Brenson v. Havener

403 F. Supp. 221
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Ohio
DecidedAugust 29, 1975
DocketCiv. C74-497
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 403 F. Supp. 221 (Brenson v. Havener) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Ohio primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Brenson v. Havener, 403 F. Supp. 221 (N.D. Ohio 1975).

Opinion

OPINION and ORDER

DON J. YOUNG, District Judge.

This cause came to be heard upon two motions of a petitioner for a writ of habeas corpus. The first motion is for reconsideration of judgment entry on the motion to dismiss and the second is a motion to grant the writ of habeas corpus.

*223 The petitioner is presently detained the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, Lucasville, Ohio serving a life imprisonment sentence following conviction for first degree murder in the Common Pleas Court of Lucas County, Ohio. This Court by a memorandum and order filed April 30, 1975, overruled a motion by the respondent to dismiss the petition. The Court found that the facts presented were not sufficient to allow a determination to be properly made as to whether or not petitioner was properly bound over for trial as an adult following a finding of delinquency by the juvenile court judge. In that memorandum and order, the Court determined that the petitioner had exhausted his state court remedies with respect to the following issues: in

(1) that he was denied due process of law in that the juvenile court judge did not make a proper finding of delinquency before binding petitioner over, nor did he undertake a full and fair investigation of petitioner’s fitness for rehabilitation within the juvenile system before waiving juvenile court jurisdiction and;
(2) the in court identifications of petitioner by two witnesses were tainted by illegal lineups and petitioner was thus denied rights guaranteed him under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

The petitioner now asks that the Court reconsider that determination.

While this Court is not willing to conclude that petitioner did, in fact, exhaust his state court remedies as to more than the two aforementioned issues, in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519, 95 S.Ct. 1779, 44 L.Ed.2d 346 (1975), the Court will reconsider the necessity for exhaustion with respect to the issue of double jeopardy.

While the exhaustion of state remedies is required by the applicable statutes, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b) and the case law, Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963), it must be remembered that it is a doctrine of comity, not of jurisdiction. Fay, supra at 417-420, 83 S.Ct. 822. As the Supreme Court stated in Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky, 410 U.S. 484, at 490, 93 S.Ct. 1123, at 1127, 35 L.Ed.2d 443 (1972):

The exhaustion doctrine is a judicially crafted instrument which reflects a careful balance between important in-\ terests of federalism and the need to preserve the writ of habeas corpus as a “swift and imperative remedy in all cases of illegal restraint or confinement” Secretary of State for Home Affairs v. O’Brien, (1923) A.C. 603, 609 (H.L.). It cannot be used as a blunderbuss to shatter the attempt at litigation of constitutional claims without regard to the purposes that underlie the doctrine and that call it into existence.

The federal courts have not predicated their deference to state procedural rules on a want of power to entertain a habeas corpus application where a procedural default was committed by the defendant in state court. Fay, supra 372 U.S. at 425, 83 S.Ct. 822. Exhaustion is not a rule which distributes power between state and federal courts. Id. “The point is that the court, by relying on a rule of discretion, avowedly flexible, Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519 [72 S.Ct. 509, 96 L.Ed. 541] (1952), yielding always to exceptional circumstances, Bowen v. Johnston, 306 U.S. 19, 27 [59 S.Ct. 442, 446, 83 L.Ed. 455] (1939) has refused to concede jurisdictional significance to the abortive state court proceeding.” Id. 372 U.S. at 426, 83 S.Ct. at 842.

This Court believes that Breed v. Jones, supra creates exceptional circumstances. At the very least, exhausting state court remedies as to the issue of double jeopardy would have been an exercise in futility and that has never been required. Matthews v. Wingo, 474 *224 F.2d 1266 (6th Cir. 1973); Allen v. Perini, 424 F.2d 134 (6th Cir. 1970). This Court then, in its discretion, will not require petitioner to exhaust his state remedies as to the issue of double jeopardy.

In the present case, this Court has previously held in its memorandum and order filed April 30, 1975 that the juvenile court did make a finding of delinquency before binding petitioner over to be tried as an adult. Petitioner was then bound over to the Common Pleas Court and tried for the same offense which was the subject of the juvenile hearing. There is no dispute that in his trial as an adult petitioner was entitled to the full protection of the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L. Ed.2d 707 (1969). There can also be no doubt that petitioner was put in jeopardy by that proceeding. Downum v. United States, 372 U.S. 734, 83 S.Ct. 1033, 10 L.Ed.2d 100 (1963).

The United States Supreme Court in Breed v. Jones, supra, held that in juvenile proceedings “whose object is to determine whether [petitioner] has committed acts that violate the criminal law and whose potential consequences include both the stigma inherent in such a determination and the deprivation of [life and] liberty for many years”, the juvenile is put in jeopardy. Id. and that jeopardy attached when the trier of fact began to hear evidence. Id. 421 U.S. 519, 95 S.Ct. 1779. The Supreme Court then held that no exception to the double jeopardy requirement should be allowed in the juvenile court setting, stating that it will not diminish the flexibility and informality of juvenile proceedings. Id. 421 U.S. 519, 95 S.Ct. 1779. The Supreme Court concluded that “the prosecution of (petitioner) in Superior Court, after an adjudication proceeding in Juvenile Court, violated the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.”

This Court is compelled to reach the same conclusion as to the petitioner Brenson.

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Bluebook (online)
403 F. Supp. 221, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/brenson-v-havener-ohnd-1975.