Price v. Johnston/Dissent Jackson

Mr. Justice JACKSON, dissenting.

I cannot agree that the District Court erred in dismissing this unsupported and unsubstantiated fourth habeas corpus petition, whether his action in so doing was based on its obvious lack of merit or on the prisoner's abuse of the writ. Nor can I agree that appearance of a prisoner merely to argue his case is 'necessary for the exercise' of the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals and 'agreeable to the usages and principles of law' as is required by § 262 of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. § 377, 28 U.S.C.A. § 377.

This case is typical of many based on repeated habeas corpus petitions by the same prisoner. This petitioner is serving a long term for armed bank robbery. Confinement is neither enjoyable nor profitable. And it is safe to assume that it neither gives rise to new scruples nor magnifies old ones which would handicap petitioner's preparation of one habeas corpus application after another. If the trial court rules one set of allegations deficient, concoction of another set may bring success. Under this decision, failure to allege the most obvious grounds in earlier applications,o r to support them with facts in a later petition, is not fatal. The number of times the Government must re-try the case depends only on the prisoner's ingenuity, industry and imagination. This prisoner, in his fourth petition in eitht years, has now gotten around to charging that, at his trial in 1938, the Government knowingly employed false testimony to obtain the conviction. This issue substantially involves a retrial of the original conviction after more than ten years have passed by, memories are blurred, evidence is lost, and parties dispersed. The petition is unaccompanied by any particulars supporting this most serious charge against the court and responsible officers of the law. The prisoner, of course, has nothing to lose in any event. Perjury has few terrors for a man already sentenced to 65 years' imprisonment for a crime of violence. Even such honor as exists among thieves is not too precious to be sacrificed for a chance at liberty. Consequently, his varying allegations can run the gamut of all those perpetuated in the pages of the United States reports.

The Court now holds that such irresponsible, general, unsupported and belated accusations must be tried out; further, the District Judge erred in that he did not request the perennial petitioner to fill in details, the absence of which, under established rules, justified his dismissal of the petition actually filed. I think that the Government should not be required to go to trial (or rather, retrial) on a case of this kind, unless the petitioner, without prompting or solicitation by the Court, alleges with particularity conduct which would be sufficient, if proved, to entitle him to release. If he does not have such facts, he is doomed ultimately to fail; if he does have them, he should not be permitted to force the court and the Government into further litigation until he has disclosed them. And certainly it is not too much to require that on a fourth petition, eight years after conviction, the petitioner must also set forth facts which will excuse his failure to raise his question in earlier petitions instead of at a period so remote from his trial.

Moreover, if any one of petitioner's applications and accompanying facts convince the trial judge that a hearing on the merits is justified, the prisoner's presence in the trial court, to testify, may fairly be said to be necessary. The procedure for bringing him before that court to give his evidence is of ancient origin. But it is another and quite different matter to say that a layman's r esense, solely to take part in a legal argument on a settled record, is necessary for the exercise of the jurisdiction of the appellate court. The only suggested authority for so ordering a jailer to fetch a prisoner to argue his own appeal is § 262 of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. § 377, 28 U.S.C.A. § 377, which provides that 'the Supreme Court, the circuit courts of appeal, and the district courts shall have power to issue all writs not specifically provided for by statute,' and if the statute stopped here, the Court might have some basis for its action. But the section adds, 'which may be necessary for the exercise of their respective jurisdictions, and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.'

Even if the Court of Appeals, or this Court, believed that the former should have the power to summon prisoners for argument of their appeals, that is not the issue. The issue is, can the requirements of the statute be met? Is the prisoner's presence merely to argue his case 'necessary for the exercise' of the appellate court's jurisdiction? I think it is farfetched to so hold. Such courts may, and usually do, appoint counsel for a prisoner who cannot obtain one for himself. If there is more that the defendant himself wants to present, it can always be done in writing. Many cases are decided in appellate courts solely on written briefs. But the Court fears that some prisoners like this one may not only refuse counsel but also wish not to rest on a written brief. Under the statute, however, it is not the convenience or the egotism of the prisoner that confers power to grant a writ-it is the necessity of the writ for the exercise of the Court's jurisdiction. It is difficult for me to believe that prisoners, whom the Court so often forgives for violating all rules of pleading and procedure on the ground of lay ignorance, can be a necessary source of light and leading to an appellate court. The absence of such a necessity is, I suppose, the reason why no such writ has been known to the law until today's revelation, and why the statute does not allow it. But the Court by this decision makes it proper for any prisoner, whose appeal from either conviction or denial of any one of his multitudinous petitions for habeas corpus is before the Court of Appeals, to insist that he be transported to that court to argue the case and to demand a ruling by the court on that issue as well as on the merits. This seems to open the gate to new and fruitless litigation.

Admittedly, the statute's second requirement, viz.: that the writ be 'agreeable to the usages and principles of law,' cannot be met. It is apparent that the latter clause is a limitation on the earlier sweeping grant of power. Ex parte Bollman (Ex parte Swartwout), 4 Cranch 75, 99, 2 L.Ed. 554. The Circuit Courts of Appeal are statutory courts and must look to a statutory basis for any jurisdiction they exercise. But in this cas the Court is authorizing a complete overriding of the limitation Congress has seen fit to impose. The Court's opinion points out that employment of the writ of habeas corpus for this purpose has never been a usage or principle of the common law. No statutory or decisional basis for such a usage or principle is cited. Yet, ignoring the limitations of this very statute, the Court concludes that the writ can just be issued anyway. I cannot subscribe to this sort of statutory 'construction.'

This is one of a line of cases by which there is being put into the hands of the convict population of the country new and unprecedented opportunities to re-try their cases, or to try the prosecuting attorney or their own counsel, and keep the Government and the courts litigating their cases until their sentences expire or one of their myriad claims strikes a responsive chord or the prisoner make the best of an increased opportunity to escape. I think this Court, by inflating the great and beneficent writ of liberty beyond a sound basis, is bringing about its eventual depreciation.