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United States ex rel. Smith v.
Baldi |
CERTIORARI
TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR
THE THIRD CIRCUIT
Syllabus
1.
A denial of certiorari by this Court (with no statement of reasons therefor) to
review a decision of a state supreme court affirming a conviction in a criminal
prosecution should be given no weight in subsequent habeas corpus proceedings
in a federal court. Brown v. Allen, ante, p. 
443.
P. 565.
2.
Petitioner, sentenced to death by a state court for murder, was not denied due
process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment by virtue of his having been
allowed to plead guilty without there first having been a formal adjudication
of his sanity, in view of the procedure available for subsequently withdrawing
the plea of guilty and entering a plea of "not guilty because of
insanity." Pp. 565-567.
3.
Petitioner was not denied due process by reason of his having been summarily
advised by court-designated counsel at his arraignment to plead "not
guilty," since there was ample opportunity later to rectify the error, if
there was error, by a hearing on insanity. Pp. 567-568.
4.
It was not the constitutional duty of the State, even upon request, to appoint
a psychiatrist to make a pretrial examination into petitioner's sanity. P. 568.
5.
Petitioner's contention that an insane man may not be executed assumes
erroneously that he has been found to be insane. The law of Pennsylvania, as announced
by the State Supreme Court, protects against execution of the insane. Pp. 568-569.
6.
Upon the record in this case, the Federal District Court, on petitioner's
application for habeas corpus, did not err in refusing to hold a plenary
hearing for the determination of petitioner's sanity. Pp. 569-570.
[344 U.S. 562]
7.
As the state trial and appellate court records which were before the District
Court show a judicial hearing where, on the plea of guilty, the question of
sanity at the time of the commission of the crime was canvassed, petitioner's
sentence does not violate due process. P. 570.
192
F.2d 540 affirmed.
Petitioner,
a state prisoner, applied to the District Court for habeas corpus, and his
application was dismissed. 96 F.Supp. 100. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 192
F.2d 540. This Court granted certiorari. 343 U.S. 903. Affirmed., p. 570.
REED, J., lead opinion
MR.
JUSTICE REED delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner
was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania.
The crime was committed in January, 1948. Petitioner was without counsel when
he appeared for arraignment on February 25, 1948. The presiding judge asked a
lawyer present in the courtroom to advise petitioner how to plead. This lawyer,
who knew nothing about petitioner, advised him to enter a plea of "not
guilty." On September 21, 1948, after several continuances, the District
Attorney, together [344 U.S. 563]
with petitioner's state-named counsel, who had been appointed after
arraignment, and a judge of the sentencing court, agreed that a plea of
"guilty" would be substituted for the earlier plea of "not
guilty." This was done so that the State could present its evidence that
the crime was first degree murder, and petitioner's counsel would then have
additional time in which to procure out-of-state evidence at State expense to
support the contention that petitioner was insane. The State put in its
evidence on September 21, 1948. At hearings held on October 28, 1948, and
November 5, 1948, defense counsel introduced evidence tending to show that
petitioner was insane. The sentencing court was not satisfied by the evidence
that petitioner had been insane either at the time of the murder or at any time
thereafter, and, on February 4, 1949, sentenced him to death.
While
the docket entries as shown in the trial record differ from the notes on the
indictment as to whether the sentencing court found petitioner guilty of first
degree murder on September 21, 1948, or did not so find until February 4, 1949,
the difference is immaterial. According to the entries written in longhand on
petitioner's indictment, 192 F.2d at 569, the entry noting the adjudication of
guilty of murder in the first degree on February 4, 1949, is not in proper
order. It appears to have been inserted between the entry stating that
petitioner had withdrawn his plea of not guilty and entered a plea of guilty on
September 21, 1948, and the entry of November 5, 1948, stating that
"additional testimony [had been] heard and held under advisement." If
the contested and out-of-order date of "2/4/49" is removed, the notes
on the indictment would agree with the docket entry of September 21, 1948, and
would read,
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[A]fter hearing testimony both for the Commonwealth
and the defendant . . . , the defendant is adjudged guilty of murder in the
first [344 U.S. 564] degree.{ |
Since the entry of September
21, 1948, was made following a plea of guilty and with opportunity for further
evidence as to insanity, it was not in any way binding or even persuasive. It
was the sentence on February 4, 1949, after the insanity hearing, that was the
final adjudication.
