1. A denial of certiorari by this Court (with no statement of
reasons therefor) to review a decision of a state supreme court
affirming a conviction in a criminal prosecution should be given no
weight in subsequent habeas corpus proceedings in a federal court.
Brown v. Allen, ante, p.
344 U. S. 443. P.
344 U. S.
565.
2. Petitioner, sentenced to death by a state court for murder,
was not denied due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment
by virtue of his having been allowed to plead guilty without there
first having been a formal adjudication of his sanity, in view of
the procedure available for subsequently withdrawing the plea of
guilty and entering a plea of "not guilty because of insanity." Pp.
344 U. S.
565-567.
3. Petitioner was not denied due process by reason of his having
been summarily advised by court-designated counsel at his
arraignment to plead "not guilty," since there was ample
opportunity later to rectify the error, if there was error, by a
hearing on insanity. Pp.
344 U. S.
567-568.
4. It was not the constitutional duty of the State, even upon
request, to appoint a psychiatrist to make a pretrial examination
into petitioner's sanity. P.
344 U. S.
568.
5. Petitioner's contention that an insane man may not be
executed assumes erroneously that he has been found to be insane.
The law of Pennsylvania, as announced by the State Supreme Court,
protects against execution of the insane. Pp.
344 U. S.
568-569.
6. Upon the record in this case, the Federal District Court, on
petitioner's application for habeas corpus, did not err in refusing
to hold a plenary hearing for the determination of petitioner's
sanity. Pp.
344 U. S.
569-570.
Page 344 U. S. 562
7. As the state trial and appellate court records which were
before the District Court show a judicial hearing where, on the
plea of guilty, the question of sanity at the time of the
commission of the crime was canvassed, petitioner's sentence does
not violate due process. P.
344 U. S.
570.
192 F.2d 540 affirmed.
Petitioner, a state prisoner, applied to the District Court for
habeas corpus, and his application was dismissed.
96 F.
Supp. 100. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 192 F.2d 540. This
Court granted certiorari. 343 U.S. 903.
Affirmed., p.
344 U. S.
570.
MR. JUSTICE REED delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by the
State of Pennsylvania. The crime was committed in January, 1948.
Petitioner was without counsel when he appeared for arraignment on
February 25, 1948. The presiding judge asked a lawyer present in
the courtroom to advise petitioner how to plead. This lawyer, who
knew nothing about petitioner, advised him to enter a plea of "not
guilty." On September 21, 1948, after several continuances, the
District Attorney, together
Page 344 U. S. 563
with petitioner's state-named counsel, who had been appointed
after arraignment, and a judge of the sentencing court, agreed that
a plea of "guilty" would be substituted for the earlier plea of
"not guilty." This was done so that the State could present its
evidence that the crime was first degree murder, and petitioner's
counsel would then have additional time in which to procure
out-of-state evidence at State expense to support the contention
that petitioner was insane. The State put in its evidence on
September 21, 1948. At hearings held on October 28, 1948, and
November 5, 1948, defense counsel introduced evidence tending to
show that petitioner was insane. The sentencing court was not
satisfied by the evidence that petitioner had been insane either at
the time of the murder or at any time thereafter, and, on February
4, 1949, sentenced him to death.
While the docket entries as shown in the trial record differ
from the notes on the indictment as to whether the sentencing court
found petitioner guilty of first degree murder on September 21,
1948, or did not so find until February 4, 1949, the difference is
immaterial. According to the entries written in longhand on
petitioner's indictment, 192 F.2d at 569, the entry noting the
adjudication of guilty of murder in the first degree on February 4,
1949, is not in proper order. It appears to have been inserted
between the entry stating that petitioner had withdrawn his plea of
not guilty and entered a plea of guilty on September 21, 1948, and
the entry of November 5, 1948, stating that "additional testimony
[had been] heard and held under advisement." If the contested and
out-of-order date of "2/4/49" is removed, the notes on the
indictment would agree with the docket entry of September 21, 1948,
and would read,
"[A]fter hearing testimony both for the Commonwealth and the
defendant . . . , the defendant is adjudged guilty of murder in the
first
Page 344 U. S. 564
degree. [
Footnote 1]"
Since the entry of September 21, 1948, was made following a plea
of guilty and with opportunity for further evidence as to insanity,
it was not in any way binding or even persuasive. It was the
sentence on February 4, 1949, after the insanity hearing, that was
the final adjudication.
