ROY SYLVESTER PARROTT, Appellant v. GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS
No. 99-3688
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
October 13, 2000
Before: SLOVITER, ROTH and STAPLETON, Circuit Judges
Precedential or Non-Precedential: Docket 99-3688. Argued: April 13, 2000. Appeal from the District Court of the Virgin Islands (Division of St. Thomas and St. John) D.C. Civil Action No. 98-cv-00152. District Judge: Honorable Thomas K. Moore. District Judge: Honorable Raymond L. Finch. Territorial Judge: Edgar D. Ross
2000 Decisions Opinions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit 10-13-2000 Parrott v. Govt of VI Precedential or Non-Precedential: Docket 99-3688 Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/thirdcircuit_2000 This decision is brought to you for free and open access by the Opinions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit at Villanova University School of Law Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in 2000 Decisions by an authorized administrator of Villanova University School of Law Digital Repository. For more information, please contact Benjamin.Carlson@law.villanova.edu. Recommended Citation “Parrott v. Govt of VI” (2000). 2000 Decisions. Paper 218. http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/thirdcircuit_2000/218
Filed October 13, 2000
Iver A. Stridiron Attorney General Frederick Handleman Solicitor General Maureen P. Cormier (Argued) Assistant Attorney General Department of Justice 48B-50 Kronprindsens Gade GERs Bldg., 2nd Floor Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas USVI, 00802 Attorneys for Appellee
OPINION OF THE COURT
ROTH, Circuit Judge:
Roy Parrott is currently serving a life sentence for a 1976 murder conviction, based on a violation of Virgin Islands territorial law. He is appealing the dismissal by the District Court of the Virgin Islands of his petition for collateral relief under the Virgin Islands habeas statute,
I. Factual and Procedural Background
Twenty-four years ago, the District Court of the Virgin Islands, sitting as a local court of general jurisdiction, convicted Parrott of first degree murder and of possession of an unlicenced firearm and sentenced him to life in prison without possibility of parole. Both crimes were violations solely of the Virgin Islands local criminal code. Parrott twice challenged his conviction by direct appeal to this Court but was ultimately unsuccessful. On his first appeal, we remanded Parrott‘s case to the District Court for a new trial. See Government of Virgin Islands v. Parrott, 551 F.2d 553 (3d Cir. 1977) (remanding for concerns about jury impartiality). The second trial ended with a hung jury. A third trial was held, and at its conclusion the jury found Parrott guilty of both crimes. The District Court reimposed a life sentence without parole. Parrott appealed the conviction. This time, we found no error and affirmed.
Parrott then twice petitioned the District Court for collateral relief under the federal habeas statute,
In July 1998, Parrott made a third attempt to obtain habeas relief, this time from the Territorial Court under the local Virgin Islands habeas statute. See
Parrott appealed the dismissal to the District Court Appellate Division, which reviewed the matter in its capacity as a local appellate court. Although the District Court affirmed the dismissal, it relied on other grounds to do so. The District Court recognized that, as a result of the 1984 amendments to Revised Organic Act and the subsequent expansion of the Territorial Court‘s jurisdiction, the District Court had been divested of original jurisdiction over questions of purely local civil law, including habeas petitions. The District Court concluded, however, that this divestiture did not extend to all local habeas petitions and that the Territorial Court‘s jurisdiction for local habeas petitions extended only to prisoners that it had sentenced. Prisoners sentenced under territorial law by the District Court, in contrast, still had to submit their
The District Court emphasized that, because the 1984 amendments reconfigured its relationship with the Territorial Court to mirror the relationship between federal and state courts, the Territorial Court could not review a decision originally made by the now “federalized” District Court in its former territorial capacity. Unless the District Court retained jurisdiction over petitions for
The District Court had jurisdiction as an appellate court under both local law,
A. Divestiture of District Court‘s Concurrent Jurisdiction Over Local Civil Actions
Parrott‘s effort to obtain collateral relief before the Territorial Court under the local habeas statute requires us once again to clarify the scope of the jurisdictional changes brought about by Congress‘s 1984 amendments to the Revised Organic Act. See
With the 1984 amendments, Congress established the framework for a dual system of local and federal judicial review in the Virgin Islands. By virtue of these amendments, the District Court now possesses the jurisdiction of a “District Court of the United States.” 48U.S.C. S 1612(a).4 After the 1984 amendments, the District Court continued to possess its statutorily granted local jurisdiction. The Virgin Islands Legislature was now able, however, to divest the District Court of original jurisdiction for local matters by vesting that jurisdiction in territorial courts established by local law for all causes for which “any court established by the Constitution and laws of the United States does not have exclusive jurisdiction.”
