Court Opinion

ID: 9479133
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:09:10.928151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:50.695384
License: Public Domain

EDMONDSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I join in the court’s opinion except Part C.
I agree that Ballard v. Blackwell, 449 F.2d 868, 869 (5th Cir.1971), sets the standard: whether the state confinement was “exclusively the product of such action by Federal law-enforcement officials [so] as to justify treating the State jail as the practical equivalent of a Federal one.” (citation omitted) (emphasis added). “Exclusively” is an important part of this formulation. See Savage v. Henderson, 475 F.2d 78, 79 (5th Cir.1973) (prisoner entitled to credit if unable to make bond “solely” due to federal detainer warrant); O’Connor v. Attorney General, 470 F.2d 732, 734 (5th Cir.1972) (defendant-appellant has burden “to show that the federal detainer alone caused his continued state confinement”).
“A judicial opinion, as a precedent, is to be read and applied in the light of the facts of the case in which the opinion was written.” Roberson v. United States, 249 F.2d 737, 743 (5th Cir.1957); accord White v. Aronson, 302 U.S. 16, 21, 58 S.Ct. 95, 97, 82 L.Ed. 20 (1937) (“Of course, the general language of [] opinions must be read in connection with the facts.”). Ballard’s facts therefore dictate the meaning of the phrase “exclusively the product” of action by federal officials. Ballard said he would have made bail on his state charges and, thus, would have been free but for the existence of a federal detainer. So, Ballard alleged facts showing that his imprisonment was due solely to federal action.
Here, defendants were arrested by state officers, acting pursuant to a state arrest warrant issued by a state judicial officer. Defendants could have been prosecuted by the state, and perhaps they still could be (although I do not think this is determinative). The days of credit defendants seek are days that predate the federal detainer. Until that detainer was lodged, defendants were purely state prisoners and could have been set free by the state at any time had it wished to do so. Therefore, until the federal detainer was lodged, defendants’ imprisonment was not due solely — if it was due in any legal sense — to federal action.
The circumstances leading up to defendants’ arrest do not control whether defendants, once they are incarcerated, are state or federal prisoners. See United States v. Walker, 710 F.2d 1062, 1070-71 (5th Cir.1983) (following Ballard and rejecting argument that state custody was functional equivalent of federal custody where federal agents participated with state agents in investigation and arrest); United States v. Shillingford, 586 F.2d 372, 375 (5th Cir.1978). In addition, even if a DEA agent did urge defendants’ arrest in this case, state officials still had to agree and to act: the DEA agent’s wish was not the exclusive cause of the arrest. Ballard lends no support to the conclusion reached by the court’s opinion; nor am I aware of other precedent that extends state jail-time credit to federal cases as today’s court seems to do.
*1508Many people get no credit for time spent in pretrial custody; for example, no credit is given for pretrial confinement if the charges are dropped. Whether these defendants get ten days of jail-time credit is not very important to anyone but them, but situations like the one in this case will happen again. The expansion of Ballard to allow colorable arguments for jail-time credit whenever a federal agent had something to do with a state arrest — with subtle factual shadings affecting the argument’s outcome — injects considerable uncertainty into law that was settled.
I would affirm the district court’s judgment.