Edgar M. Ellis v. C. J. Fitzharris, Department of Corrections

The district court denied appellant’s petition for habeas corpus without a hearing. The court concluded on the basis of the record of a state court hearing that appellant’s confession was not the product of coercion. In examining-the state court record, the district court, followed the procedures suggested by Justice Frankfurter in his opinion, concurred in by Justice Stewart, in Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U.S. 568, 603-605 , 81 S.Ct. 1860 , 6 L.Ed.2d 1037 (1961). The procedures announced in that opinion were modified, and in some respects explicitly repudiated, by the decision in Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293 , 83 S.Ct. 745 , 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963). The- judgment must therefore be reversed and the cause remanded to the district court for reconsideration in accordance with procedures detailed in Townsend at pages 313-317 of 372 U.S., 83 S.Ct. 745, (and in 28 U.S.C. § 2254 as amended November 2,1966, by Public Law 89-711, § 2 , 80 Stat. 1105 ), beginning with a determination of whether the state court impliedly found the material facts from the conflicting evidence, and, if so, whether a reconstruction of those findings is possible. We also call the trial court’s attention to the…