Smith v. State of Texas

225 F. Supp. 150, 1963 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6237
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Texas
DecidedNovember 21, 1963
DocketCiv. A. No. 63-H-581
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 225 F. Supp. 150 (Smith v. State of Texas) 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
Smith v. State of Texas, 225 F. Supp. 150, 1963 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6237 (S.D. Tex. 1963).

Opinion

NOEL, District Judge.

Petitioner is again before this Court upon application for writ of habeas corpus. His first application was dismissed by this Court on May 7, 1962.1 This dismissal was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on April 4, 1963.2 Petitioner then applied to the Supreme Court of the United States for writ of certiorari. This application was likewise dismissed.

Finality was not achieved by the action of three federal courts upon petitioner’s first application for writ of habeas corpus. The constitutional grounds asserted in his second application were not urged in his first. This Court must therefore consider those issues asserted for the first time in petitioner’s second application. Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 10 L.Ed.2d 148 (1963).

The new grounds asserted by petitioner are:

(1) That the State failed to introduce evidence establishing all the basic elements of the crime charged, which under the teaching of Thompson v. Louisville, 362 U.S. 199, 80 S.Ct. 624, 4 L.Ed.2,d 654 (1960) would make his conviction violative of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and
(2) That the proof offered by the State did not fulfill the requirements of Texas law and, therefore, [152]*152petitioner’s conviction constituted a denial of equal protection of the law under the United States and Texas Constitutions.

Petitioner’s state remedies were exhausted by the denial on November 7, 1963 of petitioner’s petition for writ of habe-as corpus to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Petitioner was to be executed in the early morning of November 8, 1963. But, since the contents of the petition suggested a careful examination of the trial record which had not been returned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, this Court on November 7, 1963 stayed petitioner’s execution for thirty days.

The grounds asserted in petitioner’s application were not such as required an evidentiary hearing within the purview of Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963). Petitioner did not request an evidentiary hearing. Petitioner’s counsel did request oral legal argument, to which he was not entitled as a matter of right but which this Court in the exercise of its discretion granted.

The Brief in Support of Petitioner’s Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus and the Supplemental Brief in Support of Petitioner’s Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus show that despite petitioner’s reliance upon the holding of the United States Supreme Court in Thompson v. Louisville, supra, his actual contention is that the proof offered by the State did not meet the standards of proof required to sustain a conviction under Texas law. This ground encompasses such contentions by petitioner as the failure in the absence of direct evidence to introduce circumstantial evidence excluding every other reasonable hypothesis except petitioner’s guilt, failure to prove each of the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt, the obtaining of the conviction by basing one inference upon another inference, and conviction without the-introduction of sufficient quantitative-evidence to justify rationally a finding as. to every element of the crime charged. These contentions are nothing more than a request for an inquiry into or a weighing of the sufficiency of the evidence supporting a conviction, which is. not within the province of a federal court in a habeas corpus matter.3

Petitioner in relying on Thompson v. Louisville, supra, as authority for these-contentions, misinterprets the case.4 There the Court said,

“The ultimate question presented to us is whether the charges against petitioner were so totally devoid of evidentiary support as to render his conviction unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the-Fourteenth Amendment. Decision of this question turns not on the-sufficiency of the evidence, but on whether this conviction rests upon any evidence at all.” (Emphasis-added.)

In following and applying the Thompson rule, the court in Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U.S. 157, 82 S.Ct. 248, 7 L.Ed. 2d 207 (1961) said,

“As in Thompson v. City of Louisville * * * our inquiry does-not turn on a question of sufficiency of evidence to support a conviction,, but on whether these convictions, rest upon any evidence which would support a finding that the petitioners’ acts caused a disturbance of the peace.” (Emphasis added.)

[153]*153There is a difference between a conviction based upon evidence deemed insufficient as a matter of state criminal law, as is petitioner’s basic contention, and one so totally devoid of evidentiary support as to raise a due process issue. It is only in the latter situation that there has been a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment which would then afford a state prisoner a remedy in a federal court on writ of habeas corpus.3

Petitioner’s contentions involving an inquiry into the sufficiency of evidence to support his conviction are not grounds for the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus. However, his contention, if true, that there is no evidence supporting an essential element of the crime of murder with malice aforethought for which he was charged and convicted,5 6 would be a denial of due process under the teaching of Thompson v. Louisville, supra, for which a writ of habeas corpus would lie.

This contention is in essence that the State introduced no evidence that either petitioner or his co-indictee, Adrian Johnson, while preparing for or executing felonious acts of sodomy on the deceased, killed him by mistake or accident. The determination of this question required an extensive examination by this Court of the record made in the trial court. This Court carefully reviewed the entire trial court record before making its determination of petitioner’s first petition for writ of habeas corpus and has now done so a second time in connection with this his second petition.

A summation of the evidence adduced against petitioner was prepared by First Assistant District Attorney Sam Robertson and stipulated as accurate and complete in open court by petitioner’s counsel James J. Hippard. From my examination of the trial court record, I find independently of such stipulation that such summation is accurate and complete. The summation is attached to this opinion for convenience, as an Appendix.

It is necessary to examine the Texas law to determine the essential elements required to be proved in order to convict the petitioner. Article 42 of the Vernon’s Ann.Texas Penal Code provides :

“One intending to commit a felony and who in the act of preparing for or executing the same shall through mistake or accident do another act which, if voluntarily done, would be a felony, shall receive the punishment affixed to the felony actually committed.”

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Related

Joe Edward Smith v. The State of Texas
329 F.2d 498 (Fifth Circuit, 1964)
Smith v. State of texas
225 F. Supp. 158 (S.D. Texas, 1963)

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Bluebook (online)
225 F. Supp. 150, 1963 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6237, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/smith-v-state-of-texas-txsd-1963.