Court Opinion

ID: 9464129
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:25:50.395349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:28.451217
License: Public Domain

WEIS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The Interstate Detainers Act is obviously written to cope with problems arising when prisoners confined in one state are charged with crimes in another. Both prosecution and defense may have an interest in securing a speedy trial of outstanding charges. The state may seek to have a trial without the delay attendant on extradition. The prisoner may wish to have a determination of pending charges so that he may seek the advantages of concurrent sentences or earlier parole. Moreover, the prisoner may be denied rehabilitative programs because of interruptions caused by travel and attendance at criminal proceedings in other states.
When the Interstate Detainers Act was proposed by the Council on State Governments as Suggested State Legislation in 1957, state statutes were contemplated. Not until 1970 did the federal government adopt the Act and include itself as a “state.” The legislative history is quite brief and demonstrates that Congress did not fully explore the legislation’s ramifications as they affected the federal government.
So long as the Act included only states and not the federal government, geographical and sovereignty concepts posed no particular difficulty. But when the federal legislation adopted the text of the state compacts and involved the United States simply by including it within the definition of a “state,” serious problems of interpretation arose. As an example, the Act’s reference to trial being “commenced within one hundred and twenty days of the arrival of the prisoner in the receiving State,” is clear and understandable if the prisoner is being transferred from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. Similarly, a transfer from New Jersey to the District of Columbia is workable under the federal version of the Act. Confusion arises, however, if the prisoner is being transferred from a state institution in Pennsylvania to a federal court in that state. In that instance, the prisoner has been in the United States, the “receiving state”, continuously.
To enforce the speedy trial provisions of the Act, therefore, the federal courts must interpret “receiving state” to mean custody of the federal government. See United States v. Ford, 550 F.2d 732 (2d Cir. 1977). Since this interpretation carries out the Act’s announced intention to afford a speedy trial, the semantic revision may be justified. If the statute were read literally, however, there could be no enforcement of the one hundred and twenty day limitation because there is no arrival date in a “receiving state.”
Similarly in Article V(h), Interstate Agreement on Detainers Act § 2, Art. V(h), 18 U.S.C. App. at 233 (Supp.1977), the statute provides that responsibility for the prisoner rests with the receiving state from the time “a party State receives custody . until such prisoner is returned to the territory and custody of the sending State ..” Where the prisoner is transferred from a federal institution to a state, he has never left the United States. Does United States “territory” mean the confines of a federal institution? If a state prisoner is taken to a federal court located in the same state, when does the prisoner return to the “territory” of the state?
The government in this case has argued, as on other occasions, that Congress contemplated the federal government being affected only as a sending, not a receiving state. That interpretation makes the stat*236ute workable and reasonable.1 The government’s position, however, has been consistently rejected in the courts reviewing it. See United States v. Mauro, 544 F.2d 588 (2d Cir. 1976), United States v. Scallion, 548 F.2d 1168 (5th Cir. 1977). Article II, 18 U.S.C. App., at 230-231 (Supp.1977), defines the United States as a “state” without any qualification, and the legislative history furnishes no support for the government’s interpretation. It is apparent that in adopting the Interstate Agreement Congress has attempted to fit a square peg into a round hole.
In United States ex rel. Esola v. Groomes, 520 F.2d 830 (3d Cir. 1975), a panel of this court concluded that the Agreement on Detainers Act is the sole means by which a prisoner may be transferred from another state for trial on state charges. In the case sub judice, that principle is extended to the federal system as well, thus restricting the writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum.
Congress, I am confident, had no intention to limit federal courts in exercising their power to issue this writ first authorized by the Judiciary Act of 1789. The grant has been continued without interruption in legislation since that time. See Carbo v. United States, 364 U.S. 611, 81 S.Ct. 338, 5 L.Ed.2d 329 (1961); Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75, 2 L.Ed. 554 (1807). Not a word in the legislative history of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers Act hints of repealing or limiting the authority to issue the writ or, indeed, even mentions it.2
