Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/982/757/137174/
Timestamp: 2017-11-22 05:34:22
Document Index: 728737207

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3583', '§ 3583', '§ 4083', '§ 4083', '§ 3583', '§ 3565', '§ 3583', '§ 3553', '§ 3553', '§ 3583']

United States of America, Appellee, v. Curtis Smith, Defendant-appellant, 982 F.2d 757 (2d Cir. 1992) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Second Circuit › 1992 › United States of America, Appellee, v. Curtis Smith, Defendant-appellant
United States of America, Appellee, v. Curtis Smith, Defendant-appellant, 982 F.2d 757 (2d Cir. 1992)
US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit - 982 F.2d 757 (2d Cir. 1992)
Argued Oct. 21, 1992. Decided Dec. 11, 1992
Following Smith's guilty plea on the misdemeanor embezzlement charges, Magistrate Judge Hedges of the District Court for the District of New Jersey sentenced him on May 2, 1989 to the maximum term of one year imprisonment, to be followed by one year of supervised release. One year is the maximum release term for a misdemeanant. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(b) (3) (1988). The sentence was to be served following the completion of a sentence Smith was then serving for another offense. Magistrate Judge Hedges imposed "the standard conditions that have been adopted by this court" as conditions of Mr. Smith's release. These conditions, which were drafted for probation cases and include terms not mandated for supervised releasees, included requirements that Smith commit no crimes while on release, that he report regularly to his probation officer, that he neither possess nor use any illegal drug, that he work regularly, and that he support his dependents. Two of these conditions, that Smith commit no crimes and that he possess no illegal substances, were mandated by § 3583(d) (1988 & Supp. III 1991).
First, Smith has not been sentenced to more than a year's imprisonment for a single crime. Rather, he was sentenced to a single year of jail time, to be followed by a separate term of supervised release. Although he has violated the terms of that release and been sentenced to serve an additional six months for violation of the court orders enforcing those conditions, these are separate punishments which do not require indictment under either the Fifth Amendment or Rule 7(a). Two other circuits confronted with this question have reached the same conclusion. United States v. Purvis, 940 F.2d 1276, 1280 (9th Cir. 1991); United States v. Celestine, 905 F.2d 59, 60 (5th Cir. 1990). See also United States v. Jamison, 934 F.2d 371, 373-75 (D.C. Cir. 1991); United States v. Montenegro-Rojo, 908 F.2d 425, 431-434 (9th Cir. 1990); United States v. West, 898 F.2d 1493, 1504 (11th Cir. 1990), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 1030, 111 S. Ct. 685, 112 L. Ed. 2d 676 (1991) (all holding that the supervised release statute authorizes a separate punishment; indictment clause issue not raised).
Second, neither the Fifth Amendment nor Rule 7(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which, according to the Advisory Committee on the Rules, "gives effect to" this clause,4 required an indictment in this case. The Fifth Amendment requires the federal government to proceed by indictment only when charging someone with "a capital, or otherwise infamous crime." U.S. Const. amend. V. A crime is infamous if the accused may be subjected to an infamous punishment upon conviction. Ex Parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 422, 5 S. Ct. 935, 937, 29 L. Ed. 89 (1885). Infamous punishments include sentences of imprisonment in a penitentiary, Mackin v. United States, 117 U.S. 348, 6 S. Ct. 777, 29 L. Ed. 909 (1886); Wilson, 114 U.S. at 428, 5 S. Ct. at 940; and sentences to hard labor; United States v. Moreland, 258 U.S. 433, 42 S. Ct. 368, 66 L. Ed. 700 (1922) (six months hard labor for misdemeanor); Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228, 16 S. Ct. 977, 41 L. Ed. 140 (1896) (one year, plus deportation); Wilson, 114 U.S. at 429, 5 S. Ct. at 941. They do not include ordinary misdemeanor sentences of no more than a year in jail. Duke v. United States, 301 U.S. 492, 57 S. Ct. 835, 81 L. Ed. 1243 (1937); see also Purvis, 940 F.2d at 1279-80; Celestine, 905 F.2d at 60-61.
Smith argues that no sentence of more than one year may be imposed without indictment. He provides no case support for this argument, and criticizes only the more recent cases, which do not address the indictment clause issue in depth. However, the rationale of the early indictment clause cases is not that any imprisonment of more than one year is infamous, but that imprisonment in a penitentiary, rather than in a jail or federal correctional facility, is infamous. See Moreland, 258 U.S. at 447-48, 42 S. Ct. at 373; Mackin, 117 U.S. at 352, 354, 6 S. Ct. at 779, 780. The Supreme Court of the post-Civil War and pre-Depression eras viewed prisons and penitentiaries as places of punishment, and indeed as the modern substitutes "for all the ignominious punishments formerly in use ...," Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. at 428-29, 5 S. Ct. at 88, quoting Jones v. Robbins, 8 Gray 329, 349 (Mass.1857) (opinion of Chief Justice Shaw, for the court), while viewing correctional facilities open only to minor offenders as centers for rehabilitation. See, e.g., Moreland 258 U.S. at 440, 42 S. Ct. at 371.