To the extent that that divestiture power is exercised by the legislature, the District Court loses jurisdiction to the Territorial Court over local matters.5 See
The purpose of section 22(b) [48 U.S.C. S 1612(b)] is to eliminate the present situation of both the district court and the local court having jurisdiction over strictly local causes. Upon the effective date, the district court will not [sic] longer have jurisdiction over any cause over which local law has vested jurisdiction in the local courts. The decision as to whether jurisdiction over strictly local causes should be vested in the district courts or the local courts will be made by local law. At any time, . . . by vesting jurisdiction in the localcourts, the local law will have the effect of divesting the district court of jurisdiction.
103 Cong. Rec. S10527 (daily ed. Aug. 10, 1984) (statement by Sen. Weicker) (emphasis added).
The relations between the courts established by the Constitution or laws of the United States and the courts established by local law with respect to . . . the issuance of writs of habeas corpus . . . shall be governed by the laws of the United States pertaining to the relations between the courts of the United States, including the Supreme Court of the United States, and the courts of the several States in such matters and proceedings.
The Territorial Legislature took the first steps toward eliminating concurrent jurisdiction in 1991 when it divested the District Court of original jurisdiction over purely local civil matters. See
has vested jurisdiction over local civil actions in the Territorial Court. See Brow, 994 F.2d at 1035-36 (recognizing implicit repeal in
Because habeas proceedings are generally considered civil in nature, see Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U.S. 770, 776 (1987), the term “civil action” includes habeas petitions.7 Thus, S 76(a)‘s implied repeal of the District Court‘s jurisdiction for local civil actions governs our interpretation of the grant of jurisdiction in S 1303.
The situation here is complicated, however, by the fact that, despite S 76(a)‘s grant of jurisdiction in local actions to the Territorial Court, the Virgin Islands code continues to provide that “[t]he writ of habeas corpus may be granted by the district court, upon petition by or on behalf of any person restrained of his liberty.”
1998) (construing same for
We note that when the District Court tried Parrott‘s case, it did so as a local court acting under its then general jurisdiction, which authorized it to serve the dual functions of local territorial and federal court. The District Court no longer fulfills these twin roles. Nevertheless, this former duality of function does not prevent us from finding that the elimination of the District Court‘s territorial function impliedly repealed its territorial habeas function.
In sum, because S 76(a) operates to divest the District Court of jurisdiction for all civil actions, including habeas proceedings, we hold that the correct forum for Parrott‘s habeas petition under
B. Unified Sovereign Authority Under Article IV, S 3
In analyzing whether the Territorial Court had jurisdiction for petitions brought under the Virgin Islands habeas statute, the District Court gave priority to the institutional separation between the two courts that S 1613 of the Revised Organic Act requires, rather than to the jurisdictional separation required by the Revised Organic Act‘s S 1612. This priority, however, is mistaken. Because both the Territorial Court and the District Court derive their power from the same sovereign, i.e., the U.S. Congress, the institutional separation is administrative
rather than constitutional. Consequently, this separation does not prevent the Territorial Court from reviewing prior decisions made by the District Court in cases in which the District Court sat as a local court.
