United States ex rel. Raby v. Woods

440 F.2d 478
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedMarch 5, 1971
DocketNo. 18389
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 440 F.2d 478 (United States ex rel. Raby v. Woods) 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
United States ex rel. Raby v. Woods, 440 F.2d 478 (7th Cir. 1971).

Opinion

MAJOR, Senior Circuit Judge.

This case had its genesis in a civil rights movement participated in by a large number of persons, of whom Albert A. Raby, petitioner, was a leader. The participants, including Raby, marched to the intersection of Randolph and La Salle in the City of Chicago, Illinois, at about 5 p. m. on June 28, 1965, at the peak of the evening rush hour, where a number either sat or lay in the intersection, thereby blocking all traffic for a considerable time. A number of policemen who had been called to the scene demanded that they vacate the intersection. Those who refused to do so, including Raby, were placed under arrest.

Raby was charged in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, with the offenses of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He was tried and convicted of those charges by a jury, fined $500.00 for disorderly conduct and sentenced to serve three months in the Cook County Jail for resisting arrest. Raby, raising constitutional issues, appealed directly to the Illinois Supreme Court, which affirmed his conviction. People v. Raby, 40 Ill.2d 392, 240 N.E.2d 595. The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari, 393 U.S. 1083, 89 S.Ct. 867, 21 L.Ed.2d 776.

The instant proceeding was commenced by a petition on behalf of Raby for a writ of habeas corpus, pursuant to 28 U.S.C.A. Sec. 2241, which was later supplanted by an amended petition in which he alleged that both of the State statutes under which he was convicted were unconstitutional and that he was denied his constitutional rights in other ways. The District Court conducted a hearing which in effect amounted to a review of the decision of the Illinois Supreme Court. The transcript of the State Court proceedings was introduced in evidence and the Court heard the same witnesses who had testified in the State Court trial.

After the decision of the Illinois Supreme Court, Raby paid the fine imposed upon the disorderly conduct charge. The District Court decided adversely to Raby on all constitutional issues except as stated in its order, “The Illinois resistance of arrest statute is found constitutional, but the court’s instructions to the jury regarding it were so inadequate that petitioner was deprived of due process of law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment * * The order also stated, “The court’s memorandum opinion read into the record, will stand as findings of fact and conclusions of law herein.”

Thus, the sole basis for the order of the District Court discharging Raby is that he was deprived of a constitutional right by reason of the instruction which the Trial Court gave to the jury, as follows :

“The Jury is instructed that there was in force in the State of Illinois at [480]*480the time of the alleged occurrence in question a statute known as resisting or obstructing a peace officer under Chapter 38, Section 31-1 of the Illinois Revised Statutes as amended, which statute provides in part that it shall be unlawful for a person knowingly to resist or obstruct the performance by one known to the person to be a peace officer of any authorized act within his official capacity.
“You are instructed that the defendant, Albert Raby, is charged with committing the offense of obstructing and resisting a peace officer on June 28, 1965, at La Salle and Randolph Streets in that he resisted a peace officer in the performance of his duty by: when placed under arrest by said officer, refused to voluntarily accompany arresting officer and had to be physically carried away in violation of Chapter 38, Section 31-1, Illinois Revised Statutes and against the peace and dignity of the People of the State of Illinois, which charge said defendant denies.
“The Court instructs the Jury, as a matter of Law, that resisting a peace officer in the performance of his duty may be passive as well as active. To interfere and obstruct does not require active resistance and force.”

It is the last paragraph of this instruction, that the resistance “may be passive as well as active,” upon which the constitutional attack is based. The Court’s memorandum stated:

“I do not find that the use of the phrase ‘passive resistance’ may not be included in the instructions of the judge to the jury, but the instructions must be broad enough that the jury can understand what is meant at law by ‘passive resistance’ in order that it not include conduct which is not in fact affirmative conduct on the part of the arrested person.”

Thus, the Court recognized that the statute encompassed passive resistance, providing the jury was properly instructed as to its meaning. This recognition was made in spite of the Court’s statement made for the record at the conclusion of the hearing:

“I hold that there is no such thing [passive resistance], despite the language to be found in the cases, to-wit, the Landry case, written by a three-judge court of this court, and the Supreme Court decision in the Raby case and in the words and the language of the trial judge in this case, on the state level, there is no such thing as passive resistance.”

In Landry et al. v. Daley, 280 F.Supp. 938, a three-judge panel1 of the same Court from which this appeal comes, in a well considered opinion held that resistance can be passive as well as active, naming as one of the examples, “merely going limp.” This opinion was quoted from at some length and its reasoning approved by the Illinois Supreme Court in People v. Raby, supra. In response to Raby’s attack on the resisting arrest provision upon the ground that it fixed no standards for the ascertainment of guilt, that Court stated (240 N.E.2d 599):

“This attack was recently rejected in Landry v. Daley (N.D.111.1968), 280 F.Supp. 938, 959. In that case the court emphasized that the statute requires knowing resistance or obstruction, ‘[which] considerably narrows the scope of the enactment by exempting innocent or inadvertent conduct from its proscription’ (280 F.Supp. at 959). The court further noted that the statutory terms convey commonly recognized meanings. ‘Resisting’ or ‘resistance’ means ‘withstanding the force or effect of’ or the ‘exertion of oneself to counteract or defeat’. ‘Obstruct’ means ‘to be or come in the way of’. These terms are alike in that they imply some physical act or exertion. Given a reasonable and natural construction, these terms do not proscribe mere argument with a police[481]*481man about the validity of an arrest or other police action, but proscribe only some physical act which imposes an obstacle which may impede, hinder, interrupt, prevent or delay the performance of the officer’s duties, such as going limp, forcefully resisting arrest or physically aiding a third party to avoid arrest.’ (280 F.Supp. at 959). We agree with these observations, and we hold that section 31-1 is neither vague nor overbroad.”

The same Court, relative to the instruction here under attack, stated (240 N.E.2d 601):

“The defendant argues that it was error to give this instruction and to refuse an instruction tendered by the defendant which advised the jury of certain dictionary definitions of the term ‘resist’.

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Related

United States v. Woods
440 F.2d 478 (Seventh Circuit, 1971)

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Bluebook (online)
440 F.2d 478, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-ex-rel-raby-v-woods-ca7-1971.