An appeal was taken from this judgment on a full record to the
State Supreme Court, where it was asserted that it was an abuse of
discretion by the sentencing court to have imposed the death
sentence in the circumstances of the case. The conviction was
affirmed. 362 Pa. 222, 66 A.2d 764. No effort was made to secure
from this Court a writ of certiorari to review that affirmance.
Petitioner thereafter filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus
in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania. The petition was denied on the ground that petitioner
was not within the jurisdiction of the court at the time the
proceeding was instituted. On appeal, the denial was affirmed by
the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. 181 F.2d 847. No
petition for certiorari to review that decision was filed with this
Court. A petition for habeas corpus was then filed in the State
Supreme Court. This was entertained on the merits and denied on the
ground that there was no denial of due process of law, and
there
"was nothing in this record which convinces us that this relator
was insane when he committed the murder charged or when he pleaded
guilty or at the time
Page 344 U. S. 565
he was sentenced to death."
364 Pa. 93 at 119, 71 A.2d 107 at 120. Immediately following our
denial of a timely petition for certiorari, 340 U.S. 812,
petitioner filed a second application for a writ of habeas corpus
in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania. The District Court dismissed the petition, noting
that all the issues presented in the petition had been before the
State Supreme Court.
96 F.
Supp. 100, 105. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit affirmed. 192 F.2d 540. We granted certiorari, 343 U.S.
903. The petitions involved in the State habeas corpus proceedings
presented the identical due process questions which are before us
now, and the complete record of the State trial proceedings --
appellate as well as those in State habeas corpus -- were before
the District Court and the Court of Appeals.
The first point we consider is the question of the effect to be
given our denial of certiorari in a habeas corpus case. Both the
District Court (
96 F.
Supp. 100, 105) and the Court of Appeals (192 F.2d 540, 544)
concluded that the denial of certiorari in habeas corpus cases
means nothing except that certiorari was denied. As the effect of a
denial of certiorari was then in doubt, we granted this petition
primarily to determine its effect. As this conclusion is spelled
out more fully in the opinions in
Brown v. Allen,
344 U. S. 443,
decided today, the answer is short. Our denial of certiorari in
habeas corpus cases is without substantive significance.
The next contention of petitioner is that he was denied due
process. In substance, this issue presents questions as to (1)
whether the State should have allowed him to plead guilty without
having first formally adjudicated the question of his mental
competency, and (2) whether it should have permitted him to plead
at all to a capital offense without affording him the technical
services of a psychiatrist.
Page 344 U. S. 566
Petitioner had been committed to an institution for mental
patients in New York three years prior to the commission of the
crime with which he is charged. At the New York institution, his
disease was diagnosed as dementia praecox. After four months, he
was discharged as recovered. Later, he voluntarily committed
himself to the Philadelphia General Hospital for fear that he might
harm someone. Ten days later, he was released because there was "no
evidence of [his] having any psychosis." These facts were presented
to the trial court prior to sentencing on February 4, 1949.
In contending that Pennsylvania denied him due process by
convicting him of murder on his plea of guilty without an
adjudication or evidence as to his sanity, petitioner points to
language used by the State Supreme Court indicating, in his view, a
holding of sanity based on the plea of guilty, instead of on
evidence. There, that court stated that the plea of guilty was an
admission of sanity, and that the evidence of petitioner's mental
condition taken by the trial court after the plea of guilty went to
the question of the appropriate penalty. [
Footnote 2] The complete answer to petitioner's
contentions, however, is found in the succeeding paragraph, where
the court said:
"If the evidence taken as to the defendant's mental condition
for the purpose of enabling the court to assess the proper
punishment, raised a substantial doubt as to Smith's sanity, it
would have been the duty of his counsel to have moved to withdraw
the
Page 344 U. S. 567
plea of guilty so that a plea of 'not guilty because of
insanity' could be entered. If the trial court had denied this
motion, the defendant could have taken an exception, and, on
appeal, this court would have decided whether or not the court in
denying the motion had abused its discretion."
