Court Opinion

ID: 9463229
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:01:13.534425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:59.610018
License: Public Domain

MANSFIELD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent for the reason that the writ of habeas corpus issued by the Eastern District of New York was not a “detainer” but a valid order pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241(c)(5), a federal law which has not been repealed or modified by the Interstate Agreement on Detainers Act (“Detainers Act”). Article IV(e) of the Detainers Act, which requires dismissal where a prisoner produced under that Act is returned to the sending state without trial, therefore does not apply.
The majority, in my view, has failed to recognize and give effect to the significant functional and legal differences between a detainer and a federal writ of habeas corpus. A detainer, as its name implies, is an administrative notification lodged with a prison authority, advising that a certain prisoner in its custody is wanted for prosecution elsewhere and requesting that the prisoner be detained or held to face the out-of-state charge. See S.Rep.No.1356, 91st Cong., 2d Sess., 1970 U.S.Code Cong, and Admin.News, pp. 4864-65. The detain-er is not an order commanding or obligating the custodian to produce the prisoner; it is merely a request, usually respected as a matter of comity between states, to detain the prisoner so that a representative of the requesting state may take custody, with the consent and cooperation of the holding state, and transport or release him to the requesting state for the purpose of facing the new charge. Prior to a state’s adoption of the Detainers Act it usually did not surrender the prisoner to the other state until the termination of his incarceration in the holding state, since that state was not obligated, except to the extent that it expressly elected to do so by extradition statute or as a matter of comity, to produce a prisoner who was the subject of a detainer or writ of habeas corpus lodged with it by another state. See, e. g., May v. Georgia, 409 F.2d 203, 204 (5th Cir. 1969); Schindler, Interjurisdictional Conflict and the Right to a Speedy Trial, 35 U.Cin.L.Rev. 179, 185 (1966). Similarly the federal government was not under any such obligation, see Ableman v. Booth, 62 U.S. (21 How.) 506, 16 L.Ed. 169 (1858); Tarble’s Case, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 397, 20 L.Ed. 597 (1872); Warren, Federal and State Court Interference, 43 Harv.L.Rev. 345, 353-59 (1930), except to the extent that Congress authorized a prisoner to be transferred to the requesting state, see, e. g., Title 8 U.S.C. § 4085.
Unlike a detainer, a federal writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum is a federal court order commanding the immediate production of a prisoner at a federal trial. Congress has expressly authorized the federal district courts, without qualification, to issue such writs for the production of a prisoner where “it is necessary to bring him into court to testify or for trial.” 28 U.S.C. § 2241(c)(5). Upon being served with a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum, the state authority does not treat the writ as a detainer; it turns the prisoner over at once to the federal custodian, usually a U.S. Marshal. Nor is the prisoner thus surrendered by the state pursuant to any enabling law passed by it, such as the Detainers Act, but pursuant to § 2241, which represents the supreme law of the land, Const. Art. VI, cl. 2, and extends beyond the geographical boundaries of the district court which issued the writ. Carbo v. United States, 364 U.S. 611, 81 S.Ct. 338, 5 L.Ed.2d 329 (1961). Upon termination of the federal trial the *596marshal returns the prisoner to the state’s custody and the writ is discharged. At no time does the writ have the effect of a detainer.
Because state authorities have apparently always complied with the commands of such federal writs, the federal government has never, according to our research, been called upon to invoke federal supremacy. See, e. g., Ex parte Royall, 117 U.S. 241, 6 S.Ct. 734, 29 L.Ed. 868 (1886), where the Supreme Court stated “That the petitioner is held under the authority of a State cannot affect the question of the power or jurisdiction of the Circuit Court to inquire into the cause of his commitment, and to discharge him if he be restrained of his liberty in violation of the Constitution,” 117 U.S. at 249, 6 S.Ct. at 739 but went on to hold that comity required the federal courts to defer passing upon such questions until the applicant had exhausted his state remedies. See, generally, Developments in the Law — Federal Habeas Corpus, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1038, 1048-49 (1970). Similarly in Carbo v. United States, 364 U.S. 611, 81 S.Ct. 338, 5 L.Ed.2d 329 (1961), the Supreme Court, in holding that federal district courts have the power to issue writs of habeas corpus ad prosequendum extraterritorially, recognized that the existence of comity between sovereignties made it unnecessary to invoke the Supremacy Clause, stating:
“In view of the cooperation extended by the New York authorities in honoring the writ, it is unnecessary to decide what would be the effect of a similar writ absent such cooperation.” 364 U.S. at 621 n. 20, 81 S.Ct. at 344.
However, I have no doubt that if a state institution refused to obey a federal writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum properly issued pursuant to § 2241 and thus provoked a federal-state confrontation, the writ would be held enforcible against the institution under the Supremacy Clause.1
For present purposes the important point is that the Detainers Act applies only to those subject to detainers, not to persons surrendered pursuant to § 2241 writs or to proceedings in connection with which such writs are used. The reasons underlying the adoption of the Detainers Act, furthermore, militate against its being construed as a repeal or modification of § 2241, since they do not pertain to the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum. The primary purpose of the Detainers Act is to protect a prisoner against the detrimental consequences of a detainer being lodged against him, which prior to the Act caused him to lose various privileges and to remain ineligible for rehabilitation or work programs as long as the detainer remained outstanding, a period usually lasting for the duration of his imprisonment. The Detainers Act enables a prisoner to clear a detain-er lodged against him by obtaining a speedy trial of the out-of-state charges which led to the detainer being lodged.
The writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum, as distinguished from a detainer, has *597never had any such prejudicial consequences for the prisoner; it is executed at once and, upon return of the prisoner to the state institution, it does not remain outstanding against him as would a detainer. Thus the writ is wholly unrelated to detainers or their prejudicial consequences.
Nor was Art. IV of the Detainers Act, which permits a state lodging a detainer against a prisoner in another state or in federal custody to request and obtain production of the prisoner for trial unless disapproved by the governor of the sending state, intended to apply to proceedings under § 2241. The purpose of Art. IV is to assure that states which formerly were powerless to obtain production of prisoners held by other states or by the federal government will now be able to secure their presence, subject to certain conditions. One of these conditions is that the receiving state, after obtaining the detained prisoner merely upon request, will not abuse that privilege by returning him untried, since this would have the effect of reinstating and indefinitely prolonging the detainer lodged against him by the receiving state, with its detrimental effects. Since the federal government obtains custody under a § 2241 writ without lodging any detainer, Art. IV does not have any effect on its action.
That Congress, in adopting the Detainers Act, did not intend to classify federal writs of habeas corpus as detainers or to subject such writs to the limitations of the Act, is further evidenced by the following later statement of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, issued when it expressly recommended clarification of the matter in the proposed Criminal Justice Reform Act of 1975 (S.l):
“Federal prosecution authorities and all Federal defendants have always had and continue to have recourse to a speedy trial in a Federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2241(c)(5), the Federal writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum. The Committee does not intend, nor does it believe that the Congress in enacting the Agreement in 1970 intended, to limit the scope and applicability of that writ.”
Although this statement post-dated the adoption of the Detainers Act, it is significant for the reason that 12 of the 15 members of the Committee who issued it had been members who joined in the original report recommending adoption of the Detainers Act (Sen.Rep. 91-1356).
The Third Circuit’s recent decision in United States ex rel. Esola v. Groomes, 520 F.2d 830 (3d Cir. 1975), relied upon by the majority, is clearly distinguishable. In that case the court properly treated a Monmouth County, New Jersey, writ of habeas corpus as a detainer under the Detainers Act, holding that dismissal of a New Jersey charge against a federal prisoner obtained under such a writ would be mandated by Art. IV(e) of the Act if the plaintiff should prove that the state returned him to federal custody in Danbury, Connecticut, without trial. The essential distinguishing feature, of course, was that the New Jersey writ, unlike the federal writ in the present case, could not, independent of the Detainers Act, have effectively commanded the federal authorities at Danbury to produce or release the prisoner for trial in New Jersey. It could only function as a detainer or request under Art. Ill of the Detainers Act, and it was so treated by the court.
Thus nothing in the language or legislative history of the Detainers Act indicates any intent on the part of Congress to repeal or modify § 2241 or to supplant federal writs of habeas corpus, which serve one distinctive purpose, with detainers, which serve another. The two statutes do not conflict with one another. When they are so easily reconcilable, it is error, in my view, to hold in effect that § 2241 is implicitly repealed in part by the Act. See Rosencrans v. United States, 165 U.S. 257, 17 S.Ct. 302, 41 L.Ed. 708 (1897).
Accordingly I would hold that where a federal court obtains the presence of a prisoner for pleading or trial by a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum issued pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241(c)(5), Art. IV(e) of the Detainers Act has no application.

