Beck v. Washington (369 U.S. 541)/Dissent Black

Mr. Justice BLACK, with whom The CHIEF JUSTICE concurs, dissenting.

I dissent from the Court's holding because I think that the failure of the Washington courts to follow their own state law by taking affirmative action to protect the petitioner Beck from being indicted by a biased and prejudiced grand jury was a denial to him of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Since 1854, when Washington was a Territory, that State has had a statute comprehensively governing the use of grand juries in criminal trials which provides in part:

'Challenges to individual grand jurors may be made by * *  *      (any person in custody or held to answer for an offense) for      reason of want of qualification to sit as such juror; and      when, in the opinion of the court, a state of mind exists in      the juror, such as would render him unable to act impartially      and without prejudice.'

In State ex rel. Murphy v. Superior Court, the Washington Supreme Court held in construing this statute that in order to preserve the right of defendants to fair and impartial grand jurors, Washington State judges must select grand jurors by chance, explaining:

'That it was the policy of the legislature to preserve the     right to have an unbiased and unprejudiced jury and grand      jury and that no suspicion should attach to the manner of its      selection in all cases, cannot be questioned.'

Some years later in State v. Guthrie the Washington Supreme Court held that it was not only within the power of Washington State judges but it was also their duty to insure unbiased grand juries, even if so doing meant changing the composition of the grand juries selected by the rules of chance. That court in this latter case reiterated the statute's policy to preserve impartial grand juries and made it crystal clear that juries biased because of judicial inaction are as offensive to the policy of the Washington statute as juries biased because of deliberate judicial selection:

'While this section may be said to relate to challenges made     by interested persons, it is not to be construed as denying      to the court the right, upon its own motion, to excuse a      juror deemed to be disqualified or incompetent. To deny this     right would be out of harmony with the policy of the law,      which charges the court with the responsibility of insuring      that qualified and impartial grand jurors are secured.'

That this state policy for impartial grand juries has been generally accepted as the settled law of Washington is demonstrated, not only by the statements of the four judges who voted to reverse this conviction, but also by the current practice cited to us of other Washington trial courts. Indeed, the presiding judge who impaneled the Beck grand jury made sufficient inquiries to insure that grand jurors would not be biased against the State in its investigation of Beck.

The Court, however, finds that the Murphy and Guthrie cases have no relation to the guarantee of a fair and impartial grand jury but are 'concerned only with whether the members of the grand jury had been selected by chance.' But even the State has taken no such position, either before the Washington Supreme Court or here. In its brief before the Washington Supreme Court the State acknowledged that the Washington statute as interpreted by the Murphy and Guthrie cases set out a 'well-recognized rule' that state 'grand juries should be impartial and unprejudiced.' And even in this Court the State does not repudiate this acknowledgment but says only that because the Washington Supreme Court was equally divided 'the meaning of Washington statutes in regard to grand juries cannot be determined at this point.' But of course we must decide what the Washington law is in order to pass upon Beck's claim that Washington has denied him the equal protection of the law.

The Washington statute as authoritatively interpreted by its Supreme Court in the Murphy and Guthrie cases means not only that defendants are entitled under Washington law to have indictments against them returned by impartial grand jurors but also that Washington State judges are specifically charged with the duty and responsibility of making all inquiries necessary to insure defendants against being tried on indictments returned by prejudiced grand jurors. Neither the legislature nor the State Supreme Court has ever changed that statute or its interpretation. Certainly, the equal division of judges in the Washington Supreme Court which left Beck's conviction standing did not impair the old statute or its previously established interpretation. Even Washington's own counsel tell us that 'since the reasons for the Washington court being equally divided are signed by no more than four judges each, those reason are not a decision of that court,' and 'are of no significance whatsoever as far as the decisional law of the state of Washington is concerned.' Since the legislature has not changed its statute and the Supreme Court of Washington has not changed its interpretation of that statute, the law of Washington remains the same as it was before Beck's conviction was left standing by the equally divided Washington court. And as it was before, it required Washington judges to protect persons from being indicted by prejudiced and biased grand juries. If Beck has been denied that protection without the law's having been changed, than he has been singled out by the State as the sole person to be so treated. Such a singling out would be a classic invidious discrimination and would amount to a denial of equal protection of the law. We must determine, therefore, whether the grand jury that indicted Beck was impaneled in a way that violated the state law.