An
appeal was taken from this judgment on a full record to the State Supreme
Court, where it was asserted that it was an abuse of discretion by the
sentencing court to have imposed the death sentence in the circumstances of the
case. The conviction was affirmed. 362 Pa. 222, 66 A.2d 764. No effort was made
to secure from this Court a writ of certiorari to review that affirmance.
Petitioner thereafter filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The
petition was denied on the ground that petitioner was not within the
jurisdiction of the court at the time the proceeding was instituted. On appeal,
the denial was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. 181 F.2d
847. No petition for certiorari to review that decision was filed with this
Court. A petition for habeas corpus was then filed in the State Supreme Court.
This was entertained on the merits and denied on the ground that there was no
denial of due process of law, and there
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was nothing in this record which convinces us that
this relator was insane when he committed the murder charged or when he
pleaded guilty or at the time [344 U.S. 565] he was
sentenced to death. |
364 Pa. 93 at 119, 71 A.2d
107 at 120. Immediately following our denial of a timely petition for
certiorari, 340 U.S. 812, petitioner filed a second application for a writ of
habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania. The District Court dismissed the petition, noting that all the
issues presented in the petition had been before the State Supreme Court. 96
F.Supp. 100, 105. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
affirmed. 192 F.2d 540. We granted certiorari, 343 U.S. 903. The petitions
involved in the State habeas corpus proceedings presented the identical due
process questions which are before us now, and the complete record of the State
trial proceedings -- appellate as well as those in State habeas corpus -- were
before the District Court and the Court of Appeals.
The
first point we consider is the question of the effect to be given our denial of
certiorari in a habeas corpus case. Both the District Court (96 F.Supp. 100,
105) and the Court of Appeals (192 F.2d 540, 544) concluded that the denial of
certiorari in habeas corpus cases means nothing except that certiorari was
denied. As the effect of a denial of certiorari was then in doubt, we granted
this petition primarily to determine its effect. As this conclusion is spelled
out more fully in the opinions in Brown
v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, decided today, the answer is short. Our denial
of certiorari in habeas corpus cases is without substantive significance.
The
next contention of petitioner is that he was denied due process. In substance,
this issue presents questions as to (1) whether the State should have allowed
him to plead guilty without having first formally adjudicated the question of
his mental competency, and (2) whether it should have permitted him to plead at
all to a capital offense without affording him the technical services of a
psychiatrist. [344 U.S. 566]
Petitioner
had been committed to an institution for mental patients in New York three
years prior to the commission of the crime with which he is charged. At the New
York institution, his disease was diagnosed as dementia praecox. After four
months, he was discharged as recovered. Later, he voluntarily committed himself
to the Philadelphia General Hospital for fear that he might harm someone. Ten
days later, he was released because there was "no evidence of [his] having
any psychosis." These facts were presented to the trial court prior to sentencing
on February 4, 1949.
In
contending that Pennsylvania denied him due process by convicting him of murder
on his plea of guilty without an adjudication or evidence as to his sanity,
petitioner points to language used by the State Supreme Court indicating, in
his view, a holding of sanity based on the plea of guilty, instead of on
evidence. There, that court stated that the plea of guilty was an admission of
sanity, and that the evidence of petitioner's mental condition taken by the
trial court after the plea of guilty went to the question of the appropriate
penalty.{2}
The complete answer to petitioner's contentions, however, is found in the
succeeding paragraph, where the court said:
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If the evidence
taken as to the defendant's mental condition for the purpose of enabling the
court to assess the proper punishment, raised a substantial doubt as to
Smith's sanity, it would have been the duty of his counsel to have moved to
withdraw the [344 U.S.
