Opinion ID: 527037
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Submission on Appeal

Text: 4 Mr. Sager's argument can be stated succinctly. The indictment charged him with harboring and concealing a person for whose arrest a warrant had been issued by the United States Parole C mmission. In Mr. Sager's view, section 1071 3 does not proscribe such conduct. Rather, he submits, the statute only proscribes harboring and concealing a person for whom a warrant has been issued pursuant to Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure--a person sought because there is probable cause to believe he has committed a crime. In short, Mr. Sager argues that he harbored and concealed a person wanted for return to the custody of the Attorney General for service of an already existing sentence; the statute, on the other hand, only precludes harboring or concealing a person wanted to answer for a crime for which he has not yet been convicted. 4 5 In support of his position, Mr. Sager invites our attention to the statutory language. The statute dealing with parole violations, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 4213, empowers the Parole Commission to issue a warrant and retake the parolee. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 4213(a)(2) (emphasis added). By contrast, Rule 4, dealing with the apprehension of a person wanted to answer a criminal charge, employs the word arrest. Fed.R.Crim.P. 4. Similarly, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3606, dealing with the apprehension of probation violators and those on supervised release, speaks in terms of arrest. 5 Therefore, Mr. Sager argues, section 1071 is not applicable because there was no outstanding arrest warrant for Carlos Aubrey at the time Mr. Sager allegedly concealed him. 6 Mr. Sager attempts to bolster the foregoing statutory argument by suggesting that the federal criminal code contains another section that would have been a more appropriate basis for any criminal prosecution. Specifically, he notes that 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1072 punishes harboring any prisoner after his escape from the custody of the Attorney General or from a Federal penal or correctional institution. He argues that prosecution under this statute, as opposed to section 1071, would be consistent with the significant body of case law that considers the parolee to be a person in custody. 7 Finally, Mr. Sager invokes the so-called rule of lenity and submits that a criminal statute must be strictly construed in favor of the defendant.