## Facts

- During World War II, military orders issued under Executive Order 9066 imposed a nighttime curfew and later exclusion/reporting requirements on persons of Japanese ancestry in designated West Coast military areas.
- Gordon K. Hirabayashi, a U.S. citizen of Japanese ancestry, refused to comply, believing the orders were racially based and unconstitutional.
- In 1942, he was convicted in federal district court of violating both the curfew and the exclusion/reporting order and received concurrent sentences.
- In 1943, the Supreme Court affirmed the curfew conviction and, because of the concurrent sentences, also affirmed the exclusion conviction.
- Decades later, researchers uncovered an original version of General John DeWitt’s report supporting the military program; it had been suppressed and rewritten before submission to the Supreme Court, and the original reflected racial assumptions rather than supported military necessity.
- In 1983, after his sentence had long been served, Hirabayashi petitioned for a writ of error coram nobis to vacate both convictions based on newly discovered evidence and government misconduct.
- The district court vacated the exclusion conviction but left the curfew conviction intact.
- Hirabayashi appealed the denial of relief as to the curfew conviction; the United States cross-appealed the vacatur of the exclusion conviction and asserted laches and mootness.

## Issues

1. What requirements govern issuance of a federal writ of error coram nobis to set aside a long-final conviction in the Ninth Circuit.
2. Whether newly discovered evidence of suppressed material and government misrepresentations concerning the asserted “military necessity” required vacatur of the curfew and exclusion convictions.
3. Whether laches or mootness barred coram nobis relief.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the vacatur of the exclusion conviction.
- The Ninth Circuit reversed the refusal to vacate the curfew conviction and directed that it be vacated as well.
- The court rejected the government’s laches defense because the key facts were not reasonably discoverable earlier and any delay was tied to suppression of evidence.
- The court rejected mootness, holding that completed sentences do not eliminate a live case where collateral consequences of conviction persist.

## Legal Principles

- Coram nobis is an extraordinary remedy available after the sentence has been served when no other post-conviction remedy is adequate.
- Relief requires continuing collateral consequences and an error of the most fundamental character that rendered the proceeding irregular and invalid.
- Newly discovered evidence may justify relief when the factual basis for challenging the conviction was not known and could not reasonably have been known during trial or direct review, and the petitioner acted with due diligence.
- Government suppression or alteration of material information presented to the courts, especially where it affected the factual predicate for judicial review, can constitute fundamental error warranting vacatur to protect the integrity of the judicial process.
- Where two convictions rest on the same asserted justification shown to have been materially tainted by misrepresentation, there is no principled basis to vacate one while leaving the other intact.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that coram nobis was available and warranted because newly uncovered evidence showed the government had suppressed and altered key material supporting the wartime “military necessity” rationale, undermining the factual foundation on which the curfew and exclusion convictions had been affirmed; accordingly, the court vacated both convictions and rejected laches and mootness defenses.


Hirabayashi v. United States, 828 F.2d 591 (9th Cir. 1987)