Abbit v. BernierAbbit v. Bernier
- Reporters:
- ,
- Before:
- Smith
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
J. JOSEPH SMITH, Circuit Judge:
Fred Abbit, a judgment debtor against whose body a writ of execution has issued, seeks to enjoin the enforcement of Connecticut’s body execution statute,
Since the suit is brought under
For the reasons set forth below, we find that the defendants’ enforcement of
I. The Statute
If personal estate of the debtor sufficient to satisfy the debt and charges cannot be found, and the creditor does not agree to take the debtor’s lands, the officer shall levy the execution on the body of the debtor, unless exempt by law from imprisonment on such execution, and commit him to jail in the county in which the execution is being levied, where he shall remain until he pays the debt and the lawful fees and charges, or is discharged in due course of law. Each officer who commits any person to prison by virtue of distress or execution shall deliver an attested copy of the writ or execution to the commissioner of correction, or his authorized agent, which shall be a sufficient warrant to him to hold such person in safe custody until he is delivered in due course of law. If the debtor, after such levy of execution upon his body, is discharged or released from such imprisonment, or released by the officer serving the execution, by direction of the creditor, he shall not be liable to imprisonment again on the judgment upon which *60 such execution issued, but the same may be collected out of his property.
Although this provision embraces all judgment debtors by its language,
Since Abbit’s indebtedness derives from his unsuccessful defense of a
tort
claim, he is not protected by
Very simply, then,
II. Constitutional Validity
The plaintiff levels four independent constitutional attacks on the Connecticut body execution statute: arrest and incarceration without representation by appointed counsel infringes Abbit’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel; body execution of a person because of his indigence amounts to a punishment for status violative of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment; arrest and incarceration without notice and hearing constitutes a denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment; and imprisonment of persons without the means to prevent their incarceration deprives those persons of their Fourteenth Amendment right to the equal protection of the laws. Since we find the latter ground dispositive, we do not pass on the plaintiff’s other contentions. 7
*61 The force of the plaintiff’s equal protection claim rests squarely on the principle informing the Supreme Court’s decisions in Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235, 90 S.Ct. 2018, 26 L.Ed.2d 586 (1970), and Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395, 91 S.Ct. 668, 28 L.Ed.2d 130 (1971). Both cases involved the constitutionality of keeping a person in prison beyond the maximum term set by statute for the particular offense in order to compensate for his inability to pay a fine included in his sentence. On the two occasions, the Court held that this difference in time served according to “ability to pay” constituted an “impermissible discrimination” violative of the Equal Protection Clause, Williams, supra, 399 U.S. 235 at 241, 90 S.Ct. 2018, 26 L.Ed.2d 586. The Court in Williams did take care to limit its holding to instances involving prison terms in excess of a statutory ceiling. Lower courts have, however — and we believe quite rightly — read these eases for their broader implication: that imprisoning someone “solely because of his indigency,” Tate, supra, 401 U.S. 395 at 398, 91 S.Ct. 668, 28 L.Ed.2d 130, works a denial of equal protection. Thus, the Second Circuit has relied upon Tate and Williams to require that persons forced to spend time in jail due to their inability to meet bail be given credit against their sentence for this time served which one wealthier would have been able to avoid. Paroutian v. United States, 471 F.2d 289 (2d Cir. 1972); United States v. Gaines, 449 F.2d 143 (2d Cir. 1971) (per curiam). And the Fifth Circuit has invoked the Tate-Williams doctrine to strike down the “|30 or 30 days” type sentence. 8 Frazier v. Jordan, 457 F.2d 726 (5th Cir. 1972); Burton v. Goodlett, 480 F.2d 983 (5th Cir. 1973).
Under
We therefore enjoin the application of
III. Due Process Requirements for Reformulation
The denial of equal protection which we find inherent in
*63
Insofar as the ingredients of the process due the judgment debtor in a hearing to determine ability to pay (see note 12) may require further specificity or supplementation, the court will deal with such matters in the event that a new body execution statute in fact comes before it. In the case before us, we strike down Connecticut’s existing body execution law,
So ordered.
Notes
.
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.
§ 1343 . Civil rights and elective franchise The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action authorized by law to be commenced by any person :
(3) To redress the deprivation, under color of any State law, statute, ordinance, *59 regulation, custom or usage, of any right, privilege or immunity secured by the Constitution of the United States or by any Act of Congress providing for equal rights of citizens or of all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States ;
. The defendants are Conrad Bernier, deputy sheriff of AVmdham County, David Derosier, high sheriff of Windham County, and John Harris, commissioner of the Superior Court. The suit was instituted as a class action, but since Abbit can point to no one similarly situated, the elements needed to satisfy Fed.R. Oiv.P. 23 are plainly lacking. Our award of declaratory relief, however, see infra, in effect substitutes for an affirmative class action ruling.
. Presumably a proceeding under
. Also exempt are persons in debt for judgments rendered in actions for money received by a fiduciary and in suits to recover costs assessed in a summary process action.
. A comprehensive listing of current (to 1971) state body execution laws, constitutional and statutory, may be found in Note, Imprisonment for Debt: In the Military Tradition, 80 Yale L.J. 1679, 1679 n. 1 (1971). (Under 28 U.S.O. § 2007, a federal district court follows the body execution law of the state in which it is sitting.) An attempt to categorize state body execution laws in terms of the scope of the prohibition against imprisonment for debt was previously made in Note, Present Status of Execution against the Body of the Judgment Debtor, 42 Iowa L.Rev. 306, 307-08 (1957). See generally, Freedman, Imprisonment for Debt, 2 Temple L.Q. 330 (1928); Ford, Imprisonment for Debt, 25 Mich.L.Rev. 24 (1926) ; Comment, 37 Colum.L.Rev. 1216 (1937).