This question is not that which the Court treats as crucial, whether there is proof in the record that some individual grand juror was actually prejudiced against Beck, but rather the quite different question of whether the judge who impaneled the grand jury took the precautions required by the statute and its controlling judicial interpretation to insure a grand jury that would not be tainted by prejudice against Beck. I think that the record in this case shows beyond doubt that the presiding judge failed to do what the state law required him to do-try to keep prejudiced persons off the grand jury. This failure was particularly serious here because of the extraordinary opportunity for prejudgment and prejudice created by the saturation of the Seattle area with publicity hostile and adverse to Beck in the months preceding and during the grand jury hearing.

Petitioner Beck is a long-time resident of Seattle, well known to the community as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and as a former president of the Western Conference of Teamsters. Beginning in March 1957, he became the target of a number of extremely serious charges of crime and corruption by the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field and its staff. These charges were given unprecedented circulation in the Seattle area. On March 22 23, banner headlines proclaimed the Committee's charge that Beck had used $270,000 in Teamsters funds for his own benefit. When Beck appeared before the Committee several days later and refused to answer questions regarding the charges, he again drew headline coverage in the Seattle press: 'BECK TAKES 5TH AMENDMENT.' One television station went so far as to run a 9 3/4-hour telecast of the proceedings. On May 3, the headlines announced the fact that Beck had been indicted for federal tax evasion and that a former mayor of Seattle had received a special appointment to prosecute further charges before a state grand jury. On May 9, 15 and 16, other front-page, page-wide headlines appeared, the last charging that Beck had misused his position of union trust no less than 52 different times. On May 17, a three-column front-page story recounted the fact that Beck had pleaded the Fifth Amendment 60 times to questions from the Senate Committee. And on May 20, the day the grand jury was impaneled, headlines announced Beck's expulsion from his AFL-CIO post on the ground that 'Dave Beck was found 'guilty as charged' by the A.F. of L.C.I.O. executive council,' and that same paper also carried a charge by Senator McClellan that Beck 'has committed many criminal offenses.' All the while radio, television, the national news magazines and the press in lesser front-page and backup stories published charges of a similar nature. This flood of intense public accusation of crime and breach of trust by prominent and highly placed persons, coupled with publicity resulting from Beck's refusal on grounds of possible self-incrimination to answer questions before the Senate Committee as to the charges made, imposed a very heavy duty on the presiding judge under Washington law to protect Beck from a biased and prejudiced grand jury.

Far from discharging that duty, however, the judge actually increased the probability that persons biased against Beck would be left on the grand jury. For while he asked a number of questions directed toward excluding from the jury union members who might be sympathetic to Beck, he made no effective effort at all to protect Beck. Thus, he managed to ask almost every juror whether he had any connection with the Teamsters or any affiliated union, whether he knew any of the Teamsters officers, or whether he had ever been a union officer himself. But, despite his knowledge of the widespread prejudice-breeding publicity against Beck, the judge failed to ask a single juror a single question regarding whether he had read about, heard about or discussed the charges against Beck. Moreover, he failed to ask a single juror who actually sat on the jury whether he was prejudiced against Beck or had already made up his mind about the many public charges. Indeed as to those jurors the most searching question which even the Court has managed to pull from the record was the sterile query: 'Is there anything about sitting on this grand jury that might embarrass you at all?' Even the most tenuous logic could not equate that search for embarrassment with a search for bias and prejudice. That a search for bias and prejudice would have shown its existence hardly seems questionable, particularly in view of the fact that six months later when the publicity adverse to Beck was, according to the Court, 'neither intensive nor extensive,' 15 of 43 prospective petit jurors subjected to voir dire questioning expressed some degree of bias or prejudice in the case.

