Court Opinion

ID: 9444545
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:05:00.81677+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:55.075035
License: Public Domain

MEDINA, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Defendant, having served his sentence, makes this application to clear his record and remove an impediment to the granting of his request to be permitted to take the New York Dental licensing examination. At the time he filed his questionnaire with his Local Draft Board on November 27, 1942, he was a student at Columbia University and, after his release in 1945, he took a pre-dental course and graduated in June 1953, with honors, from Pennsylvania University Dental School. Immediately thereafter he registered under the 1953 Doctors and Dentists Draft Law, was classified 1-A and accepted for service.
There is no reason to doubt his statement that as a German national he did not wish to join the armed forces in conflict with Germans. Neither his feelings in the matter, nor his erroneous belief that, if he submitted to the physical examination, he would waive any rights he might have to object to such service as an enemy alien, involved moral turpitude so far as I can see. But we cannot trespass upon the field allotted to those who exercise the power of clemency. Technically, there is no flaw in the proceedings leading to this judgment of conviction. Accordingly, I concur.