364 Pa. 93 at 113, 71 A.2d 107 at 117.
Petitioner furthermore maintains that the sentence imposed
violates due process because he was advised to plead "not guilty"
at arraignment on the snap advice of a court-designated lawyer who
had never before laid eyes on petitioner. As a consequence of this
off-hand plea of not guilty, petitioner contends he lost his only
chance to require that his mental competency be tried at the outset
by a jury. [
Footnote 3]
Assuming that such a chance was in fact lost, it does not follow
that due process was denied. As pointed out above, the Pennsylvania
Supreme Court emphasized that, even after changing his plea to
"guilty" on the advice of counsel familiar with this case, there
was still adequate
Page 344 U. S. 568
opportunity to withdraw the second plea and substitute a plea of
"not guilty because of insanity" had petitioner's counsel
entertained any doubt of his client's mental competency. 364 Pa. at
113, 71 A.2d at 117. When Pennsylvania furnished petitioner counsel
for his arraignment, we cannot say his error in advising a "not
guilty" plea made all future proceedings unconstitutional when
there was ample opportunity to rectify the error, if any there was,
by a hearing on insanity. A claim of denial of due process can
hardly be predicated upon the failure of a defense move.
This brings us to petitioner's second point: that the assistance
of a psychiatrist was necessary to afford him adequate counsel. The
record of the trial court proceedings reveals that, on November 5,
1948, a psychiatrist who had examined petitioner at the court's
request testified as to petitioner's sanity at the time of the
trial and at the time of the commission of the crime. In addition,
on October, 28, 1948, two other psychiatrists were called by the
defense to testify as to petitioner's mental competence. On the
same day, petitioner's counsel also introduced various reports and
letters dealing with his client's mental history. On this evidence,
the court determined his sanity. Petitioner further asserts that he
should have been given technical pretrial assistance by the State.
Although the trial judge testified that defense counsel made no
such request, petitioner here states that the trial court refused
to appoint a psychiatrist to make a pretrial examination. We cannot
say that the State has that duty by constitutional mandate.
See
McGarty v. O'Brien, 188 F.2d 151, 155. As we have shown, the
issue of petitioner's sanity was heard by the trial court.
Psychiatrists testified. That suffices.
Petitioner's argument that an insane man may not be executed
proceeds on the assumption that he has been found to be insane. The
law of Pennsylvania, as announced
Page 344 U. S. 569
by the Supreme Court of the State, provides full protection
against the execution of the insane.
"It is a principle imbedded in the common law -- and we
administer the common law in Pennsylvania -- that no insane person
can be tried, sentenced or executed."
"
* * * *"
"A prisoner convicted of murder and under sentence of death is
(like the relator in the instant case) still in
the hands of
the law, and, in a proper case, the judiciary of the State can
intervene by appropriate means to save an insane prisoner from
execution. The judiciary has this power both under the statutes and
under the common law."
Commonwealth ex rel. Smith v. Ashe, 364 Pa. 93,
116-119, 71 A.2d 107, 118.
See Phyle v. Duffy,
334 U. S. 431, and
Solesbee v. Balkcom, 339 U. S. 9.
Petitioner's final point is that the United States District
Court committed error in refusing to hold a plenary hearing for
determination of his sanity. This is refuted by
Brown v.
Allen, 344 U. S. 443, at
344 U. S.
460-465.
In denying the first petition, the District Court received
evidence from judges of the State trial panel, defense and
prosecution counsel, and others as to whether a fair hearing on
petitioner's sanity had been accorded him by the State. In denying
the second petition for habeas corpus, the District Court held that
not
"unless special circumstances prevail should the lowest federal
court reverse the highest state court in cases where the
constitutional issues have been disposed on the merits by the
highest state court in an opinion specifically setting forth its
reasons that there has been no denial of due process of law, and
where the record before the state court and the allegations in the
petition for the writ before
Page 344 U. S. 570
the federal court fail to disclose that the state, in its
prosecution, departed from constitutional requirements. That is
this case."