Because the separation is administrative rather than constitutional, when the jurisdiction of these courts is changed, as was accomplished by S 1612, there is no bar to the Territorial Court exercising its revised jurisdiction to review a judgment of the District Court made under territorial law. The jurisdictional separation discussed above indeed requires that the divesting of the District Court of its jurisdiction for local civil actions also strips it of jurisdiction for local habeas petitions from territorial prisoners like Parrott, even though the District Court sentenced those prisoners.
Under our earlier reasoning in Brow and Moravian Sch. Advisory Bd., the Territorial Court possesses jurisdiction over local habeas provisions from prisoners it tried and sentenced. See Walker, slip opinion at 3-4 (3d Cir. Oct. 13, 2000) (citing Callwood v. Enos, slip opinion at 9 (3d Cir. Oct. 13, 2000)); Parrott, 56 F. Supp. 2d at 596 n.10. The District Court, nevertheless, concluded that our decision in Joseph v. DeCastro, 805 F. Supp. 1242 (D.V.I. 1992), aff‘d, 995 F.2d 217 (3d Cir. 1993) (affirming without opinion), and the newly established “federal-state” relationship between the two courts, which the Revised Organic Act‘s S 1613 codified, prevented the Territorial Court from reviewing the District Court‘s earlier convictions. Were it to relinquish
First, the decision in Joseph, which concluded that the District Court is the more appropriate forum for review of local habeas petitions, can be distinguished because at the time Joseph was decided, the District Court retained original jurisdiction over many local criminal actions. Moreover, the court in Joseph recognized that its conclusion would change at such time as jurisdiction over local crimes was vested in the local judicial system. Joseph, 805 F. Supp. at 1252. As of 1994, however, when the Virgin Islands Legislature vested jurisdiction for all local crimes with the Territorial Court, that jurisdictional obstacle was removed. See
Court criminal convictions decided after 1994. The Territorial Court can only exercise habeas review of cases in which it is the successor court to the District Court of the District Court‘s now-terminated territorial jurisdiction.10
The District Court was reluctant to construe the Territorial Court‘s habeas jurisdiction to parallel our reasoning in Brow and Moravian Sch. Advisory Bd. because it wished to avoid having the Territorial Court review the decision of a “federal” court. This purported federalism concern is, however, a red herring: The restructuring of the relationship between the District Court and the Territorial Court in SS 1612 and 1613 of the Revised Organic Act requires the opposite conclusion.
The District Court‘s power originates under Article IV, S 3, which authorizes
As a result, the District Court does not derive its jurisdiction, as do other federal courts, from Article III. See United States v. George, 625 F.2d 1081, 1088-89 (3d Cir. 1980).11 Nor has the District Court previously been treated
as “a court of the United States” or, as we say more commonly, as an Article III court. See generally United States v. Kennings, 861 F.2d 381 (3d Cir. 1988). In Kennings, we applied the federal anti-bribery statute to proceedings in the District Court of the Virgin Islands because the statute covered the solicitation of bribes before “any court,” not just to bribery attempts by witnesses appearing before courts “of the United States.” Id. at 388-89. Indeed, the District Court continues, even after the 1984 amendments, to classify itself as territorial, rather than federal, in a constitutional sense. See 35 Acres Assoc. v. Adams, 962 F. Supp. 687, 690 (D.V.I. 1997).
Thus, while Congress has elected, for administrative purposes, to treat the Virgin Islands as a separate sovereign, see Government of Virgin Islands v. Schneider, 893 F. Supp. 490, 495 (D.V.I. 1995), the constitutional relationship between the territories and the federal government remains unified:
[I]n a federal Territory and the Nation, as in a city and a State, “[t]here is but one system of government, or of laws operating within [its] limits.” City and State, or Territory and Nation, are not two separate sovereigns to whom the citizen owes separate allegiance in any meaningful sense, but one alone.