While Congress rejected this neat distinction between punitive and rehabilitative institutions in its 1984 Sentencing Reforms, see H.R.Rep. No. 1030, 98th Cong., 2d Sess. 38, 176 (1984), reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3182, 3221, 3359, it continues to forbid courts from sentencing those subject to no more than a year imprisonment to serve their terms in penitentiaries without their consent, 18 U.S.C. § 4083 (1988). The law was the same before 1984. See 18 U.S.C. § 4083, as amended in 1959. Pub. L. 86-256, 73 Stat. 518 (1959).5 In short, the distinction between prisons, where only serious offenders may be housed, and jails, where misdemeanants are housed, is, as it has been, the critical one. In effect, the modern day equivalent of the infamy discussed in the Supreme Court's post-Civil-War & pre-Depression era indictment clause cases is being branded a felon.6
It is true that Congress cannot simply declare an offense a misdemeanor and subject offenders to infamous punishment without indictment. Wilson, 114 U.S. at 426, 5 S. Ct. at 939; and see Moreland, 258 U.S. 433, 42 S. Ct. at 368 (misdemeanor, if punishable by sentence to hard labor, must be prosecuted by indictment). However, the infamy of the punishment is essentially a measure of the infamy attached to the offender: by authorizing an infamous punishment, the Congress indicates that it believes the offender deserving of infamy. See Moreland, 258 U.S. at 447-48, 42 S. Ct. at 373 (Holmes, J., dissenting) (work camp rehabilitative; sentence does not expose convicted misdemeanant to infamy).
Rule 7(a), though it requires indictment for any "offense which may be punished by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year or at hard labor," also does not help Smith. As discussed above, he has never been subjected to a term of imprisonment of more than one year: he was sentenced to a single one-year term, and received additional jail time after violating the terms of a separate supervised release term. Rule 7(a) was drafted with the express intent to codify the Supreme Court indictment clause cases discussed above, see Fed. R. Crim. P. 7(a) advisory committee's note (1946), and there is nothing in the legislative history to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, which established supervised release terms, to suggest an intent to start requiring indictments in ordinary misdemeanor cases. See H.R.Rep. No. 1030, supra, 37-190, 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 3220-3373. Rule 7(a) simply means, as it always has, that crimes punishable by a basic imprisonment term of more than one year must be charged by indictment.
Smith also contends that the district court's denial of a continuance before holding his revocation hearing denied him both the effective assistance of counsel and the due process required by the Fifth Amendment and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1. Because Congress neglected to include a provision granting courts jurisdiction to complete revocation hearings after the end of supervised release terms (there is such a provision extending jurisdiction to revoke probation), it is arguable that the court would have lost jurisdiction over Mr. Smith had it granted the requested continuance. Compare 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e) (3) (1988 & Supp. III 1991) (revocation of supervised release) with 18 U.S.C. § 3565(c) (1988) (revocation of probation).
First, we confront Mr. Smith's argument that the Federal Public Defender appointed for him was unable to provide effective assistance without a continuance. It is true that in some instances, the denial of a continuance will provide counsel with so little time to prepare that the defendant is effectively deprived of his right to the effective assistance of counsel. E.g., Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 53 S. Ct. 55, 77 L. Ed. 158 (1932) (appointment on day of trial in highly publicized, racially charged capital case); but cf. United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 104 S. Ct. 2039, 80 L. Ed. 2d 657 (1984) (25 days granted inexperienced attorney to prepare for fraud trial which had taken government over four years to construct sufficed); Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 53-54, 90 S. Ct. 1975, 1982, 26 L. Ed. 2d 419 (1970) (new legal aid lawyer who first conferred with defendants on day of trial conducted competent defense).
Unless circumstances are such that "the likelihood that any lawyer, even a fully competent one, could provide effective assistance is so small that a presumption of prejudice is appropriate without inquiry into the actual conduct of the trial," Cronic, 466 U.S. at 659-60, 104 S. Ct. at 2047, a result will be overturned only on the basis of evidence that a "breakdown in the adversarial process" resulted. Id. at 662, 104 S. Ct. at 2048. According to the Cronic Court, "there is generally no basis for finding a Sixth Amendment violation unless the accused can show how specific errors of counsel undermined the reliability of the finding of guilt." Id. at 659, n. 26, 104 S. Ct. at 2047, n. 26. See also Morris v. Slappy, 461 U.S. 1, 103 S. Ct. 1610, 75 L. Ed. 2d 610 (1982).
Secondly, the revocation hearing met the procedural requirements of the Fifth Amendment and of Rule 32.1 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Rule 32.1, which governs the conduct of hearings to revoke either probation or supervised release, provides greater procedural protections than those the Supreme Court has held essential in revoking probation, Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 489, 92 S. Ct. 2593, 2604, 33 L. Ed. 2d 484 (1972), or parole, Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778, 782, 93 S. Ct. 1756, 1759, 36 L. Ed. 2d 656 (1973). These requirements are: the right to receive written notice of the alleged violation; the disclosure of evidence against the defendant; the opportunity to appear and to present evidence; the opportunity to question adverse witnesses; and notice of the right to be represented by counsel. Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.1(a) (2) (A)-(E).
Smith argues that discretionary conditions may not be imposed without an explicit determination that each condition meets the requirements set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d). Under the statute, conditions of release must: (1) be reasonably related to the sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) (1988); (2) involve no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary for the purposes set forth in § 3553(a) (2); and (3), be consistent with any pertinent policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d) (1988 & Supp. III 1991).
While a court must conduct the analysis this section requires, it need not analyze the factors on the record for each condition. See, e.g., United States v. Graves, 914 F.2d 159, 160 (8th Cir. 1990). The challenged condition, like most of the standard conditions imposed, is a basic administrative requirement essential to the functioning of the supervised release system: that the defendant communicate with a supervising officer. While the court did not explain its reasons for requiring this particular condition, it did explain its reasons for imposing the maximum sentence, including the maximum one-year supervised release term. In particular, the magistrate judge stressed his well-founded sense that Smith was not functioning well without supervision. The record indicates that the magistrate judge considered the factors required by statute, although he did not explicitly discuss the connection between these factors and each imposed condition. This is sufficient.
Fed. R. Crim. P. 7(a).
Fed. R. Crim. P. 7(a) advisory committee's note (1946)