567] plea of guilty so that a plea of
"not guilty because of insanity" could be entered. If the trial
court had denied this motion, the defendant could have taken an exception,
and, on appeal, this court would have decided whether or not the court in
denying the motion had abused its discretion. |
364 Pa. 93 at 113, 71 A.2d
107 at 117.
Petitioner
furthermore maintains that the sentence imposed violates due process because he
was advised to plead "not guilty" at arraignment on the snap advice
of a court-designated lawyer who had never before laid eyes on petitioner. As a
consequence of this off-hand plea of not guilty, petitioner contends he lost
his only chance to require that his mental competency be tried at the outset by
a jury.{3}
Assuming
that such a chance was in fact lost, it does not follow that due process was
denied. As pointed out above, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court emphasized that,
even after changing his plea to "guilty" on the advice of counsel
familiar with this case, there was still adequate [344 U.S. 568] opportunity to withdraw the second plea
and substitute a plea of "not guilty because of insanity" had
petitioner's counsel entertained any doubt of his client's mental competency.
364 Pa. at 113, 71 A.2d at 117. When Pennsylvania furnished petitioner counsel
for his arraignment, we cannot say his error in advising a "not
guilty" plea made all future proceedings unconstitutional when there was
ample opportunity to rectify the error, if any there was, by a hearing on insanity.
A claim of denial of due process can hardly be predicated upon the failure of a
defense move.
This
brings us to petitioner's second point: that the assistance of a psychiatrist
was necessary to afford him adequate counsel. The record of the trial court proceedings
reveals that, on November 5, 1948, a psychiatrist who had examined petitioner
at the court's request testified as to petitioner's sanity at the time of the
trial and at the time of the commission of the crime. In addition, on October,
28, 1948, two other psychiatrists were called by the defense to testify as to
petitioner's mental competence. On the same day, petitioner's counsel also
introduced various reports and letters dealing with his client's mental
history. On this evidence, the court determined his sanity. Petitioner further
asserts that he should have been given technical pretrial assistance by the
State. Although the trial judge testified that defense counsel made no such
request, petitioner here states that the trial court refused to appoint a
psychiatrist to make a pretrial examination. We cannot say that the State has
that duty by constitutional mandate. See McGarty v.
O'Brien, 188 F.2d 151, 155. As we have shown, the issue of petitioner's
sanity was heard by the trial court. Psychiatrists testified. That suffices.
Petitioner's
argument that an insane man may not be executed proceeds on the assumption that
he has been found to be insane. The law of Pennsylvania, as announced [344 U.S. 569] by the Supreme
Court of the State, provides full protection against the execution of the
insane.
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It is a principle
imbedded in the common law -- and we administer the common law in
Pennsylvania -- that no insane person can be tried, sentenced or executed. |
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* * * * |
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A prisoner
convicted of murder and under sentence of death is (like the relator in the
instant case) still in the hands of the law,
and, in a proper case, the judiciary of the State can intervene by
appropriate means to save an insane prisoner from execution. The judiciary
has this power both under the statutes and under the common law. |
Commonwealth
ex rel. Smith v. Ashe, 364 Pa. 93, 116-119, 71 A.2d 107, 118. See Phyle
v. Duffy, 334 U.S. 431, and Solesbee
v. Balkcom, 339 U.S. 9.
Petitioner's
final point is that the United States District Court committed error in
refusing to hold a plenary hearing for determination of his sanity. This is
refuted by Brown
v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, at 460-465.
In
denying the first petition, the District Court received evidence from judges of
the State trial panel, defense and prosecution counsel, and others as to
whether a fair hearing on petitioner's sanity had been accorded him by the
State. In denying the second petition for habeas corpus, the District Court
held that not
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unless special circumstances prevail should the
lowest federal court reverse the highest state court in cases where the
constitutional issues have been disposed on the merits by the highest state
court in an opinion specifically setting forth its reasons that there has
been no denial of due process of law, and where the record before the state
court and the allegations in the petition for the writ before [344 U.S. 570] the federal court fail to disclose that the state,
in its prosecution, departed from constitutional requirements. That is this
case. |
United
States ex rel. Smith v. Baldi, 96 F.Supp. 100 at 103.
