Opinion ID: 2099712
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Mandate in This Case

Text: As noted, this court granted the remand request in the first appeal in an order entered on August 19, 1994, and the first resentencing took place on September 1, 1994. No timely appeal was taken from that sentencing; therefore, direct review of the underlying conviction by this court would be problematic. [14] Happenstance intervened, however, because, as later discovered by the government, and confirmed by us, this court's mandate did not reach the Superior Court until October 4, 1994  over a month after the first resentencing. [15] As noted above, the mandate is ordinarily issued twenty-one days after the entry of judgment, in this appeal, the remand order. Here, however, for reasons not discernible in the record, the mandate was not issued until much later. As we have said, the mandate is the means by which jurisdiction over a case is transferred from this court to the trial court. Pyramid Nat'l Van Lines, supra, 66 A.2d 693 at 694 (when the mandate of an appellate court is filed in the lower court, that court reacquires the jurisdiction which it lost by the taking of the appeal). Therefore, the trial court did not regain jurisdiction over the case until October 4, 1994, when the Superior Court received the mandate. Because the trial court was without jurisdiction until that date, the first resentencing on September 1, 1994, was a nullity. Abrams v. Abrams, 245 A.2d 843, 844 (D.C.1968) (order granting motion for new trial entered before receipt of mandate from this court, was a nullity). The circumstances are quite different, however, for the second resentencing that occurred on December 2, 1994. That resentencing was imposed in response to Bell's timely motion to reduce sentence filed on November 15, 1994, forty-one days after receipt of the mandate. See Super. Ct. Crim. R. 35(b) (a motion to reduce sentencing may be filed not later than 120 days after receipt of the mandate). Because that resentencing occurred after the Superior Court's receipt of the mandate, the sentencing judge had jurisdiction to grant a motion to reduce sentence. And, because a timely notice of appeal was filed from that sentence, we have jurisdiction to hear this appeal. Affirmed.