After such a restrained effort toward affording Beck the protection of the unbiased grand jury assured by Washington law, it would be expected that the presiding judge would have given careful and detailed instructions to the grand jury in order to dispel any possible prejudice in their minds. Not so here, however. In fact the instructions given not only failed to cure, they made the situation worse. For instead of instructing that the testimony and charges before the Senate Committee were not evidence before the grand jury and that it would be highly improper for the grand jury to consider them at all, the presiding judge called the jury's attention to the charges of theft and embezzlement against Beck before the Committee and told the jury that it was under a duty to determine whether these charges were refuted by an explanation attributed by the press to Beck:

'It seems unnecessary to review the recent testimony before a     Senate Investigating Committee except to say that disclosures      have been made indicating that officers of the Teamsters      Union have, through trick and device, embezzled or stolen      hundreds of thousands of dollars of the funds of that union      money which had come to the union from the dues of its      members. * *  *

'The president of the Teamsters Union has publicly declared     that the money he received from the union was a loan which he      has repaid. This presents a question of fact, the truth of     which is for you to ascertain.' Together with the additional facts set out by Mr. Justice DOUGLAS in his dissent, what I have said above seems clearly to show that the presiding judge took none of the steps, eithe rin interrogation or in instruction, that in the atmosphere of the day would have fulfilled his state statutory duty to insure a grand jury unbiased against Beck.

This failure of the judge denies petitioner a protection which Washington has provided to similarly situated defendants over the years and which, so far as now foreseeable, Washington will continue to provide to all Washington defendants in the future. This failure would be cast in a different light if the Washington Legislature had repealed its law or if its Supreme Court had altered its interpretation and set out a general rule abrogating the right to have judges take affirmative action to insure an unbiased grand jury. But without any change in the prior law or any sure indication that Beck's 'law' is the law of the future, the State of Washington in convicting Beck applies special and unfair treatment to him. For only Beck, a single individual out of all the people charged with crime by indictment in Washington, is denied his clearly defined right under the law to have the state judicial system insure his indictment by 'impartial grand jurors.' Through the device of an equally divided vote in the Washington Supreme Court he goes to prison for 15 years. I think that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids such an invidious picking out of one individual to bear legal burdens that are not imposed upon others similarly situated. I cannot agree with the Court that such a gross discrimination against a single individual with such disastrous consequences can be treated as a mere trial error. For a judicial decision which sends a man to prison by refusing to apply settled law which always has been and so far as appears will continue to be applied to all other defendants similarly situated is far more than a mere misapplication of state law. It is a denial of equal protection of the law and a State should no more be allowed to deny a defendant protection of its laws through its judicial branch than through its legislative or executive branch.

I think that petitioner was denied equal protection of the law for still another reason. The four Washington judges who voted to affirm the conviction below, and whose views have therefore determined the outcome of Beck's case, agreed that those 'in custody or held (on bail) to answer for an offense,' the '(p)ersons for whose benefit that statute was enacted,' are entitled to grand jurors without bias or prejudice. This divides all persons suspected of larceny by embezzlement, as petitioner was, into two classes: (1) those persons in custody or on bail, and (2) those persons who are only under investigation by grand jury. The first class is entitled to have an impartial and unbiased grand jury; the second is not. The four judges who wanted to reverse this conviction could see no reason, nor can I, for saying that one charged with crime and in jail or on bail should be entitled to an unprejudiced grand jury but one who happened not to be already held for grand jury action could validly be indicted by a biased and prejudiced grand jury. So far as the need to be free from prosecution by a prejudiced grand jury is concerned, there can be no rational distinction between the need of the man who is not yet in custody and the need of the man who is in jail or on bail, particularly where as here the grand jury was called for the specific purpose of examining into petitioner's activities and was so instructed. No doubt the clearest evidence of the lack of rationality in such a distinction is the fact that for 108 years the State of Washington has itself made no such distinction. For even though the statute on its face applies only to those in custody or on bail, it has always been interpreted to guarantee an impartial grand jury to all.

