Court Opinion

ID: 9491351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:11:44.586164+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:41.091175
License: Public Domain

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
concurring separately.
I concur fully in Judge Noonan’s opinion for the court. This case simply represents an instance of an over-zealous prosecution and the misuse of the criminal laws where at most a civil remedy would have been appropriate. I write this separate concurrence, however, to point out another problem that is not limited to this ease alone. The defendant who, it turns out, did not commit a criminal offense after all, completed service of his period of incarceration before his appeal was heard. It is a sentence he should never have served. The injury he suffered cannot ever be undone — by our reversal of his improper conviction, or otherwise.
Procedures exist under which, in many instances, incarceration can be delayed until after an appeal is decided. That process also does not always work properly. It is initially up to defense counsel, and then to the judicial system, to see that it does, within the limits that Congress has permitted. Unfortunately, for the defendant, that did not happen here.