United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313, 321 (1978) (internal citations omitted). Moreover, “vesting a territorial court with jurisdiction similar to that vested in the District Courts of the United States does not make it a `District Court of the United States.’ ” Mookini v. United States, 303 U.S. 201, 205 (1938). See also Barnard v. Thorstenn, 489 U.S. 546, 551-52 (1989) (holding that Supreme Court lacked supervisory power over District Court of the Virgin Islands because that court was not an Article III federal district court). Before the1984 amendments, the District Court considered itself a local court, see George, 625 F.2d at 1088, so that, for the purposes of Parrott‘s trial, the District Court sat as a local court. Federalism concerns, therefore, are not implicated in matters where the District Court, in the past, reviewed questions of local law sitting as a territorial court and exercising its general jurisdiction. See Spink v. General Accident Ins. Co. of Puerto Rico, Ltd., 36 F. Supp. 2d 689, 691 n.6 (D.V.I. 1999).
Until 1994, the District Court and the Territorial Court had concurrent jurisdiction
Treating the Territorial Court as a successor court, moreover, is consistent with Congress‘s objective to eliminate the situation in which the District Court and the Territorial Court share jurisdiction over purely local matters. It also unifies in a single tribunal the review of habeas petitions initiated under territorial law for territorial law convictions. By contrast, the District Court‘s approach would bifurcate this review so that prisoners sentenced under local law by the District Court would have to submit their local law petitions to that court, while all other territorial prisoners would submit their petitions for review by the Territorial Court.
Finally, S 1613‘s administrative separation of the two courts does not implicitly deprive prisoners like Parrott of their guaranteed right to habeas relief under the Revised Organic Act‘s S 1561. No federalism concerns are implicated when the two courts share, as products of Congress‘s authority under Article IV, S 3, the same sovereign as the source of their jurisdiction. For that reason, the restrictions placed on the District Court‘s original jurisdiction by S 1612 properly limit review of local habeas petitions to the Territorial Court.
III. Conclusion
Consistent with congressional purpose, S 76(a)‘s implied repeal of the District Court‘s jurisdiction for local civil actions merely alters the forum for reviewing a local habeas petition; it does not deprive prisoners like Parrott of their guaranteed access to “the great writ.” Consequently, we will reverse the District Court‘s conclusion that it retains jurisdiction over habeas petitions under S 1303, Title 5 of the V.I. Code, if those petitions are submitted by prisoners over whose convictions the District Court presided as a local court of general jurisdiction. For the reasons stated above, we conclude that the District Court was acting as a “local court” when it sentenced Parrott. For that reason, the Territorial Court is now the proper forum for review of Parrott‘s local habeas petition. We will remand this matter to the Territorial Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.12
SLOVITER, Circuit Judge, Dissenting.
I agree with the majority‘s conclusion that following the changes to the jurisdiction of the Territorial Court and the District Court of the Virgin Islands, described in detail in Walker v. Government of the Virgin Islands (3d Cir. Oct. 13, 2000), and Callwood v. Enos (3d Cir. Oct. 13, 2000), the Territorial Court has jurisdiction under the Virgin Islands statute,
The Territorial Court has already considered Parrott‘s petition for a writ of habeas corpus under S 1303 and it denied the petition on July 17, 1998. It did not deny the petition because it believed it had no jurisdiction. Instead, it concluded that “[a] determination by the Territorial Court on the merits of this matter would not serve the ends of justice.” Parrott v. Government of the Virgin Islands, Misc. No. 58/98, slip op. at 5 (Terr. Ct. V.I. July 17, 1998). When it denied Parrott‘s petition without prejudice to his right to refile in the District Court it did not know that we would hold that the District Court had no jurisdiction under S 1303. However, nothing in the Territorial Court‘s opinion suggests that our holding would have made a difference in its denial of the petition.