A fair trial under fair procedure is a basic element in our Government. Zealous partisans filled with bias and prejudice have no place among those whom government selects to play important parts in trials designed to lead to fair determinations of guilt or innocence. Whether the due process provisions of the Federal Constitution require, however, that every procedural step in a trial, including the impaneling of a grand jury, be absolutely fair and impartial, I need not determine here. But in considering whether people charged with the same crimes under the same circumstances, subject to the same penalties in the same place may be divided up into classes, some of whom are given the benefit of fair grand jurors and some of whom are not, we must keep in mind the high standard of fair and equal treatment imposed by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the important part that grand juries play in trial procedures when they are used. For me the need for fair grand juries as between those who have not yet been formally arrested and those who have is too much the same to be treated as though it were different. I would not permit the State of Washington to lay its hands so unequally upon groups whose interests, whose needs and whose dangers are so similar.

Not surprisingly the Court attempts to shrug off both of Beck's equal protection claims without reaching them on the merits. As to his first claim, that he was denied equal protection by the failure of the Washington courts to accord him the benefit of the state law guaranteeing an impartial grand jury, this Court asserts that even if Beck was, unlike everyone else, denied the benefit of a grand jury which had been questioned by the presiding judge to protect against bias, the error was harmless because he presented no proof to show that the grand jury selected in violation of Washington law was actually biased or prejudiced against him. But the Washington law puts the duty on the judge to insure against bias not on the defendant to show bias. The court cites absolutely no authority and I have been unable to find any that when a Washington State judge neglects his duty to assure an impartial grand jury his error is cured by the failure of the defendant to show actual bias on the part of one or more grand jurors. On the contrary, the Washington Supreme Court said in State ex rel. Murphy v. Superior Court:

'Granting, for the sake of argument, that no real injustice     has been done in this particular case, and that a fair jury      was selected, to approve the method adopted by the court      would be to permit a judge, if he so willed, to provide a      grand jury of his own choosing in every case under color of      law.'

Moreover, even if it were possible under Washington law so cavalierly to fritter away important rights of criminal procedure designed to achieve fairness, this record should satisfy the most doubting Thomas that the failure to insure a proper grand jury here was in fact not harmless. While the trial court made no determination as to whether the grand jury was prejudiced against Beck, four of the eight Washington Supreme Court judges who ruled on the question felt that a conclusive showing of prejudice had been made. Judge Donworth, speaking for those four judges, after an exhaustive review of the facts concluded:

'I think it would be unrealistic to believe that a very     substantial number of the citizens of the community had not      adopted, consciously or unconsciously, an attitude of bias      and prejudice toward appellant at the time the grand jury was      convened. If ever there was a case which required the most stringent observance of     every safeguard known to the law to protect a citizen against      bias and prejudice, this was it.'

The other four judges did say: 'There is no showing of bias or prejudice,' but gave not the slightest evidentiary or even argumentative support to show the correctness of this offhand statement. In these circumstances where there has been no finding by the trial court and where the highest court of the State has divided evenly so that there is no finding there either, our ordinary 'solemn duty to make independent inquiry and determination of the disputed facts' upon which the question of denial of equal protection of the law turns becomes particularly pointed. Considering the overwhelming evidence to support the four judges who thought that petitioner had made a showing of prejudice, it seems inconceivable to me that it can fairly be said that no showing of prejudice was made.