To read the ambiguous and superficially considered Agreement as constricting the power which has been exercised by the federal courts for almost two hundred years is a questionable solution to a perplexing problem. Recognizing the continuing scope of the writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum might diminish in some respects the efficacy of the Interstate Detainers Act. That policy would offer federal prosecutors an alternative method of securing the presence of state prisoners for trial and, thus, deprive a state governor of the option to disapprove the request (a doubtful matter at best in the federal-state context); obviate the thirty day delay; and delete the requirement that the prisoner be kept in federal custody from time of original request to termination of trial. But the utilization of habeas corpus ad prosequendum would not defeat the primary aims of the Agreement — to permit the prisoner and authorities to obtain speedy disposition of outstanding detainers and prevent unnecessary interruptions to rehabilitative programs.
The facts of the two cases under consideration are graphic illustrations of the harm which restricting federal habeas corpus ad prosequendum can cause. In the Sorrell case, the interruption of the prisoner’s reha*237bilitation program at Graterford consisted of the time for travel between Graterford
and Philadelphia and a brief appearance in court for arraignment (certainly not a whole day), and the trial which would likely have required no more than a few days. All told, the prisoner’s absence from the rehabilitation program would likely have been no more than a total of 7 to 10 days. Under the majority’s view, however, Sorrell would have had to remain in federal custody from the date of arraignment till verdict, normally at least a month. That period of confinement would usually be in a facility in Philadelphia which does not offer rehabilitation programs. Thus, the goal of rehabilitation is not aided by the restrictive approach adopted by the majority, but is actually thwarted.
Moreover, the aim of a speedy trial would be hindered, not helped. The Federal Speedy Trial Act limits require that a prisoner be arraigned within ten days after indictment, 18 U.S.C. § 3161, but if his presence at that proceeding can only be obtained by recourse to the Detainers Act, a thirty-day period must elapse before he may be transported to the court. Article IV(a), 18 U.S.C. App. at 232 (Supp.1977). Thus, there is a direct conflict between the Speedy Trial Act and the Detainers Act which the majority’s interpretation does not resolve but, in fact, creates.3
The situation created in the Thompson case is even more bizarre. He was serving a state sentence in the Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia in April, 1976. On April 9, through the use of habeas corpus ad prosequendum, Thompson was brought to the federal courthouse in the same city for arraignment and was returned on the same day. He was returned to the courthouse on May 3 for trial, and on May 6, a guilty verdict was rendered. That conviction is now set aside as a result of the majority opinion.
Apparently, there was no rehabilitative program at Holmesburg, that institution being used only for short term sentences and pretrial detention.4 Hence, no rehabilitation program was interrupted. The ultimate irony, however, is that the federal government and Philadelphia have contracted for the use of Holmesburg Prison as a detention center for federal prisoners. Thus, had the United States arranged for the technical “paper” transfer of Thompson from state to federal custody — within the very same institution — from the arraignment date to the date of sentencing, the conviction would stand.
In United States v. Mauro, supra, the Court of Appeals affirmed dismissals of indictments under the provisions of the Detainers Act. Judge Mansfield dissented on the ground that the writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum was not a detainer within the meaning of the Act,5 and refused to *238accept any implied repeal of the statute authorizing habeas corpus ad prosequendum. In United States v. Ford, supra, he wrote the majority opinion, holding that the speedy trial provisions of the Detainers statute applied to the federal government. In United States v. Chico, 558 F.2d 1047 (2 Cir., 1977), Judge Mansfield, writing for a unanimous panel, distinguished both Ford and Mauro in a fact situation similar to the case sub judice. There, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that when state prisoners were in the federal court for only the few hours required for arraignment and guilty pleas and were immediately returned to state imprisonment, they were never actually incarcerated by the federal government. That distinction could be utilized in the Thompson and Sorrell cases, but I think the better approach is to take the view espoused by the Courts of Appeals for the First and Sixth Circuits and to uphold the unrestricted availability of habeas corpus ad prosequendum. See United States v. Kenaan, supra, Ridgeway v. United States, supra.
I disagree with the majority opinion, but in fairness must recognize the difficulties caused by this poorly drafted legislation. The Act has created a problem which Congress should resolve expeditiously in the interest of efficient administration of criminal justice.
I dissent.
ADAMS and ROSENN, Circuit Judges, join in the conclusion reached in this dissent, primarily because they do not believe it should be assumed that Congress has cut back on an enactment as venerable as that of the Judiciary Act of 1789 in the absence of an express statement that Congress intended to do so.6

