Source: https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-chodorski
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 08:29:50+00:00

Document:
September 28, 1956. Rehearing Denied February 28, 1957.
In United States v. Henderson, 7 Cir., 223 F.2d 421, we were not dealing with the original decision of the board reviewed by the appeal board, but with the final decision of the local draft board subsequent to the appeal, and condemned the further proceeding as depriving the defendant of procedural due process in that the board refused to reopen and reconsider defendant's classification on an erroneous theory. This action had never been reviewed or modified by a board of appeal. In Mintz v. Howlett, 2 Cir., 207 F.2d 758, at page 762 the court did not find in the decision of the appeal board any corrective action over the original error before the local board. It remarked that "it appears that the appeal board assumed the crucial fact in issue." Consequently, the decision of the appeal board perpetuated the procedural errors before the local board.
In Niznik v. United States, 6 Cir., 173 F.2d 328, and Niznik v. United States, 6 Cir., 184 F.2d 972, the court held that if material presented to the local board which should have been included by the local board in the registrant's file was not included so that the appeal board could consider it, then there was lack of procedural due process. Therefore, in the first case the judgment was reversed for a new trial in order that it could be determined whether there had been an omission by the local board to include in the record sent by the appeal board everything that the law required. In the second appeal the court failed to determine expressly whether a full and complete record had been sent to the appeal board and, if so, whether that board's decision should apply. The opinion is silent on this point, but merely holds that the defendant was deprived of procedural due process before the local board. Consequently, in the absence of the record, we are unable to determine the limits of the exact holding. We agree with that court that if the record which goes to the board of appeal does not contain all of the evidence submitted to the local board, then the hearing before the appeal board is without due process of law, but such is not our case.
In United States v. Fielder, D.C., 136 F. Supp. 745, and in United States v. Kose, D.C., 106 F. Supp. 433, the controlling facts are not clear. However, if there is anything in those decisions conflicting with our conclusions in this case, we disapprove.
Mr. Justice Rutledge, in his concurring opinion in Falbo v. United States, 320 U.S. 549, at page 555, 64 S.Ct. 346, 349, 88 L.Ed. 305, had this to say: "Petitioner claims the local board's order of classification was invalid because that board refused to classify petitioner as a minister on the basis of an antipathy to the religious sect of which he is a member. And, if the question were open, the record discloses that some evidence tendered to sustain this charge was excluded in the trial court. But petitioner has made no such charge concerning the action of the appeal board which reviewed and affirmed the local board's order. And there is nothing to show that the appeal board acted otherwise than according to law. If therefore the local board's order was invalid originally for the reason claimed, as to which I express no opinion, whatever defect may have existed was cured by the appeal board's action." (Emphasis supplied.) The language in Tomlinson v. United States, 9 Cir., 216 F.2d 12, at page 16, is equally persuasive. The court held there that any error which the local board might have made with reference to ordination of a minister was precisely the sort of thing the appeal board was set up to correct. As the court said, so here, the whole record went to the appeal board along with the registrant's statement, in which he dealt with the precise question involved. If the local board erred, such error was cured by the de novo action of the appeal board.

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