United States ex rel. Smith v. Baldi, 96 F.
Supp. 100 at 103.
This view of the proceedings accords with our holding in the
Brown case,
supra. As the trial and appellate
State court records which were before the District Court show a
judicial hearing where, on the plea of guilty, the question of
sanity at the time of the commission of the crime was canvassed,
the sentence does not violate due process.
Affirmed.
[
Footnote 1]
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania stated that
petitioner had been adjudged guilty of murder in the first degree
on the former date, September 21, 1948.
Commonwealth v.
Smith, 362 Pa. 222 at 223, 66 A.2d 764. In its opinion denying
the subsequent petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the
Pennsylvania court held that "[w]hether this judgment was entered
on September 21, 1948, or on February 4, 1949, is unimportant in
these proceedings."
Commonwealth ex rel. Smith v. Ashe,
364 Pa. 93 at 112, 71 A.2d 107 at 116.
[
Footnote 2]
"When counsel for the relator entered a plea of guilty to the
indictment, that plea admitted to prisoner's sanity, because no
insane person can be guilty of murder. The testimony relating to
Smith's mental condition, taken after the plea had been entered,
was for the purpose of providing the court with data which it could
use in determining the appropriate penalty to be imposed upon the
defendant."
364 Pa. 93 at 112, 71 A.2d 107 at 117.
[
Footnote 3]
Pennsylvania law provides that counsel may ask for a special
trial to test his client's sanity at arraignment.
"The same [lunacy commitment] proceedings may be had if any
person indicted for an offense shall, upon arraignment, be found to
be a lunatic by a jury lawfully impaneled for the purpose or if,
upon the trial of any person so indicted, such person shall appear
to the jury charged with such indictment to be a lunatic, the court
shall direct such findings to be recorded, and may proceed as
aforesaid."
19 Purdon's Pa.Stat.Ann. ยง 1352. Whether such a jury trial at
the outset will be granted depends on the discretion of the trial
judge. He may defer the inquest and allow the question to be
decided by the jury trying the indictment.
Webber v.
Commonwealth, 119 Pa. 223, 13 A. 427;
Commonwealth v.
Scovern, 292 Pa. 26, 140 A. 611;
Commonwealth v.
Cilione, 293 Pa. 208, 142 A. 216;
Commonwealth v.
Iacobino, 319 Pa. 65, 178 A. 823.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, whom MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE
DOUGLAS join, dissenting.
*
Ever since our ancestral common law emerged out of the darkness
of its early barbaric days, it has been a postulate of Western
civilization that the taking of life by the hand of an insane
person is not murder. But the nature and operation of the mind are
so elusive to the grasp of the understanding that the basis for
formulating standards of criminal responsibility and the means for
determining whether those standards are satisfied in a particular
case have greatly troubled law and medicine for more than a
century.
See Glueck, Mental Disorder and The Criminal Law
(1925); Abrahamsen, Crime and The Human Mind (1944); Overholser,
The Psychiatrist and the Law (to be published in April, 1953, by
Harcourt Brace & Co.) (particularly Chapter II). To this day,
conflict and controversy regarding these problems bedevil the
administration of criminal justice.
See, e.g., Fisher v. United
States, 328 U. S. 463. The
deep concern engendered in England just the other day by the case
of John Thomas Straffen strikingly disclosed
Page 344 U. S. 571
the unsatisfactory state of the law.
See The
Times, July 22, 1952, p. 3; July 23, 1952, p. 4; July 24,
1952, p. 3; July 25, 1952, p. 3; July 26, 1952, p. 7; August 30,
1952, pp. 2, 5; September 1, 1952, p. 5; September 4, 1952, p. 5;
September 12, 1952, p. 7;
The Economist, August 30, 1952,
p. 494, and
The Lancet, August 2, 1952, p. 239.
