Stanley Forman Reed

“ Disregarding, as we think we should, the clerk's unchallenged selections based on taxable property, there is no evidence of racial discrimination. Negroes names now appear in the jury box. If the requirement of comparative wealth is eliminated, and the statutory standards employed, the number would increase to the equality justified by their moral and educational qualification for jury service as compared with the white race. We do not think the small number, by comparison, of Negro names in this one jury box, is, in itself, enough to establish racial discrimination. ”

“ How much obscurity is inevitable will be a matter of opinion. However, in considering a remedy for habeas corpus problems, it is prudent to assume that the scope and reach of the Fourteenth Amendment will continue to be unknown and unknowable, that what seems established by one decision is apt to be unsettled by another, and that its interpretation will be more or less swayed by contemporary intellectual fashions and political currents. ”

“ Whenever decisions of one court are reviewed by another, a percentage of them are reversed. That reflects a difference in outlook normally found between personnel comprising different courts. However, reversal by a higher court is not proof that justice is thereby better done. There is no doubt that if there were a super-Supreme Court, a substantial proportion of our reversals of state courts would also be reversed. We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final. ”

“ But an examination of these petitions will show that few of them, tested by any rational rules of pleading, actually raise any question of law on which the state court has differed from the understanding prevailing in this Court. The point on which we are urged to overrule state courts almost invariably is in their appraisal of facts. For example, the jury, the trial judge, and one or more appellate courts below have held that conflicting evidence proves a confession was voluntary; the prisoner wants us to say the evidence proves it was coerced. ”

“ True, neither those outside of the Court, nor on many occasions those inside of it, know just what reasons led six Justices to withhold consent to a certiorari. But all know that a majority, larger than can be mustered for a good many decisions, has found reason for not reviewing the case here. Because no one knows all that a denial means, does it mean that it means nothing? Perhaps the profession could accept denial as meaningless before the custom was introduced of noting dissents from them. ”

“ Our duty to protect the federal constitutional rights of all does not mean we must or should impose on states our conception of the proper source of jury lists, so long as the source reasonably reflects a cross-section of the population suitable in character and intelligence for that civic duty. ”

“ Second, every petition to a federal court is required and those to a state court may be required by state law to contain a plain but full statement of the facts on which it is based. Unless it states facts which, if proved, would warrant relief, the applicant is not entitled as of right to a hearing. Technical forms or artificialities of pleading will not be required.
Presumably a federal court will not release a convict until he proves facts which show invalidity of his conviction. If proof is to be required, it is no hardship to require a simple statement of what it will be. ”

“ The name of every property owner and every voter is in the jury box. We recognize, too, that we are now reviewing a constitutional objection to a state court conviction, and we may not act to alter practices of a state which are short of a denial of equal protection or due process in the selection of juries.23 States should decide for themselves the quality of their juries as best fits their situation so long as the classifications have relation to the efficiency of the jurors and are equally administered. ”

“ Applications to district courts on grounds determined adversely to the applicant by state courts should follow the same principle-a refusal of the writ without more, if the court is satisfied, by the record, that the state process has given fair consideration to the issues and the offered evidence, and has resulted in a satisfactory conclusion. Where the record of the application affords an adequate opportunity to weigh the sufficiency of the allegations and the evidence, and no unusual circumstances calling for a hearing are presented, a repetition of the trial is not required. ”

“ The fact that the substantive law of due process is and probably must remain so vague and unsettled as to invite farfetched or border-line petitions makes it important to adhere to procedures which enable courts readily to distinguish a probable constitutional grievance from a convict's mere gamble on persuading some indulgent judge to let him out of jail. ”

“ The states all allow some appeal from a judgment of conviction which permits review of any question of law, state or federal, raised upon the record. No state is obliged to furnish multiple remedies for the same grievance. Most states, and with good reason, will not suffer a collateral attack such as habeas corpus to be used as a substitute for or duplication of the appeal. A state properly may deny habeas corpus to raise either state or federal issues that were or could have been considered on appeal. ”

“ The writ has no enemies so deadly as those who sanction the abuse of it, whatever their intent.
If a state is really obtaining conviction by laws or procedures which violate the Federal Constitution, it is always a serious wrong, not only to a particular convict, but to federal law. ”

“ Whatever one may think of that result, it does not seem logical to support it by asserting that this Court's certiorari power is any part of a state's remedy. An authority outside of the state imposes a duty upon the state to turn the case over to it, in a proceeding which makes the state virtually a defendant. To say that our command to certify the case to us is a state remedy is to indulge in fiction, and the difficulty with fictions is that those they are most apt to mislead are those who proclaim them. ”

“ The right to an instant determination as to the lawfulness of an existing imprisonment, and the twofold quality of such a determination that, if favourable to liberty it was without appeal, and if unfavourable it might be renewed until each jurisdiction had in turn been exhausted, have from time to time been pointed out by Judges as securing in a marked and exceptional manner the personal freedom of the subject. ”

