Flood of Applications Depreciates Habeas Corpus, Schaefer Claims

A flood of frivolous attacks on state court convictions has depreciated the great writ of habeas corpus and has interfered with state judicial administration, Justice Walter V. Schaefer of the Illinois Supreme Court warned yesterday. The writ allows prisoners to challenge the legal grounds on which they are being held.

In the Holmes lecture at the Law School, Schaefer said that federal district courts are flooded with many worthless applications for habeas corpus. "Out of 4,849 federal-question habeas corpus cases disposed of from 1946 through 1954," he said, "only 1.6 percent of the petitioners were successful."

The reason for the increase in habeas corpus cases, Schaefer said, can be found in new prison practices and in the higher degree of literacy of prison inmates. "There were almost no habeas corpus petitions from Illinois prisons until it was revealed that they were being bottled up by a system of prison censorship," Schaefer said, "but now more than 3,000 legal documents a year come from the Illinois state prison."

To remedy the situation, Schaefer proposed a screening procedure "by which those few petitions which have merit can be separated from the others." Initial screening could be made by the district courts, he said, and further proceedings by statutory three-judge federal courts.

Schaefer indicated this remedy was preferable to that embodied in a bill recently passed by the House of Representatives. The House Bill, which would limit the authority of federal judges to issue writs of habeas corpus in certain state cases, is now pending in the Senate, Senate.

"The pending bill seems to be based on the assumption that every state provides adequate safeguards for direct and post-conviction review of criminal cases," Schaefer said. "That assumption is not justified."