Griffin v. Louisiana

269 F. Supp. 32, 1967 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8759
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Louisiana
DecidedMay 26, 1967
DocketCrim. A. No. 30461
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 269 F. Supp. 32 (Griffin v. Louisiana) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Griffin v. Louisiana, 269 F. Supp. 32, 1967 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8759 (E.D. La. 1967).

Opinion

HEEBE, District Judge:

These petitioners are charged in three separate indictments with three separate and distinct crimes of attempted murder. All three petitioners are named in each indictment, and all three indictments were returned by the same grand jury on June 6,' 1966. The prosecutions were removed by these petitioners from the Twenty-Second Judicial District of Louisiana to this Court under the provisions of 28 U.S.C.A. § 1443(1). The State of Louisiana has moved for an order remanding the case to the state court on the grounds that removal is not authorized by § 1443(1). Under 28 U.S.C. A. § 1447(c) the Court must remand a case if it appears that it was removed improvidently and without jurisdiction; and whether or not removal was authorized by § 1443(1), as alleged by petitioners, is therefore the sole question [33]*33before the Court. Section 1443(1) provides in substance that:

A criminal prosecution commenced in a state court may be removed by the defendant to the appropriate United States District Court if such prosecution is against any person who is denied, or cannot enforce, in the courts of such state, a right under any law providing for the equal civil rights of United States citizens.

It is the express requirement of § 1443 (1) that in order to support removal the defendants must show both (1) that the right upon which they rely is a “right under any law providing for * * * equal civil rights,” and (2) that they are “denied or cannot enforce that right” in the courts of the state. State of Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. 780, 788, 86 S.Ct. 1783, 1788, 16 L.Ed.2d 925 (1966).

Respondent, State of Louisiana, does not contest the fact that the rights relied on by these petitioners are “right[s] under ' any law providing for equal civil rights.” It is clear to the Court also that none of the problems involved in Heymann v. State of Louisiana, 269 F.Supp. 36, also rendered today by this Court, are present in this case with respect to the requirement that “equal rights” be involved, and we find in this case ample' support for removal with respect thereto.

We cannot, however, find support for removal under the second essential requirement of § 1443(1). Petitioners have failed to present to this Court, with the conclusiveness envisioned by the Rachel decision, the prediction that they have been or will be denied their rights in the courts of Louisiana.

The petitioners here are not so much concerned with testing the validity of this removal as they are with demanding a factual hearing in the matter; they assert strongly that they are at least entitled to the opportunity to prove the facts that they allege in their petition to the satisfaction of this Court. The Court cannot argue with that proposition as a general rule. However, it is apparent that all the factual allegations in the removal petition — even if true and proved to this Court beyond any doubt — would nevertheless not entitle these petitioners to maintain this removal. No evidentiary hearing need be had in this situation ; petitioners simply have not alleged facts which, when proved, can support removal under- § 1443(1). The removal petition is, on its face, defective.

In approaching questions of removal under § 1443(1), we are of course bound by the pronouncements of the Supreme Court in City of Greenwood, Miss. v. Peacock, 384 U.S. 808, 86 S.Ct. 1800, 16 L.Ed.2d 944 (1966), and State of Georgia v. Rachel, 384 U.S. 780, 86 S.Ct. 1783, 16 L.Ed.2d 925 (1966). Those cases require, in order to support removal under § 1443(1), not only proof by the petitioners for removal that their rights have been denied, but a showing by the petitioners that there is a firm prediction that those rights will be inevitably denied by each and every court of the state. We see no need to reiterate here all of the ramifications of the Peacock and Rachel cases nor the important considerations which forced the narrow holding of the court in those eases. We refer to our discussion at 13 Loyola Law Review 57 (1967), for a brief outline of those issues. The substance of the law as developed in Greenwood and Rachel is simply that (1) removal may be had only where the court can firmly predict that the petitioners’ equal rights will inevitably be denied by each and every state court, and (2) such a prediction can only be made where the prosecution itself is fatally and obviously defective.1 Petitioners admit the substance of that analysis to be correct. They propose, however, that there is in this case the basis — and they offer to prove that basis upon a factual hearing — for a firm prediction of the denial of their rights. In essence their position is that any denial of rights secured by § 201 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will provide the “firm [34]*34prediction” required by Rachel; the contention is that it is always possible for a federal court to predict firmly that the state courts will deny to defendants rights accruing to them under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for the reason that any prosecution for acts done pursuant to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is fatally defective. Their conclusion is that any time a defendant alleges in his removal petition that a state prosecution is a disguised attack on his federal right to enter a place of public accommodation, then the federal court is required to hold a hearing to determine the truth of those allegations, and that if the court finds that the defendant was exercising a right under the Public Accommodations provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that the prosecution is actually an attack on and a deprivation of that right, then the court must sustain removal. The hub of their thesis is the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 contains what might be termed a “protection-from-prosecution provision.” The provision contains quite definite language protecting those who refuse to obey an order to leave a place of public accommodation from being punished — or prosecuted — for such refusal. There is certainly a great deal of emphasis in Rachel on the existence of a protection-from-prosecution clause in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, as I have stated elsewhere,2 this Court is not prepared to imply from the language in Rachel that removal is to be available for each and every prosecution aimed at a denial of rights under the Public Accommodations provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Certainly any prosecution which is expressly for the exercise of an act which is actually a federal right under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, could, under Rachel, be removed pursuant to § 1443(1). Here, however, the prosecutions are for attempted murder, not for the exercise of a federal right. There is obviously no federal right to commit the crime of attempted murder. Petitioners argue, however, that because of the protection-from-prosecution clause in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the prosecution need not be one expressly for the exercise of a federal right, but that the protection extends also to disguised prosecutions aimed at punishing those who exercise their federal rights under that Act and that removal under § 1443(1) is available in all such cases. This argument we reject. The Rachel decision certainly did not expressly hold that. In Rachel

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Related

Reverend John M. Perkins v. State of Mississippi
455 F.2d 7 (Fifth Circuit, 1972)
Ratcliff v. Texas
296 F. Supp. 370 (S.D. Texas, 1969)
Heymann v. State of Louisiana
269 F. Supp. 36 (E.D. Louisiana, 1967)

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Bluebook (online)
269 F. Supp. 32, 1967 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8759, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/griffin-v-louisiana-laed-1967.