a danger . of self-incrimination.” Once it has been held, as these cases clearly did, that the Sixth Amendment may apply outside the courtroom and when, as in Massiah, the accused did not even know of the presence of the police or the prosecutor, I see no escape from the conclusion that, if the right has attached, the accused is entitled to the assistance of counsel when the prosecutor attempts to use him as a means of procuring evidence to be offered at the trial.
I cannot believe my brothers would go to the extent of saying that, after arraignment or indictment, counsel could be excluded while the defendant was being subjected to medical examination or blood or handwriting tests. If counsel cannot be excluded from such procedures, common sense does not supply me with a satisfactory answer why he can be barred from an identification which his client is compelled to attend — although no one would dream of excluding him from a less meaningful one in the courtroom; the argument that, although excluded from the former, he will have an opportunity to attack both identifications at trial, does not seem sufficient for preventing him from rendering all possible assistance to the accused before the'•¡witness’ impression hardens. I fear that my brothers simply have not been able to adjust their sights to the Supreme Court’s new concept that the right to the assistance of counsel embraces activities outside the courtroom.

. It is unnecessary to decide in this case the manner and extent to which Stovall could have been exposed to viewing in the course of normal jail routine. Cf. Morris v. Crumlish, 239 F.Supp. 498, 499 (E.D.Pa.1965).