Robert Dewey Hilbrich v. United States

406 F.2d 850, 1969 U.S. App. LEXIS 9097
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedFebruary 3, 1969
Docket16885_1
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 406 F.2d 850 (Robert Dewey Hilbrich v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Robert Dewey Hilbrich v. United States, 406 F.2d 850, 1969 U.S. App. LEXIS 9097 (7th Cir. 1969).

Opinion

DUFFY, Senior Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from the denial of a petition under Title 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate a sentence of fifteen years' imprisonment imposed upon defendant after he was found guilty by a jury of the federal crime of bank robbery.

Petitioner urges as a ground for setting aside his conviction, that his confession was ~obtained after an unlawful delay in taking him before a judicial of- *851 fieer for a preliminary hearing. Petitioner denies the Government’s assertion that he is, in effect, endeavoring to have the rules which were laid down in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, applied retroactively to this case. However, petitioner’s attorney frankly admits that he is asking this Court to enlarge the protection established by the Supreme Court in Miranda. If there is to be any extension or broadening of the rule in Miranda, the Supreme Court should undertake that task. We decline the invitation.

The principal contention of petitioner on this appeal is that his confession was obtained as the direct result of a threat to arrest petitioner’s father and brothers unless he confessed, and that his confession was the result of coercion. The District Court denied the petition herein without a hearing.

Shortly after 9 a. m. on Saturday, November 17, 1962, the Oak Lawn Federal Savings and Loan Association, a federally insured institution, located in the village of Oak Lawn, a suburb of Chicago, was robbed by three persons. Before 9:30 a. m., petitioner was arrested by an officer of the Oak Lawn Police Department. The FBI was notified and before noon one or more of these agents interrogated petitioner who requested that he might speak to FBI agent Loy Wagoner. No reason for such request appears in the record except that petitioner may have been an acquaintance of Wagoner.

Agent Wagoner was notified and arrived about 2 p. m. Inculpatory statements were made in Wagoner’s presence at about 3 p. m. These included a detailed plan of the robbery.

After further questions by Wagoner and other agents, and at about 5 p. m., petitioner was placed under federal arrest and was taken to the FBI office in Chicago. Sunday intervened, and on Monday, November 19, petitioner was brought before a judicial officer for a preliminary hearing.

Petitioner was brought to trial before a jury in April 1963. He appealed his conviction to this Court. In our opinion affirming petitioner’s conviction, we said (341 F.2d at page 558): “Hilbrich contends that testimony concerning his alleged confession to FBI agent Wagoner was inadmissible because the confession was obtained illegally. He does not contend that the confession was coerced, but that he was not taken ‘without unnecessary delay before the nearest available commissioner * * *.’ ” We further stated at page 558 “We affirm the district court’s denial of the motion but prefer to base our ruling on the fact that the record shows that Hilbrich had been arrested by Oak Lawn and not by federal officers.” We also pointed out (page 559): “No claim of coercion is made here and there was no error in denying the motion to suppress.”

Certiorari was denied, 381 U.S. 941, 85 S.Ct. 1775, 14 L.Ed.2d 704. In his petition for certiorari, petitioner asked for “a review of the Court of Appeals’ ruling on the admissibility of petitioner’s confession in order to maintain the integrity of its Mallory decision.”

Petitioner was before this Court for a second time when he appealed from a District Court order denying his petition under Title 28 U.S.C. § 2255, to vacate and set aside his sentence. He there complained he had been promised a sentence similar to that imposed on one Berger. We affirmed the order of the District Court. Hilbrich v. United States, 371 F.2d 826.

Now, on the third round before this Court, petitioner, for the first time, makes charges that his confession was obtained by some agent or police officer threatening that unless he confessed to the bank robbery, his father and brothers would be arrested. There is nothing in his petition or in the record to explain why such serious charges had not been previously called to the attention of the District Court.

In Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 10 L.Ed.2d 148, the Court said at page 15, 83 S.Ct. at page 1077: “We think the judicial and statutory evolution of the principles governing *852 successive applications for federal ha-beas corpus and motions under § 2255 has reached the point at which the formulation of basic rules to guide the lower federal courts is both feasible and desirable.” The Court then proceeded to outline procedures to be followed.

In Sanders, the Court sought to deal with two related though distinct problems. The first is that of a successive motion based on the same ground raised before. “By ‘ground’, we mean simply a sufficient legal basis for granting the relief sought by the applicant.” (Sanders, supra, at page 16, 83 S.Ct. at page 1077). Here, the petitioner previously sought to have the confession excluded as a consequence of a delay in taking him before a judicial officer for a hearing. Now he asserts that the confession was obtained as a result of coercion. It is true that the immediate result sought is the same — the exclusion of the confession. However, such a generalization would seem to be too broad. In Sanders, supra, at page 16, 83 S.Ct. at page 1077, the Court said: “Should doubts arise in particular cases as to whether two grounds are different or the same, they should be resolved in favor of the applicant.” We therefore hold that this motion is not based on the same ground as the previous one relating to the delay in the hearing.

The second problem discussed in Sanders is closely related to the first. That is the difficulty of successive motions which raise matters not considered before, but which could have been. Busy federal district courts should not be required to entertain needless, piecemeal litigation or to entertain collateral proceedings whose only purpose is to vex, harass or delay. (Sanders, supra, at page 18, 83 S.Ct. 1068).

In Sanders, supra, page 10, 83 S.Ct. at page 1074: “* * * [T]he prisoner who on a prior motion under § 2255 has deliberately withheld a ground for relief need not be heard if he asserts that ground in a successive motion; his action is inequitable — an abuse of the remedy — and the court may in its discretion deny him a hearing.” (Emphasis supplied)

Sanders followed a previous case, Price v. Johnston, 334 U.S. 266, 68 S.Ct. 1049, 92 L.Ed. 1356, in allocating the burden of pleading abuse of the writ. In Price it

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Bluebook (online)
406 F.2d 850, 1969 U.S. App. LEXIS 9097, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/robert-dewey-hilbrich-v-united-states-ca7-1969.