. The Senate Judiciary Committee in its 1975 report on S-l commented that the enabling Act should be amended by “providing that the Federal Government is a participant in the Agreement only in the capacity of a ‘sending state.’ ” Sen.Rep. 94-00, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. 983-984 (1975).

. In the Senate Judiciary Committee report in 1975, referred to in n.l supra, it is said:
“Federal prosecution authorities and all Federal defendants have always had and continue to have recourse to a speedy trial in a Federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2241(c)(5), the Federal writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum. The Committee does not intend, nor does it believe that the Congress in enacting the Agreement in 1970 intended, to limit the scope and applicability of that writ.
“Unlike the existing Federal statute, however, the State statutes do not provide a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum with nationwide territorial effect beyond the boundaries of the issuing State. Consequently, since the Agreement is only effective between member States, the Federal Government, at the urging of the Council of State Governments, has become a member State so that the other member States may use the Agreement to reach Federal prisoners against whom State detainers have been lodged who are incarcerated outside the lodging State’s territorial boundaries.
“Clarification of the enabling act is necessary because at least one Federal court has indicated that in the absence of specific language to the contrary, it will interpret the Agreement to apply to all prisoner exchanges between member States and the Federal Government, thereby negating all use of 28 U.S.C. 2241(c)(5), the Federal writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum, between the Federal Government and other member States.”

. The majority relies to some extent upon an asserted inconvenience to defense counsel as a ground for its interpretation of the statute. I find that basis unconvincing on the facts of these cases. If the transfers here had been within the state’s jurisdiction, the removal of a prisoner from a penitentiary in Pittsburgh to a Pennsylvania court in Philadelphia, some 300 miles away, would involve more inconvenience than that present here. However, that, in and of itself, would be an unlikely ground for vacating a conviction.

. In United States v. Roberts, 548 F.2d 665 (6th Cir. 1977), the court held that the Act did not apply to a pretrial detainee who was not participating in any rehabilitation program.

. Despite dictum in the majority opinion, that point is not at issue here since in both cases detainers in the customary form had been lodged by the United States Marshal before the writs of habeas corpus were served. However, I agree with the Courts of Appeals for the First Circuit, United States v. Kenaan, 557 F.2d 912 (1977); the Fifth Circuit, United States v. Scallion, supra; the Sixth Circuit, Ridgeway v. United States, 558 F.2d 357 (1977); and the dissenting opinion of Judge Mansfield in Mauro, supra, that a federal writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum does not come within the meaning of the word “detainer” as used in the Act.
The handbook on Interstate Crime Control of the Council of State Governments (1949) contains a report of the joint committee on detainers, stating in part:
“A detainer may be defined as a warrant filed against a person already in custody with the purpose of insuring that, after the prisoner has completed his present term, he will be available to the authority which has placed the detainer. Wardens of institutions hold*238ing men who have detainers on them invariably recognize these warrants and notify the authorities placing them of the impending release of the prisoner.” (page 85)

. Such a result would appear to be particularly appropriate here since the documents directing the transfer of the defendants to federal authorities were specifically denominated as “writs of habeas corpus ad prosequendum.” And there is no indication on the record that, at the time of such transfer, the United States Attorney or the defense counsel were operating under the assumption that the Interstate Detainers Act was then being utilized.