As to Beck's second claim, that it is a denial of equal protection of the law to afford those in jail or on bail the judicial assurance of an impartial grand jury while denying such protection to those not in jail or on bail like Beck, the Court apparently does not claim that the error was harmless but discovers yet another way to avoid having to pass on the plain merits of his constitutional claim. It concludes on a number of grounds that petitioner's claim was not properly presented to the Washington Supreme Court. I do not think any one of the Court's grounds or all of them together justify its avoidance of determining Beck's constitutional contention on its merits.

(a) It is said that this contention was not properly before the State Supreme Court because 'Petitioner's formal attack at the trial court level did not even mention § 10.28.030 * *  * .' But Beck did claim that that section had not been complied with both in his 'Challenge to Grand Jury' and in his separate motion to set aside the indictment, both of which are set out in note 3 of the Court's opinion. In fact his challenge to the grand jury was specifically cast in the terms of § 10.28.030. And Beck's reliance on § 10.28.030 and related sections of Washington's grand jury statute was emphasized time and time again by his counsel's arguments to the trial court, both oral and written, on the challenge and on his separate motion to dismiss the indictment. For example, trial counsel said:

' * *  * (T)he decisions which we have been able to find all      indicate the same thing. That is, that the Grand Jury just     like the trial jury, must be unbiased and unprejudiced, and      indeed in a couple of the decisions they referred to this      10.28.030 in the same manner I have done to indicate the      intent of the Legislature.'

(b) The Court says: 'That the prosecution and the court viewed petitioner as outside the scope of § 10.28.030 was brought home to him in the course of the trial court proceedings on his grand jury attack.' I cannot agree that the trial court construed § 10.28.030 as denying Beck the right to an impartial and unprejudiced grand jury or informed him to that effect. While it is true that the State's counsel argued and the trial court agreed that petitioner could not question the method of impaneling the grand jury by a 'Challenge to Grand Jury,' the trial court never even intimated that § 10.28.030 limited its assurance of an impartial and unprejudiced grand jury only to those who were indicted while they were in jail or out on bond. On the contrary, the trial court admitted, even though it ultimately denied petitioner's motion without further comment, that petitioner could attack the grand jury-'incidentally on a motion to set aside that indictment'-precisely the kind of motion the petitioner actually made under § 10.40.070, which motion is set out in note 3 of the Court's opinion.

(c) The Court says that the State Supreme Court was not required to pass on petitioner's claim of denial of equal protection because it was not 'definitely pointed out in the 'assignments of error' in appellant's brief,' as required by Rule 43 of the State Rules on Appeal. But as just pointed out the trial court had not construed the statute as denying Beck was was not in custody or on bail the benefit of an impartial grand jury while insuring such a grand jury for defendants who were in custody or on bail. Since the trial court had made no such ruling, Beck could not of course assign as error a ruling that had not been made. He did, however, properly assign errors which, as shown in the Court's note 4, were sufficiently broad to challenge the trial court's failure to comply with state law in insuring an impartial grand jury. That was all that he could do at that time.

(d) Another ground for this Court's refusal to rule on Beck's claim is that: 'The Washington Supreme Court has unfailingly refused to consider constitutional attacks upon statutes not made in the trial court * *  * .' But even a casual investigation of the opinions of that court shows that it has not 'unfailingly' followed any such practice. Moreover, no Washington case or any other has been cited to prove that a question of equal protection of the law must be raised in the trial court even though that court does not itself ever make a ruling which denies equal protection of the law. And I would think that this Court would not tolerate use of such a state device to bar correction of constitutional violations.

(e) Finally while I disagree that Beck's claim has not been properly presented to the Washington Supreme Court, I find that wholly immaterial here. For as we said in Raley v. Ohio: 'There can be no question as to the proper presentation of a federal claim when the highest state court passes on it.' And here although undoubtedly familiar with the state rule and the state cases dug up here by this Court for the first time to show that Beck's claim was not properly presented, the fact is that the eight judges of the Washington Supreme Court who sat in this case did actually pass on Beck's claim in his brief before them that to take away his right to an impartial grand jury because he was not in custody or on bail would deny him the equal protection of the laws. That claim in Beck's State Supreme Court brief was:

'In fact, to permit one who has already been arrested to     challenge the mental qualifications of a grand juror, while      denying this right to one who has not been arrested, would      amount to a denial of equal protection of the law. This is     particularly true *  *  * in the state of Washington *  *  * .'

