Court Opinion

ID: 9718894
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:37:16.354764+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:03.302755
License: Public Domain

GALLAGHER, Associate Judge,
Retired, with whom KERN, Associate Judge, joins, concurring:
If I understand Judge Ferren’s dissent correctly, it is primarily based upon the failure of the majority to engage in procedural rule making (of all things) in an appellate court opinion. I should have thought it was beyond serious question that an appellate court should not engage in procedural rule making in the decision making process, especially rule making on behalf of the trial court.
The original majority opinion (District of Columbia v. Hudson, et al., D.C.App., 404 A.2d 175 (1979) (en banc)) required the parties to submit “a proposed plan for carrying out the sealing of arrest records.” As I understood it, this was done to assist the court in issuing guidelines for the trial court.
It is not the proper function of an appellate court in deciding cases to engage in rule making. That is an administrative-legislative function. Furthermore, it is undesirable to usurp the trial court’s rule making function in this or any other case.1 *297Curiously, the dissent states its awareness that “this court cannot adopt rules for the Superior Court”, but then proceeds to state it “would order implementation of the following procedures” and then actually sets out rules of trial court procedure. Thus, the dissenting judges are in fact promulgating rules for the trial court, which they previously said this court cannot do.
To illustrate the realistic side of the matter, the proposed Rule 1 in the dissent provides that a motion for relief is available when “an arrest is terminated without conviction and before trial.” The relief we authorized is directed to pre-trial terminations. But as Rule 1 is drafted, it would also enable such a motion when a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence is granted and the indictment is then later dismissed. It also, in effect, provides that a motion for relief may be filed when an indictment is dismissed for failure to state an offense (or for other reasons).
Basically, this case amounts to a judicial effort to make whole innocent persons who the government has wronged by mistaken arrests. Defendants who are arrested but whose proceedings are terminated before trial due to grant of motions to suppress evidence, for example, do not come within the philosophy of the relief being provided. Consequently, I should think the trial court would not by rule provide such defendants this procedural avenue of relief, but rather would except them from the rule. It would be no answer to say that in those circumstances a defendant would in all likelihood not be able to carry her or his evidentiary burden. The fact remains the avenue of relief, by the terms of the proposed rule, would be made available procedurally. I doubt the trial court would approve this. Rule making of trial court rules of procedure is better left to the trial court.

. Defendants coming under the rationale of our decision in Hudson, supra, need not, of course, await promulgation of procedural rules to file for relief as it has now been made available by Hudson as a matter of law. Further, I would see no reason for the trial court to hold any such proceedings in abeyance. A rule of rea*297son would apply on timeliness until the trial court adopts its rules.