Court Opinion

ID: 9455495
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:24:05.980243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:37.202135
License: Public Domain

EDWARDS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Appellant appeals from an order dated January 20,1969, filed by a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, which without evidentiary hearing denied his petition for writ of habeas corpus.
The District Judge cited appellant’s failure to exhaust his state remedies in justifying denial as to all issues except one.
Dealing with appellant’s claim of Fourteenth Amendment deprivation because of claimed prejudicial pretrial publicity, however, the District Judge concluded that there had been no denial of petitioner’s federal constitutional rights. In so holding the District Judge appears to have relied in part upon the opinion of the Michigan Court of Appeals. The record fails to disclose whether or not the District Judge also had before him and made an independent review of the'state trial court record, as required by Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 313, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963). See also Conner v. Wingo, 409 F.2d 21 (6th Cir. 1969).
The District Judge, however, also held that “on the face of the pleadings” petitioner had failed to present any federal *668constitutional issue upon which his state remedies had been exhausted. Review of the petition convinces me that petitioner’s allegations on the pretrial publicity issue, if accepted as true, did not constitute deprivation of due process of law under the standards of Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663 (1963); Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961). See also Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600 (1966).
The judgment of the District Court should be affirmed.