(Especially comments subsequent to the action of the Home
Secretary, which followed dismissal of Straffen's appeal by the
Court of Criminal Appeal in
Regina v. Straffen [1952] 2
Q.B. 911.)
The law of Pennsylvania in the abstract on this controversial
subject is clear and unassailable.
"It is a principle embedded in the common law -- and we
administer the common law in Pennsylvania -- that no insane person
can be tried, sentenced or executed."
Commonwealth ex rel. Smith v. Ashe, 364 Pa. 93, 116, 71
A.2d 107, 118. In view of the fallibilities of human judgment
regarding the same body of evidence, it is inevitable that one may
be doubtful, and even more than doubtful, whether, in a particular
case, a plea of insanity was properly rejected. It is not for this
Court to find a want of due process in a conviction for murder
sustained by the highest court of the State merely because a
finding that the defendant is sane may raise the gravest doubts.
But it is our duty under the Fourteenth Amendment to scrutinize the
procedure by which the plea of insanity failed, and defendant's
life became forfeit. A denial of adequate opportunity to sustain
the plea of insanity is a denial of the safeguard of due process in
its historical procedural sense which is within the
incontrovertible scope of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
One has only to read the opinions both of the four Judges who
constituted the majority of the Court of Appeals and of the three
dissenters to appreciate the tangled skein of procedural
complexities in which the defendant in this case was hopelessly
caught. 192 F.2d
Page 344 U. S. 572
540. And I cannot read the opinion of Chief Judge Biggs,
id. at 549, without being left with such an unrelievable
feeling of disquietude as amounts to a conviction that the accused
in this case was deprived of a fair opportunity to establish his
insanity. And this not the less so because the deprivation resulted
from the tangled web that was woven for the defendant, even if
unwittingly, by the courts of Pennsylvania.
But I am of the view that there is another reason which, in
itself, is for me conclusive, why this Court should not affirm the
judgment below. It is that a new decisive factor, which was
introduced for the first time here, requires reconsideration of the
disposition below. After the case left the Court of Appeals, it
came to the knowledge of petitioner's counsel that the
court-appointed expert, the professional witness on the issue of
insanity on whose testimony the Pennsylvania courts relied, had
himself been committed, as of January 12, 1952, because of an
incurable mental disease which had deprived him of "any judgment or
insight." This fact was brought to the notice of this Court in an
affidavit not challenged by the respondent, which also averred that
"this intellectual deterioration was evidenced even on a clinical
level in January, 1951." The expert's report on Smith's sanity was
made to the sentencing court on November 5, 1948. His disability
was not known either to the District Court or the Court of Appeals
in February and October, 1951, when they respectively ruled against
the petitioner. Even uninformed judges may know that this kind of
mental illness does not set in overnight, but is the culmination of
a long process. Indeed, the medical history, sketchy as it is,
revealed by the affidavit filed here demonstrates the gradual
manner in which the mental illness in question developed. The
extent to which this affidavit vitiates the worth of the expert
testimony taken by the sentencing court should not be made a
matter
Page 344 U. S. 573
of judicial notice. But to allow the victim of this testimony,
which, in any event, has been brought into doubt, to go to his
death without an opportunity for reassessment, by either State or
federal court, of the basis for the rejection of his plea of
insanity would constitute a denial of due process no less gross
than if the sentence had been imposed without any hearing at all on
the issue of sanity.
I need hardly point out that, in a court of equity, causes are
disposed of on the facts as they appear at the time of the
disposition, and that habeas corpus is certainly to be governed by
the rules of fairness enforced in equity. The cause should
therefore be remanded to the District Court for disposition of the
new matter revealed in the affidavit filed here.
The Court does not reach this issue. Therefore I do not now
decide whether this evidence raises a new ground which must first,
under principles of exhaustion, be presented in the State courts,
or whether the federal court may properly view it simply as new
evidence bearing on a claim already exhausted -- that the
determination of sanity was inadequate.
* [
See also opinion of MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER in
Brown v. Allen, ante, p.
344 U. S. 488,
which also applies to this case.]