. I am aware of a line of decisions stemming from the Supreme Court’s decision in Ponzi v. Fessenden, 258 U.S. 254, 42 S.Ct. 309, 66 L.Ed. 607 (1922), expressing or implying the view that compliance with a writ of habeas corpus is a matter of comity. See, e. g., United States v. Oliver, 523 F.2d 253, 258 (2d Cir. 1975); Lunsford v. Hudspeth, 126 F.2d 653 (10th Cir. 1942); Nolan v. United States, 163 F.2d 768 (8th Cir. 1947); United States ex rel. Moses v. Kipp, 232 F.2d 147 (7th Cir. 1956); Crow v. United States, 323 F.2d 888 (8th Cir. 1963); Terlikowski v. United States, 379 F.2d 501 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1008, 88 S.Ct. 569, 19 L.Ed.2d 604 (1967); McDonald v. Ciccone, 409 F.2d 28 (8th Cir. 1969); United States ex rel. Brown v. Malcolm, 350 F.Supp. 496, 499-50 n. 9 (E.D.N.Y.1972). None of these decisions, however, involved a refusal by a state to obey a federal writ. Nor do they discuss the question of whether the Supremacy Clause obligates a state to comply with a federal writ. In many of the cases the statements amount to dicta, since the issue was the prisoner’s standing to object to the writ.
For these reasons I do not find any inconsistency between these decisions, which recognize the role of comity in securing federal-state cooperation, and a case requiring application of the Supremacy Clause where comity might fail. This issue did not exist in Ponzi for the reason that it involved a state rather than a federal writ and the question was whether the state had jurisdiction to try a prisoner who had been turned over by federal authorities as a matter of comity.