Opinion ID: 363656
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the court's oral order of commitment:

Text: 21 Defendant asserts that custody would not attach within the meaning of the escape statute until he arrived at the marshal's office and surrendered. Counsel for defendant candidly concedes that custody need not be physical but that it can result from the willful failure to comply with a lawful order To custody orally given. On principle and fact we cannot perceive a significant distinction between defendant's circumstances and those in Tennant v. United States, 407 F.2d 52 (9th Cir. 1969). Tennant was placed in custody by the oral pronouncement of the fact that he was under arrest. A customs inspector lawfully issued the order. Tennant then sped away in his automobile. We held: 22 If appellant heard and understood the oral communication that he was 'under arrest,' the authorized detention became 'custody' within the meaning of the statute in question. 407 F.2d at 53. 23 Tennant was held to be under lawful arrest and in custody even though there was no confinement. 24 Here, no assertion is made that defendant did not hear and understand the oral imposition of sentence, concededly lawful. Nor that he did not hear and understand the denial of his motion for a stay of execution and that it was the order of the court that the sentence begin Now, immediately. A person of ordinary intelligence and understanding would know that he was not free to leave; that he was in custody under or by virtue of Any process issued under the laws of the United States by (a) court, (or) judge, (§ 751(a)) and that his then attorney, an officer of the court, was immediately the court's custodian for the purpose of transferring that custody to the Marshal. The defendant's conduct belies any misunderstanding on his part that he was not in custody under the court's process. United States v. Leonard, 162 U.S.App.D.C. 212, 498 F.2d 754, 757 (1974). Although arising in a different context, Vincent v. United States, 337 F.2d 891, 894 (8th Cir. 1964), Cert. denied, 380 U.S. 988, 85 S.Ct. 1363, 14 L.Ed.2d 281 (1965), recognizes that a defendant is in the court's custody immediately after sentence but before being transferred to the Marshal's custody. We think it patent that a defendant fleeing from the courtroom immediately after sentencing, in the circumstances here, would constitute an escape from custody. That defendant fled from the custody of an officer of the court after lawfully leaving the courtroom cannot alter this conclusion. Cf. People v. Handley, 11 Cal.App.3d 277, 89 Cal.Rptr. 656 (1970), interpreting and applying a state escape statute on very similar facts.