. See statutes cited in Note, supra, 42 Iowa L.Rev. 306 at 307-08. Cf., Eikenberry & Co. v. Edwards, 67 Iowa 619, 25 N.W. 832 (1885).
. As the textual discussion below indicates, the alleged due process deficiency is the driving force of the equal protection ground upon which we base our decision. On the dubiousness of the Sixth-Fourteenth Amendment claim, see n. 12 infra. For the reasons set forth immediately below, we are also skeptical of the Eighth-Fourteenth Amendment contention.
Basically, the plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment claim is an attempt to fit the same argument made for equal protection under a “cruel and unusual punishment” rubric. The *61 tack adopted departs from the traditional understanding of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. First of all, the “punishment” at which the Eighth Amendment is directed is widely understood to be “a penalty inflicted by a judicial tribunal in accordance with law in retribution for criminal conduct.” Negrich v. Holm, 246 F. Supp. 173, 176 (W.D.Pa.1965), aff’d, 379 F. 2d 213 (3d Cir. 1967) (emphasis added). See also, Zwick v. Freeman, 373 F.2d 110, 119 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 835, 88 S.Ct. 43, 19 L.Ed.2d 96 (1967); In re Walsh, 64 Misc.2d 293, 315 N.Y.S.2d 59, 61 (Westchester Cty. Fam. Ct. 1970). Although body execution of an indigent may be characterized as “punishment” for certain purposes, then, it is punishment not for the commission of a crime but, instead, for the failure to make good a civil judgment debt.
Even assuming, however, that this obstacle might be by-passed as formal or semantic, it is improbable that body execution qualifies as “cruel and unusual.” In his amended complaint, the plaintiff argues that body execution of an indigent violates the Eighth Amendment because it is punishment for “a condition beyond the control of the individual.” The plaintiff’s reliance on Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 82 S.Ct. 1417, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962), is implicit. In Robinson the Court invalidated a California law making (under the majority’s construction) narcotics addition, without more, a criminal offense. The plaintiff reads Robinson for the proposition that a person may not be punished for an act which he could not help from doing. This extension of Robinson, however, lias already been foreclosed by the Court in Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514, 88 S.Ct. 2145, 20 L.Ed.2d 1254 (1968). Both Justice Marshall’s plurality opinion, id. at 533, 88 S.Ct. 2145, and Justice Fortas’ dissent, id. at 559 & n. 2, 88 S.Ct. 2145, each joined by four members of tiie Court, disclaimed tiie applicability of Robinson where acts are involved. Accordingly, although Ab-bit, as an indigent, could not help but not pay his judgment debt, Robinson offers him no relief: Tiie statute punishes him for his act of omission (not paying) and not, tire obvious causal nexus notwithstanding, for being indigent.
. The Williams Court specifically declined to reach this question. Williams, supra, 399 U.S. 235 at 243, 90 S.Ct. 2018, 26 L.Ed.2d 586. One member of the Court lias since intimated that the doctrine of Tate and Williams controls in the manner suggested in the above Fifth Circuit cases :
Tiie type of penalty discussed above (involving the discretionary alternative of “jail or fine”) presents serious problems of fairness — both to indigents and nonindigents and to the administration of justice. Cf. Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395, 91 S.Ct. 668, 28 L.Ed.2d 130 (1971).
Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25, 55 n. 17, 92 S.Ct. 2006, 2021, 32 L.Ed.2d 1530 (1972) (Powell, J., concurring).
. We reject the state’s suggestion that any requirement for a pre-incarceration hearing would be superfluous because the judgment debtor already has the option of seeking to enjoin the statute’s application to him. Brief of Amicus Curiae at 5-6. As our discussion in n. 12 infra should make clear, the constitutionally requisite hearing and that procurable by a bill for injunctive relief are hardly fungible.
.
(a) Any person who neglects or refuses to furnish reasonably necessary support to his wife, child under the age of eighteen ‘or parent under the age of sixty-five shall be deemed guilty of nonsupport and shall be imprisoned not more than one year, unless he shows to the court before which the trial is had that, owing to physical incapacity or other good cause, he is unable to furnish such support. . . .
. If tlie debtor in fact lias property outside the state but did not fraudulently convey it there, the creditor must go to the foreign jurisdiction and sue on his judgment there. Compare, Eikenberry & Co. v. Edwards, 67 Iowa 619, 25 N.W. 832 (1885) with James v. Powell, 19 N.Y.2d 249, 257, 279 N.Y.S.2d 10, 15, 225 N.E.2d 741, 745 (1967). See also, Harris v. Balk, 198 U.S. 215, 222, 25 S.Ct. 625, 49 L.Ed. 1023 (1905).
. In deciding whether or not to draft a successor to
The extent to which procedural due process must be afforded the recipient [of welfare] is influenced by the extent to which he may *63 be “condemned to suffer grievous loss,” Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 168, 71 S.Ct. 624, 647, 95 L.Ed. 817 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring), and depends upon whether the recipient’s interest in avoiding that loss outweighs the governmental interest in summary adjudication.
397 U.S. 254, 262-263, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 1017, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970).
Attention must be directed, therefore, to the seriousness of the deprivation visited on the individual affected by the operation of
Another due process guarantee triggered by the threatened deprivation of freedom under a renovated