Collins v. Beto

241 F. Supp. 170, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8128
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Texas
DecidedJune 4, 1964
DocketCiv. A. No. 2922
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 241 F. Supp. 170 (Collins v. Beto) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Collins v. Beto, 241 F. Supp. 170, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8128 (S.D. Tex. 1964).

Opinion

NOEL, District Judge.

Petitioner, Clarence Collins, is a prisoner at the Clemens Prison Farm, a unit of the Texas Department of Corrections located in Brazoria County, Texas, within this district and division. He complains in his application for writ of habeas corpus that his conviction of the offense of murder with malice aforethought in Criminal District Court No. 2 of Harris County, Texas, on December 2, 1960, was procured by the use of a confession obtained from him and introduced at his trial in violation of the right to due process of law guaranteed him by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and that his consequent imprisonment is therefore unlawful.

The central question presented to this Court is whether the confession introduced against petitioner at his trial, viewed only through the eyes of federal law, was properly admitted in evidence. Petitioner appears properly to have exhausted his state remedies before turning here.

On November 16, 1959, Mrs. Wilma Selby was shot and killed in her Houston home. There were no witnesses. Several days later Mrs. Selby’s husband, Joseph Selby, Sr., admitted to the Houston police that he had for some time been engaged in the business of finding someone to kill his wife. Mr. Selby’s admissions implicated, among others, two negro women, Maggie Morgan and Patra Mae Bounds. Both admitted having been approached by Mr. Selby with the request that they find a killer, and they admitted having taken money from him but denied having successfully carried out a conspiracy. Joseph Selby, Sr., said he did not know who had been the killer.

In an effort to find the person who actually shot Mrs. Selby, the Houstjn police, the Sheriff’s officers, the Texas Rangers, personnel of the District Attorney’s office, and other persons interested in law enforcement began extensive investigations. Numerous persons were questioned in an effort by law enforcement officers to obtain information which would put them on the trail of the killer.

On December 12, 1959 the petitioner was taken into custody by the Houston police for questioning. Taken to the Houston police station, Collins was held until December 14, 1959, on which day he gave the police a statement saying he had once been approached by Maggie Morgan and asked to kill a white woman. He told police that he had refused to become involved in such a scheme and that he knew nothing more. After being given a lie detector test, he was released.

Then, on January 19, 1960 word was given to law enforcement officers which indicated that Collins had been the actual “triggerman.” Collins was taken into custody that evening. On the morning [172]*172of January 21, 1960 Collins signed a statement in which he admitted having gone to the Selby home in the company of Maggie Morgan and Patra Mae Bounds and having there shot Mrs. Selby.

At Collins’ trial, timely objection was made to the introduction of the statement on the grounds that it was involuntarily given and that it had been obtained while Collins was under illegal detention.

The trial judge appropriately heard evidence on the admissibility of the confession, out of the presence of the jury, and then, not finding it inadmissible, permitted the statement to be placed in evidence before the jury.

Properly instructed as to the applicable legal principles, the jury was left with the decision whether the statement had in fact been voluntarily made. Collins was found guilty of murder with malice aforethought and assessed punishment at ninety-nine years imprisonment.

Subsequently, Collins appealed his conviction to the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas. That court affirmed in a written opinion, Collins v. State, 171 Tex.Cr. R. 585, 352 S.W.2d 841 (1961), finding no error in the admission of the confession. Petitioner was unsuccessful in his petition to the Supreme Court of the United States for writ of certiorari. Collins v. Texas, 369 U.S. 881, 82 S.Ct. 1152, 8 L.Ed.2d 283 (1962).

In his application for writ of habeas corpus Collins raises the following issues:

(1) whether certain evidentiary rulings by the trial court unconstitutionally prevented Collins from developing certain evidence considered by his counsel to be critical in the inquiry whether the incriminating statement had been voluntarily given,

(2) whether the statement was obtained while Collins was illegally in custody, and if so, whether it was not therefore inadmissible as a matter of law notwithstanding its voluiltary or involuntary nature, and

(3) whether the confession was involuntary, the product of physical or psychological coercion.

Those allegations which deal with evidentiary rulings of the trial court are not of constitutional dimension. Although Collins was unable to introduce all of the evidence that he considered germane to the issue of the admissibility of his confession, he was given a real hearing. He did far more than merely tender the issue; over 700 pages of the statement of facts from the trial court are taken up by testimony and argument concerning. the question whether Collins’ statement was made voluntarily. Contrast Coleman v. State of Alabama, 377 U.S. 129, 84 S.Ct. 1152, 12 L.Ed.2d 190 (May 4, 1964).

For support of his argument that a confession obtained during a period of unlawful detention is, without more, constitutionally inadmissible, Collins turns to Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961). In that case the Supreme Court enunciated the rule that evidence obtained through unconstitutional searches and seizures is inadmissible in a state court. Petitioner suggests that an incriminating statement from one in unlawful police custody should be considered to fall within the Mapp exclusion, as “fruit” of official illegality; for that proposition he cites the recent decisions of the Supreme Court in Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), and of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Gatlin v. United States, 117 U.S.App.D.C. 123, 326 F.2d 666 (1963).

The Wong Sun and Gatlin cases did indeed hold inadmissible the incriminating statements obtained from defendants while under illegal arrest, but both cases dealt with federal convictions, and both decisions appear to have been largely, if not entirely, governed by the federal evidentiary principles which find their genesis in McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 63 S.Ct. 608, 87 L.Ed. 819 (1943). In McNabb the Court held to be erroneous the introduction in a federal court of a confession obtained from one who, in disregard of the requirements of the federal statutes, had not been taken [173]*173before a committing officer immediately after his arrest. But that rule has been repeatedly and emphatically characterized as a mere evidentiary rule for the federal courts, drawn under the supervisory powers of the Supreme Court, and of far less than constitutional force. See, e. g., Stein v.

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241 F. Supp. 170, 1964 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8128, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/collins-v-beto-txsd-1964.