The Territorial Court noted that it would create “a jurisdictional quagmire” were it to rule on decisions previously entered by the federal courts and it exercised its discretion to defer to those courts. It noted that the U.S. Attorney‘s Office for the District of the Virgin Islands, not the Office of the Attorney General of the Virgin Islands, was the prosecutorial body which had presented the case to the District Court; that the Territorial Court is not and should not act as an appellate court for the District Court; that there are unanswered procedural issues with respect to the relationship between the Territorial Court and the Office of the U.S. Attorney; and that the District Court was more
familiar than the Territorial Court with the procedural posture, record of proceedings, and arguments raised on the first two petitions and appeals. Significantly, the Territorial Court noted that in Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1, 15-16 (1963), the Supreme Court held that a successive habeas petition may be dismissed if the same ground presented in the subsequent petition was determined adversely to the petitioner on the prior petition, the prior determination was on the merits, and the ends of justice would not be served by reconsideration of the claim.
In Parrott‘s original petition for writ of habeas corpus, filed in the District Court following Parrott‘s conviction in the District Court of the territorial crimes of first degree murder and possession of an unlicensed firearm, Parrott asserted ineffective assistance of counsel, violation of his speedy trial right, and failure to give a cautionary instruction.2 The District Court denied the petition on the merits and we affirmed. Parrott‘s second petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to
Parrott‘s S 1303 petition alleges ineffective assistance of counsel (yet again), denial of his Fifth Amendment right to due process and a fair jury trial, and the inapplicability of
The Territorial Court so recognized, as it referred to the Saunders holding authorizing
served by reconsideration of the claim. It would be a needless expenditure of judicial time and effort to direct Parrott‘s third petition for collateral relief back to the Territorial Court on remand. The majority‘s bland statement that it is not commenting on the merits of Parrott‘s petition, see Maj. Op. at 15 n.12, does not, in my opinion, justify its decision.
Parrott has not only had ample opportunity to have his request for collateral relief reviewed but he took full advantage of that opportunity. I see no reason to give him a third opportunity now, some 23 years after his conviction, a conviction that was affirmed by this court on direct appeal. Because the Territorial Court‘s ruling was not a jurisdictional one and it already has set forth its views of Parrott‘s petition, I think the majority is unnecessarily playing ping pong with this case.
The majority rationalizes its decision that Parrott may now file his third petition for collateral relief in the Territorial Court under S 1303 on the theory that the District Court was acting as a Territorial Court when it was the forum for Parrott‘s trial on murder and unlawful firearm possession. Not only does that fail to justify the successive petition but it also fails to acknowledge that when the District Court denied Parrott‘s motion under
Moreover, I am concerned that footnote 4 of the majority‘s opinion unnecessarily introduces into this opinion concerned with jurisdiction under S 1303 references to
today need not consider the habeas corpus route to be taken by a defendant who is convicted in the future in the District Court in a case where that court retains concurrent jurisdiction with the Territorial Court. See
For the reasons set forth, I dissent from the decision of the majority in this case.
A True Copy: Teste:
Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Notes
Subject to the original jurisdiction conferred on the District Court by section 22 [48 U.S.C. S 1612] of the Revised Organic Act of 1954, as amended, effective October 1, 1991, the Territorial Court shall have original jurisdiction in all civil actions regardless of the amount in controversy . . . .
1993 V.I. Sess. L. 5890, SS 1, 3.Upon the effective date of this section, subject to the concurrent jurisdiction conferred on the District Court of the Virgin Islands by sections 21 and 22 of the Revised Organic Act of the Virgin Islands, as amended, the Territorial Court shall have original jurisdiction in all criminal actions. . . . This section shall become effective January 1, 1994.
625 F.2d at 1088-89.[The District Court of the Virgin Islands] is, of course, a court created by act of Congress, under the power to make rules and regulations respecting the territory belonging to the United States given by Article IV, section 3 of the Constitution, but is not a court of the United States created under Article III, section 1.