Court Opinion

ID: 9419295
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:48:32.006379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.276156
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Stone,
dissenting:
In Ex parte Lange, 18 Wall. 163, the trial court did not remit or offer to remit the fine which the offender had paid. The opinion was careful to point out (p. 175) that the fine paid had been covered into the treasury and that the courts were powerless to direct its return. That decision thus lends no support to that now rendered that the choice rests with the offender rather than with the court whether he shall be punished by fine or by imprisonment, either of which alone the court could have lawfully imposed; and that by payment of the fine, imposed and accepted under mistake of law and immediately remitted, he may irrevocably escape punishment by imprisonment.
So far as Ex parte Lange is regarded here as resting on the ground that it would be double jeopardy to compel the offender to serve the prison sentence after remission of the fine on the same day on which it was paid, I think its authority should be reexamined and rejected. The substance of the punishment imposed on the offender by a fine is in depriving him of the money he has paid. Here he has not been deprived of the money paid to the clerk of the court, for the fine was remitted on the same day on which it was paid, and he was then free to reclaim it. Since he is shown to have suffered no more from the imposition of the fine than if the clerk had refused to receive it when tendered, there is I think no substance in the contention that he will suffer double punishment if compelled to serve out his prison sentence.
The Constitution is concerned with matters of substance not of form. Nothing in its words or history forbids a common sense application of its provisions, or excludes *54them from the operation of the principle de minimis. I can hardly suppose that we would hold unconstitutional an Act of Congress commanding prompt return of a fine mistakenly imposed under these circumstances, and requiring the prison sentence originally imposed to be served. Yet Ex parte Lange as interpreted and applied here rests on constitutional grounds which are equally applicable to an Act of Congress.
I agree with the suggestion of the Government that the court’s second order resentencing petitioner could not rightly be entered without affording petitioner or his counsel an opportunity to be present, and that the cause should, on that account, be remanded for further proceedings.