United States of America Ex Rel. Clay Thomas v. State of New Jersey

472 F.2d 735
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedJanuary 23, 1973
Docket72-1361
StatusPublished
Cited by49 cases

This text of 472 F.2d 735 (United States of America Ex Rel. Clay Thomas v. State of New Jersey) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States of America Ex Rel. Clay Thomas v. State of New Jersey, 472 F.2d 735 (3d Cir. 1973).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

GIBBONS, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal by the State of New Jersey from an order granting a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The basic order appealed from provides:

“ORDERED that a writ of habeas corpus shall issue.
Further ORDERED that pending appeal, if any is taken by the State, or pending retrial, the Passaic County Court entertain an application by peti *737 tioner for bail to be fixed by the State Court in such amount and such form as may be deemed reasonable.
Further ORDERED that in the event an appeal is not taken by the State and the indictment is not moved for retrial within 60 days of the date hereof, petitioner shall be released from all further custody pursuant to the indictment.”

Upon the entry of this order, Thomas, the petitioner, applied to the Passaic County Court to be released on bail. That court declined to entertain such an application. Thomas returned to the district court, which then amended the basic order to provide that he should be released upon posting his own personal unsecured bond in the amount of $25,000 with the Passaic County Court. It directed that the Clerk of the Passaic County Court accept such bond, and that upon its posting, Thomas be released from further custody pending disposition of the instant appeal.

The state’s appeal urges.
(1) that the district court’s decision that a writ of habeas corpus should issue was error, and
(2) that the district court was without power:
(a) to order a habeas corpus petitioner’s release from state custody pending appeal, or
(b) to direct that the Passaic County Court fix the amount of bail or accept a bond in an amount fixed by the district court.

The Grant of Habeas Corpus The district court’s decision that the writ should issue was made, on the basis of the state court record without an evi-dentiary hearing, on the ground that identification evidence used at the trial violated due process. Thomas urged as an additional ground for granting the writ that the state trial court had coerced a verdict by use of an Allen charge. The district court did not regard this charge as an error of constitutional dimensions. But the court did point out that the necessity for the charge, i. e. the fact that the jury was unable to agree, tended to show that the identification errors could not, under Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 89 S.Ct. 1726, 23 L.Ed.2d 284 (1969), and Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), be regarded as harmless. Having examined the transcript of the state court trial, we affirm the order granting the writ.

The indictment on which Thomas was tried grew out of the robbery on March 22, 1968, by two Negro males of a real estate office conducted by Edward Cos-mi. His father, John Cosmi, was also in the office that evening. The district court held that due process violations occurred in the admission into evidence of testimony by John Cosmi (1) as to a pre-trial photographic identification of Thomas and (2) as to an in-court identification of Thomas.

The state’s basic contention is that the ruling of the state trial judge admitting evidence of the challenged pre-trial photographic identification by John Cosmi was a determination of a factual issue within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), and hence presumptively correct unless one of the eight exceptions set forth in § 2254(d) applies. But the determination that evidence of the challenged pre-trial photographic identification was admissible was at best a ruling on a mixed question of law and fact. As the Supreme Court observed in Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 309 n.6, 83 S.Ct. 745, 755, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963):

“By ‘issues of fact’ we mean to refer to what are termed basic, primary, or historical facts: facts ‘in the sense of a recital of external events and the credibility of their narrators. .’ Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 506, 73 S.Ct. 397, 97 L.Ed. 469 (opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter). So-called mixed questions of fact and law, which require the application of a legal standard to the historical-fact determinations, are not facts in this sense.”

*738 Whether a pre-trial identification has been conducted in an impermissibly suggestive manner, and, hence, is inadmissible is, to be sure, in one sense a question of fact. But it is a question to be determined by applying to a given collection of historical facts a defined legal standard. That defined legal standard is, moreover, a federal standard. Review by a federal habeas corpus court of a determination reflecting the application of a federal legal standard to historical facts is not barred by 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). The most common instance of federal review of such mixed questions of historical fact and legal standard is federal review of the voluntariness of confessions. Perhaps the classic statement of the rule appears in Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 50, 69 S.Ct. 1347, 1348, 93 L.Ed. 1801 (1949):

“On review here of State convictions, all those matters which are usually termed issues of fact are for conclusive determination by the State courts and are not open for reconsideration by this Court. Observance of this restriction in our review of State courts calls for the utmost scruple. But ‘issue of fact’ is a coat of many colors. It does not cover a conclusion drawn from uncontroverted happenings, when that conclusion incorporates standards of conduct or criteria for judgment which in themselves are decisive of constitutional rights. Such standards and criteria, measured against the requirements drawn from constitutional provisions, and their proper applications, are issues for this Court’s adjudication.”

See also Darwin v. Connecticut, 391 U.S. 346, 88 S.Ct. 1488, 20 L.Ed.2d 630 (1968); Greenwald v. Wisconsin, 390 U.S. 519, 88 S.Ct. 1152, 20 L.Ed.2d 77 (1968); Clewis v. Texas, 386 U.S. 707, 87 S.Ct. 1338, 18 L.Ed.2d 423 (1967). Each of these cases, like Watts v. Indiana, su pra, arose under the Supreme Court’s certiorari jurisdiction to review final state court action, and thus, technically, none is a construction of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). But Townsend v. Sain, supra,

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Bluebook (online)
472 F.2d 735, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-of-america-ex-rel-clay-thomas-v-state-of-new-jersey-ca3-1973.