In response to Beck's claim Judge Donworth, speaking for the four judges who voted to reverse the conviction, fully agreed with his contention, saying:

'I do not understand how it can be said, under the facts     shown in this record, that the reason entitling a person in      custody or held to answer for an offense to be investigated      by an impartial and unprejudiced grand jury, does not apply      equally well to appellant. It is axiomatic that all men are     equal before the law and are entitled to the same rights      under the same or similar circumstances.

'Until the legislature amends or repeals the statutory law, *     *  * it must be applied with equal effect to every person      whose conduct is under investigation by a grand jury pursuant      to the court's charge to it.'

The other four judges, obviously disagreeing with their brethren and rejecting Beck's equal protection claim, held that 'There was a reason' for the statutory guarantee of an impartial grand jury for one 'in custody or held to answer for an offense,' although denying it to one not in custody or on bail.

(f) The Court also goes so far as to say that Beck's constitutional question was not included among those questions presented which our writ of certiorari was granted to review. I disagree. In the questions presented in the petition for certiorari and in the brief supporting that petition, counsel for Beck repeatedly asserted that in the manner of selecting this grand jury Beck had been denied the equal protection of the law. The core of all these claims is discrimination growing out of the manner of the selection of the grand jury. The particular classification claim which the Court seeks to avoid passing on is also a claimed discrimination with reference to the manner of selection of the grand jury. Since all these contentions are inextricably intertwined, under our decision of last term in Boynton v. Virginia I see no more reason for refusing to pass on one than another. That case held a statutory claim of discrimination to have been sufficiently raised where discrimination generally was 'the core of the * *  * broad constitutional questions presented.' Moreover, I agree with Mr. Justice DOUGLAS that under Rule 23 which prohibits 'unnecessary detail' and which deems a question presented 'to include every subsidiary question fairly comprised therein' even the most general claim of equal protection would have been sufficient to raise petitioner's claim.

The petitioner here, however, has no need to rely on either the Boynton case or on the broad mandate of Rule 23, for his claims are clearly encompassed among the specific questions as to which the writ of certiorari was granted. Two of those questions read in part:

' * *  * (D)oes a person *  *  * have a right under the due      process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth      Amendment to have the charges and evidence considered by a      grand jury which was fair and impartial or, at least, which      was instructed and directed to act fairly and impartially?'

' * *  * (D)id he (petitioner) have a right under the due      process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth      Amendment to have the grand jury impaneled in a manner which      would prevent or at least tend to prevent the selection of      biased and prejudiced grand jurors?'

Since petitioner's claim is that he was denied equal protection of the law by the failure of the presiding judge to provide the protection, guaranteed to others, of a grand jury impaneled in a manner that would insure against biased and prejudiced grand jurors, it seems inconceivable that this conviction should be sustained on the basis that the claim was not included in the petition for certiorari.

The net result of what has taken place in the Washington Supreme Court and here is to leave Beck in this predicament: the State Supreme Court considered his contention, tried to decide it but could not because it was equally divided; this Court on the contrary refuses to decide it at all on the ground that Beck has never raised such a question anywhere. The practical consequence of this predicament is to accept the argument of the State that if Beck's constitutional rights are to be protected he must depend upon 'the Washington legislature and not the United States Supreme Court,' For this Court to accept such a consequence seems to me to be an abandonment of its solemn responsibility to protect the constitutional rights of the people.

The rules of practice which Congress and this Court have adopted over the course of years to crystallize and define the issues properly before the Court were designed to assist the Court in the fair and impartial administration of justice. I cannot believe that this end has been achieved here.