“ For here we are not dealing with a frivolous or even a tenuous claim of a denial of rights guaranteed under the United States Constitution in the proceedings that led to a death sentence. It suffices to quote what was said in dissent by Circuit Judge Soper, one of the most experienced and hardheaded of federal judges:
'There is no attempt on the part of the State of North Carolina in the pending appeal to show that there was not a gross violation of the constitutional rights of the prisoners in the trial court.' Daniels v. ”

“ But, for the case in which certiorari is denied, its minimum meaning is that this Court allows the judgment below to stand with whatever consequences it may have upon the litigants involved under the doctrine of res judicata as applied either by state or federal courts. A civil or criminal judgment usually becomes res judicata in the sense that it is binding and conclusive even if new facts are discovered and even if a new theory of law were thought up, except for some provision for granting a new trial, which usually is discretionary with the trial court and limited in time. ”

“ He concluded that the findings of the judge of the sentencing court on the matter of whether the jury had been properly selected were 'supported by all the evidence' and that it was not shown that there was a 'purposeful and systematic exclusion of negroes solely on account of race.' He also found that the trial judge correctly determined that the confessions were voluntary and that the instruction concerning the confessions was adequate. ”

“ Instead, this Court has sanctioned progressive trivialization of the writ until floods of stale, frivolous and repetitious petitions inundate the docket of the lower courts and swell our own.8 Judged by our own disposition of habeas corpus matters, they have, as a class, become peculiarly undeserving.9 It must prejudice the occasional meritorious application to be buried in a flood of worthless ones. He who must search a haystack for a needle is likely to end up with the attitude that the needle is not worth the search. ”

“ Since the states are the real guardians of peace and order within their boundaries, it is hoped that our consideration of these records will tend to clarify the requirements of the Federal Constitution in the selection of juries. Our Constitution requires that jurors be selected without inclusion or exclusion because of race. There must be neither limitation nor representation for color. ”

“ They also urge that the refusal of the Supreme Court of North Carolina to examine the merits of the trial record in the state courts because of their failure to serve a statement of the case on appeal until one day beyond the period of limitation, is a denial of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. ”

“ Although they have the power, it is not necessary for federal courts to hold hearings on the merits, facts or law a second time when satisfied that federal constitutional rights have been protected.19 It is necessary to exercise jurisdiction to the extent of determining by examination of the record whether or not a hearing would serve the ends of justice. ”

“ Under the language of the bill as it then read, an application might have been entertained where it appeared (1) that the applicant had exhausted the remedies available in the courts of the state, or (2) where there was no adequate remedy available in such courts, or (3) where such courts had denied the applicant a fair adjudication of the legality of his detention under the Constitution and laws of the United States. In accepting the recommendation of the Judicial Conference, the Congress eliminated the third basis of jurisdiction. ”

“ The trial court, seeing the demeanor of witnesses, hearing the parties, giving to each case far more time than an appellate court can give, is in a better position to unravel disputes of fact than is an appellate court on a printed transcript. Recent decisions avow no candid alteration of these rules, but revision of state fact finding has grown by emphasis, and respect for it has withered by disregard.7
3. ”

“ Lawyers and lower judges will not readily believe that Justices of this Court are taking the trouble to signal a meaningless division of opinion about a meaningless act.18 It is just one of the facts of life that today every lower court does attach importance to denials and to presence or absence of dissents from denials, as judicial opinions and lawyers' arguments show. ”

“ Once upon a time the writ could not be substituted for appeal or other reviewing process but challenged only the legal competence or jurisdiction of the committing court.14 We have so departed from this principle that the profession now believes that the issues we actually consider on a federal prisoner's habeas corpus are substantially the same as would be considered on appeal.15
Conflict with state courts is the inevitable result of giving the convict a virtual new trial before a federal court sitting without a jury. ”

“ The foregoing evidence does show a partial abandonment of the old discriminatory jury practices-since 1949 a small number of Negroes have regularly been summoned for jury duty. But proof of a lesser degree of discrimination now than before 1949 is insufficient to show that impartial selection of jurors which the Constitution requires. Negroes are about one-third of Forsyth County's population. Consequently, the number of Negroes now called for jury duty is still glaringly disproportionate to their percentage of citizenship. ”

“ Jurisdiction over applications for federal habeas corpus is controlled by statute.11 The Code directs a court entertaining an application to award the writ.12 But an application is not 'entertained' by a mere filing. Liberal as the courts are and should be as to practice in setting out claimed violations of constitutional rights, the applicant must meet the statutory test of alleging facts that entitle him to relief. ”

“ The selection from the jury box of names of persons subject to a summons to serve as grand jurors in a term of court is made by lot, as is the selection of panels of persons subject to summons for duty on petit juries. ”

“ Treating the State's response to the application as a motion to dismiss, the court properly granted that motion. Discharge from conviction through habeas corpus is not an act of judicial clemency but a protection against illegal custody.
The need for argument is a matter of judicial discretion. All issues were adequately presented. ”