Sweeney v. Woodall/Opinion of the Court

The respondent is a fugitive from a prison in Alabama. The Governor of that State instituted proceedings for his return, and respondent was arrested in Ohio. Petitioner, the Sheriff of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, now holds respondent for delivery to the authorities of Alabama.

In an attempt to prevent his rendition to Alabama, respondent applied to the Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County for a writ of habeas corpus. He alleged that during his confinement in Alabama he had been brutally mistreated, that he would be subjected to such mistreatment and worse if returned. Invoking the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, he asserted that his past confinement had amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, that any future confinement administered by Alabama would similarly be in violation of rights secured to him under the Federal Constitution. Respondent asked that petitioner's efforts to return him to the custody of Alabama be halted and that he be immediately released.

Refusing to hear this claim on its merits, the Court of Common Pleas denied respondent's application. This judgment was affirmed by the Ohio Court of Appeals for the Eighth District. In re Woodall, 88 Ohio App. 202, 89 N.E.2d 493. An appeal to the State's Supreme Court was dismissed. Woodall v. Sweeney, 152 Ohio St. 368, 89 N.E.2d 494. This Court denied a petition for certiorari. Woodall v. Sweeney, 339 U.S. 945, 70 S.Ct. 790, 94 L.Ed. 1360.

Respondent then applied to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, seeking his release upon the same ground theretofore urged in the Ohio courts. The District Court dismissed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus without hearing evidence. But the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed, without opinion, remanding the cause to the District Court for a hearing on the merits of the constitutional claim. 194 F.2d 542. Petitioner has now applied to this Court for a writ of certiorari.

Recently, in Dye v. Johnson, 1949, 338 U.S. 864, 70 S.Ct. 146, 94 L.Ed. 530, this Court considered a petition for certiorari in a similar case. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had sustained an application for habeas corpus by a fugitive prisoner from Georgia who alleged, as respondent does now, that his confinement in the demanding state amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of his constitutional rights. Presented with a petition for certiorari to review this decision, we reversed, summarily, citing Ex parte Hawk, 1944, 321 U.S. 114, 64 S.Ct. 448, 88 L.Ed. 572. Shortly after our decision in the Dye case, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed a District Court's dismissal of a similar petition for habeas corpus from still another fugitive, holding that the federal courts in the asylum should not entertain such applications. Johnson v. Mathews, 1950, 86 U.S.App.D.C. 376, 182 F.2d 677.

In the present case, as in the others, a fugitive from justice has asked the federal court in his asylum to pass upon the constitutionality of his incarceration in the demanding state, although the demanding state is not a party before the federal court and although he has made no attempt to raise such a question in the demanding state. The question is whether, under these circumstances, the district court should entertain the fugitive's application on its merits.

Respondent makes no showing that relief is unavailable to him in the courts of Alabama. Had he never eluded the custody of his former jailers he certainly would be entitled to no privilege permitting him to attack Alabama's penal process by an action brought outside the territorial confines of Alabama in a forum where there would be no one to appear and answer for that State. Indeed, as a prisoner of Alabama, under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 2254, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2254, and under the doctrine of Ex parte Hawk, supra, he would have been required to exhaust all available remedies in the state courts before making any application to the federal courts sitting in Alabama.

By resort to a form of 'self help,' respondent has changed his status from that of a prisoner of Alabama to that of a fugitive from Alabama. But this should not affect the authority of the Alabama courts to determine the validity of his imprisonment in Alabama. The scheme of interstate rendition, as set forth in both the Constitution and the statutes which Congress has enacted to implement the Constitution, contemplates the prompt return of a fugitive from justice as soon as the state from which he fled demands him; these provisions do not contemplate an appearance by Alabama in respondent's asylum to defend against the claimed abuses of its prison system. Considerations fundamental to our federal system require that the prisoner test the claimed unconstitutionality of his treatment by Alabama in the courts of that State. Respondent should be required to initiate his suit in the courts of Alabama, where all parties may be heard, where all pertinent testimony will be readily available and where suitable relief, if any is necessary, may be fashioned.

The District Court properly dismissed the application for habeas corpus on its face, and the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the applicant was entitled to a hearing in the District Court of Ohio on the merits of his constitutional claim against prison officials of Alabama.

Accordingly, the petition for certiorari is granted, and the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed. It is so ordered.

Petition for certiorari granted, and judgment of Court of Appeals reversed.