The Murderer Stays Behind Bars
A federal judge refuses to release a death-row inmate, ruling that while the state court erred, the prisoner must exhaust his legal appeals first.
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Judge Hanford of the United States court yesterday refused a writ of habeas corpus to Albert Friedrich, who is imprisoned in the state penitentiary for the murder of Julius Scherbring. Friedrich’s counsel argued he was imprisoned without due process of law because the state supreme court had modified his sentence from death for first-degree murder to twenty years for second-degree murder, despite a jury verdict that only specified the former. Judge Hanford concluded that while the imprisonment was based on a flawed judgment, the federal court should not interfere while the petitioner still had the right to seek a writ of error from the United States Supreme Court.
“A verdict which lacks the quality of certainty will not support a judgment.”
This case highlights the messy transition of Washington’s early legal system as it struggled to reconcile state sentencing powers with the newly adopted Fourteenth Amendment. Today, these same questions of 'due process' and judicial overreach in sentencing remain central to debates about mandatory minimums and the reach of federal oversight in state criminal justice.
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