This
view of the proceedings accords with our holding in the Brown case, supra.
As the trial and appellate State court records which were before the District
Court show a judicial hearing where, on the plea of guilty, the question of
sanity at the time of the commission of the crime was canvassed, the sentence
does not violate due process.
Affirmed.
FRANKFURTER, J., dissenting
MR.
JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, whom MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS join,
dissenting.*
Ever
since our ancestral common law emerged out of the darkness of its early
barbaric days, it has been a postulate of Western civilization that the taking
of life by the hand of an insane person is not murder. But the nature and
operation of the mind are so elusive to the grasp of the understanding that the
basis for formulating standards of criminal responsibility and the means for
determining whether those standards are satisfied in a particular case have
greatly troubled law and medicine for more than a century. See Glueck, Mental Disorder and The Criminal Law
(1925); Abrahamsen, Crime and The Human Mind (1944); Overholser, The
Psychiatrist and the Law (to be published in April, 1953, by Harcourt Brace
& Co.) (particularly Chapter II). To this day, conflict and controversy
regarding these problems bedevil the administration of criminal justice. See, e.g., Fisher
v. United States, 328 U.S. 463. The deep concern engendered in England
just the other day by the case of John Thomas Straffen strikingly disclosed [344 U.S. 571] the
unsatisfactory state of the law. See The Times, July 22, 1952, p. 3; July 23, 1952, p. 4;
July 24, 1952, p. 3; July 25, 1952, p. 3; July 26, 1952, p. 7; August 30, 1952,
pp. 2, 5; September 1, 1952, p. 5; September 4, 1952, p. 5; September 12, 1952,
p. 7; The Economist, August 30, 1952, p. 494,
and The Lancet, August 2, 1952, p. 239. (Especially
comments subsequent to the action of the Home Secretary, which followed
dismissal of Straffen's appeal by the Court of Criminal Appeal in Regina v. Straffen [1952] 2 Q.B. 911.)
The
law of Pennsylvania in the abstract on this controversial subject is clear and
unassailable.
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It is a principle embedded in the common law -- and
we administer the common law in Pennsylvania -- that no insane person can be
tried, sentenced or executed. |
Commonwealth
ex rel. Smith v. Ashe, 364 Pa. 93, 116, 71 A.2d 107, 118. In view of the
fallibilities of human judgment regarding the same body of evidence, it is
inevitable that one may be doubtful, and even more than doubtful, whether, in a
particular case, a plea of insanity was properly rejected. It is not for this
Court to find a want of due process in a conviction for murder sustained by the
highest court of the State merely because a finding that the defendant is sane
may raise the gravest doubts. But it is our duty under the Fourteenth Amendment
to scrutinize the procedure by which the plea of insanity failed, and
defendant's life became forfeit. A denial of adequate opportunity to sustain
the plea of insanity is a denial of the safeguard of due process in its
historical procedural sense which is within the incontrovertible scope of the
Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
One
has only to read the opinions both of the four Judges who constituted the
majority of the Court of Appeals and of the three dissenters to appreciate the
tangled skein of procedural complexities in which the defendant in this case
was hopelessly caught. 192 F.2d [344
U.S. 572] 540. And I cannot read the opinion of Chief Judge Biggs, id. at 549, without being left with such an
unrelievable feeling of disquietude as amounts to a conviction that the accused
in this case was deprived of a fair opportunity to establish his insanity. And
this not the less so because the deprivation resulted from the tangled web that
was woven for the defendant, even if unwittingly, by the courts of
Pennsylvania.
