Court Opinion

ID: 9577867
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:38:59.405145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:23.411296
License: Public Domain

Hale, J.
(dissenting) — For reasons set forth in an earlier opinion (In re White v. Rhay, 65 Wn.2d 711, 726-35, 399 P.2d 522 (1965)), I agree with the majority that this court does not lose jurisdiction in habeas corpus even though petitioner has a similar petition pending in the district court of the United States. I concur with the dissenting opinion, however, on all points except that of jurisdiction, and accept its conclusion that the petition should be dismissed.
The petition should be dismissed because it is without merit; it raises no justiciable issues presently cognizable by the highest court of the state. This court has more urgent business than the review of such stale, repetitive and overworked claims as are now asserted in this, petitioner’s fourth petition for habeas corpus.
At his trial 4 years ago, petitioner apparently made the same claims that he makes now concerning the June 7, 1962, search of jail inmates, i.e., that the police framed him by planting heroin and Nembutal in his trouser cuff; that during the search they stripped him and compelled him to lie naked on the jail floor; and that, although he made a written confession later, it was coerced and, therefore, inadmissible. Respondent specifically denies that a confession was ever taken from petitioner, much less employed at trial.
Petitioner went to trial on the primary issue of guilt or innocence and on the issues necessarily included in his claimed impairment of constitutional rights. Police officers testified that, after observing one of the jail inmates to be under the apparent influence of narcotics, they conducted a *790search of the jail and its inmates. In doing so, they said that they saw petitioner put something into the left trouser pocket of the person standing to his right. Thereupon, the officers testified, they searched the petitioner, had him strip and made a search of his body. This evidence was received at trial and considered by the jury. On all of these issues of fact, the trial court, in ruling on the admissibility of evidence, and the jury, by verdict, found against him.
Petitioner revived these same issues before the trial judge in his motion for a new trial and, again, the court, after considering fully petitioner’s claims, discountenanced his assertions of fact and refused him a new trial. I think that the trial court acted not only within its discretionary powers specifically in denying the new trial but altogether in consonance with its judicial duties. Petitioner must have thought so too, for he elected to carry his grievance no further.
At that juncture, petitioner had readily available to him one of the most effective devices for the guarantee of due process abiding within this or any judicial system — the right to appeal, a right not vouchsafed in every jurisdiction. He had the right to present all of his claims of error and denial of constitutional rights assessed by a multijudge court having full power to correct any errors or denial of due process and sworn under the constitutions of the United States and the state to do so. He knew then, as he knows now, that, if he failed to exercise that right within the time set for giving notice of appeal, he would be deemed no longer aggrieved at the judgment and sentence and be held to have waived all claims which then could or should have been raised.
With this knowledge and with the natural presumption that his grievances were far fresher and more cogent in his mind right after trial when he urged his motion for a new trial than they could be said to be now, 4 years later, petitioner declined to appeal. He did not even prepare a record from which it could be readily ascertained whether a confession was ever introduced in evidence, although such a record could easily have been then prepared.
*791The majority opinion now sets in motion expensive and time-consuming judicial machinery on unsupported assertions of fact at the behest of one who spurned the regular machinery of justice then available to him for a review of such claims. Now, when memories have faded, witnesses have died or scattered, valuable evidence, if any, lost or restored to its rightful owners, the court gives dignity to this frivolous petition by ordering a formal trial on the stale claims he readily could have asserted long ago.
In other words, a session of court will be held at the instance of petitioner, witnesses summoned, and the court obliged to make specific findings on such questions as: (1) Did the police frame petitioner by planting heroin and Nembutal in his trousers? (2) Did the police, in having him strip and forcing him to lie naked on the jail floor while they searched his person, exceed their lawful authority? If so, did this affect the evidence at trial to his detriment? (3) Did the police then stamp on his ankles, as he says, to force him to confess? (4) Did he confess, and when, and under what circumstances? (5) Was this confession introduced at his trial? (6) If so, was it obtained from him by coercion? In short, the court must again answer the same questions which were answered or readily could have been answered had they been asked at trial and on appeal.
A reading of the claims made by petitioner here demonstrates that his assertions and hundreds like them can readily be made by every convicted felon in a penitentiary who has access to a pencil and paper. Experience shows that the instant petition is but one of thousands of completely groundless and frivolous claims brought every year in the courts of this country. That the Supreme Court of the United States accepts this view may be ascertained from a reading of several quite recent opinions.
I would refer to Sunal v. Large, 332 U. S. 174, 91 L. Ed. 1982, 67 Sup. Ct. 1588 (1947), in which habeas corpus was denied where petitioner had failed to appeal:
So far as convictions obtained in the federal courts are concerned, the general rule is that the writ of habeas corpus will not be allowed to do service for an appeal.
*792and I see no reason why the same rule does not apply to state convictions. Later in the opinion, the court said:
If in such circumstances, habeas corpus could be used to correct the error, the writ would become a delayed motion for a new trial, renewed from time to time as the legal climate changed. ... If defendants who accept the judgment of conviction and do not appeal can later renew their attack on the judgment by habeas corpus, litigation in these criminal cases will be interminable.
The petition before us, and literally thousands like it brought annually before the courts of the land, makes prophesy of the foregoing words and demonstrates that where habeas corpus becomes a substitute for appeal criminal cases will be interminable.
In equally prophetic language, the United States Supreme Court again foretold the hazards of such substitutions saying in Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 97 L. Ed. 469, 73 Sup. Ct. 397 (1953):
The writ of habeas corpus in federal courts is not authorized for state prisoners at the discretion of the federal court. It is only authorized when a state prisoner is in custody in violation of the Constitution of the United States. 28 U.S.C. § 2241. That fact is not to be tested by the use of habeas corpus in lieu of an appeal. To allow habeas corpus in such circumstances would subvert the entire system of state criminal justice and destroy state energy in the detection and punishment of crime.
and, finally, in the same opinion:
A failure to use a state’s available remedy, in the absence of some interference or incapacity, . . . bars federal habeas corpus.
Petitioner, having failed to use the state’s available remedy of appeal, ought not now be heard to assert the same claims which he years ago thought too trifling to urge.
If the majority opinion is given the precedential value to which it is entitled, then I fear that we have fashioned a formidable instrument with which to attack the administration of justice at its weakest point, the point where the case ought to end. We will have devised a means to prevent *793finality in criminal judgments. The majority opinion establishes a procedure readily employable by thousands of penitentiary inmates in this country to set in motion again and again the slow, ponderous machinery of the judicial system for repeated re-examinations of the very facts upon which convictions were had, and thus conclusively establish that a criminal case shall never end, but go on and on until finally concluded by the death or discharge of the felon, or the machinery of justice wears out — whichever occurs first.
Petitioner has received all of the process due him. He has had all of the days in court to which he is entitled. A lawsuit — whether civil or criminal — should one day terminate. I would end this one by dismissing the petition.