Court Opinion

ID: 9445638
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:34:54.753399+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:21.412739
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Circuit Judge
(concurring) .
A drug-peddler dispenses to his customers drugs which he has possessed and concealed; he dispenses them without prescriptions on official treasury forms; and he dispenses them not in or from stamped packages. By legislating separately against each component part of the transaction, Congress facilitated the prosecution and conviction of any who ply the illicit trade. It clearly intended that a person against whom any one of the defined phases of a drug-selling transaction is proved should be punished. It does not follow, however, that by providing for a five-year sentence for a violation of any of the statutes, Congress intended that one who performs the entire transaction receive a cumulative sentence of fifteen years.1 If we were *767approaching afresh the question whether, in such a case, single or cumulative punishment is the legal course, I think we could not so easily conclude that the consecutive sentences here imposed are authorized. “It would be self-deceptive to claim that only one answer is possible to our problem.” United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 1952, 344 U.S. 218, 224, 73 S.Ct. 227, 231, 97 L.Ed. 260.
But the question is not one we are at liberty to approach afresh. We are bound by the decision of the Supreme Court in Blockburger v. United States, 1932, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306. It may be that the “same evidence” test which has facilitated the fragmentation of crimes into multiple separately punishable components is being abandoned in favor of a “same transaction” test. See United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., supra; Bell v. United States, 1955, 349 U.S. 81, 75 S.Ct. 620, 99 L.Ed. 905; Prince v. United States, 352 U.S. 322, 77 S.Ct. 403, 1 L.Ed.2d 370. Note also the granting of certiorari in cases presenting related problems: Bartkus v. People of State of Illinois, 1956, 352 U.S. 907, 77 S.Ct. 150, 1 L.Ed.2d 116; Hoag v. State of New Jersey, ibid.; and Ladner v. United States, 352 U.S. 907, 77 S.Ct. 151, 1 L.Ed.2d 116. Unless we are freed from the controlling effect of Blockburger, however, we have no choice but to countenance the sentences here imposed.
I am authorized by FAHY, Circuit Judge to state that he concurs in the views herein expressed.

. That Congress intended that drug peddlers be severely punished is beyond doubt. The purpose of the Boggs Act was to provide- mandatory minimum sentences and to permit increasingly high maximum sentences for repeated violations. It made possible a 20-year sentence for a third violation of 26 U.S.C. §§ 4704(a) or 4705(a) and precluded suspension of sentence or probation for such an offender. 26 U.S.C. § 7237 (a). Similarly, a third offender could be sentenced to 20 years under 21 U.S.C. § 174. By the Act of July 18, 1956, c. 629, Title I, §§ 103 and 105, 70 Stat. 568, 570, tbe maximum penalty for narcotics repeaters was increased to 40 years.
This clear intent that the offender receive a severe sentence does not imply, however, that Congress also intended that cumulative sentences be imposed when a single criminal act results in separate convictions under all three statutes. The intent to increase the punishment of a repeating drug-peddler which led Congress in 1956 to raise the maximum penalty to 40 years would seem to suggest rather that it had not been intended, before 1956, that he be punishable *767by a 60-year sentence. The legislative history of the Narcotic Control Act of 1956 supports the view that the penalties Congress was providing were for the composite act of drug-peddling, not for the separate counts into which a prosecutor’s ingenuity could divide it. See, for example, Report to the House Committee on Ways and Means from the Subcommittee on Narcotics, May 10, 1956, 2 U.S.Code Cong.Serv. 3304 (1956): “It is recommended that the convicted, narcotie peddler be sentenced to not less than 5 years for a first offense and not less than 10 years for a second or subsequent offense. Maximum sentences should be increased to 20 years and 40 years, respectively, for first offenses and for second and subsequent offenses in the case of the narcotic peddler.” (Emphasis supplied.)