But
I am of the view that there is another reason which, in itself, is for me
conclusive, why this Court should not affirm the judgment below. It is that a
new decisive factor, which was introduced for the first time here, requires
reconsideration of the disposition below. After the case left the Court of
Appeals, it came to the knowledge of petitioner's counsel that the
court-appointed expert, the professional witness on the issue of insanity on
whose testimony the Pennsylvania courts relied, had himself been committed, as
of January 12, 1952, because of an incurable mental disease which had deprived
him of "any judgment or insight." This fact was brought to the notice
of this Court in an affidavit not challenged by the respondent, which also
averred that "this intellectual deterioration was evidenced even on a
clinical level in January, 1951." The expert's report on Smith's sanity
was made to the sentencing court on November 5, 1948. His disability was not known
either to the District Court or the Court of Appeals in February and October,
1951, when they respectively ruled against the petitioner. Even uninformed
judges may know that this kind of mental illness does not set in overnight, but
is the culmination of a long process. Indeed, the medical history, sketchy as
it is, revealed by the affidavit filed here demonstrates the gradual manner in
which the mental illness in question developed. The extent to which this
affidavit vitiates the worth of the expert testimony taken by the sentencing
court should not be made a matter [344
U.S. 573] of judicial notice. But to allow the victim of this testimony,
which, in any event, has been brought into doubt, to go to his death without an
opportunity for reassessment, by either State or federal court, of the basis
for the rejection of his plea of insanity would constitute a denial of due
process no less gross than if the sentence had been imposed without any hearing
at all on the issue of sanity.
I
need hardly point out that, in a court of equity, causes are disposed of on the
facts as they appear at the time of the disposition, and that habeas corpus is
certainly to be governed by the rules of fairness enforced in equity. The cause
should therefore be remanded to the District Court for disposition of the new
matter revealed in the affidavit filed here.
The
Court does not reach this issue. Therefore I do not now decide whether this
evidence raises a new ground which must first, under principles of exhaustion,
be presented in the State courts, or whether the federal court may properly
view it simply as new evidence bearing on a claim already exhausted -- that the
determination of sanity was inadequate.
Footnotes
REED,
J., lead opinion (Footnotes)
1.
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania stated that petitioner had been
adjudged guilty of murder in the first degree on the former date, September 21,
1948. Commonwealth v. Smith, 362 Pa. 222 at
223, 66 A.2d 764. In its opinion denying the subsequent petition for a writ of
habeas corpus, the Pennsylvania court held that "[w]hether this judgment
was entered on September 21, 1948, or on February 4, 1949, is unimportant in
these proceedings." Commonwealth ex rel. Smith
v. Ashe, 364 Pa. 93 at 112, 71 A.2d 107 at 116.
2.
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When counsel for
the relator entered a plea of guilty to the indictment, that plea admitted to
prisoner's sanity, because no insane person can be guilty of murder. The
testimony relating to Smith's mental condition, taken after the plea had been
entered, was for the purpose of providing the court with data which it could
use in determining the appropriate penalty to be imposed upon the defendant. |
364 Pa. 93 at 112, 71 A.2d
107 at 117.
3.
Pennsylvania law provides that counsel may ask for a special trial to test his
client's sanity at arraignment.
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The same [lunacy
commitment] proceedings may be had if any person indicted for an offense
shall, upon arraignment, be found to be a lunatic by a jury lawfully
impaneled for the purpose or if, upon the trial of any person so indicted,
such person shall appear to the jury charged with such indictment to be a
lunatic, the court shall direct such findings to be recorded, and may proceed
as aforesaid. |
19 Purdon's Pa.Stat.Ann. §
1352. Whether such a jury trial at the outset will be granted depends on the
discretion of the trial judge. He may defer the inquest and allow the question
to be decided by the jury trying the indictment. Webber
v. Commonwealth, 119 Pa. 223, 13 A. 427; Commonwealth
v. Scovern, 292 Pa. 26, 140 A. 611; Commonwealth
v. Cilione, 293 Pa. 208, 142 A. 216; Commonwealth
v. Iacobino, 319 Pa. 65, 178 A. 823.
FRANKFURTER,
J., dissenting (Footnotes)
*
[See also opinion of MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER
in Brown v. Allen, ante, p. 488,
which also applies to this case.]