Court Opinion

ID: 9452689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:48:47.182992+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:19.228072
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
Defendant’s petition for rehearing makes, essentially, five points.
1. If one designated offense is constitutionally protected, there cannot be an included offense. Defendant cites but one case to support this contention. If it is pertinent at all, it is contrary to his position.
2. The petition at least implies that different consideration should be given to the defendant because he refused counsel in the district court. The court was, properly, most solicitous of the defendant, but it is unheard of that different legal principles became applicable because he chose to represent himself.
3. A distinction should be made between S.S.S. Form 110 (Notice of Classification) and S.S.S. Form 2 (Registration Certificate). Defendant suggests no reason for drawing a distinction, and we can think of none.
4. The “burning” of a card might leave enough card extant so that one still “possessed” the card, and 5. Defendant might have possessed a duplicate card. We might agree with defendant that, for either of these reasons, a burning in some circumstances would not violate the possession requirement. In the present case defendant was convicted under a charge that he did wilfully “mutilate, destroy and change * * * ” his card. The conviction was fully supported. The government witnesses described the “charred remains” of the card as a “fragment.” Defendant, who was fully advised of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights, acknowledged to the witnesses that he had burned “his” card, and permitted the fragment to be photographed. At trial he conceded the photograph’s admissibility and “obvious” au*543thenticity. We note, but without approval, defendant’s present argument that he would still “possess” a card if it was “cut * * * in ten pieces.” The photograph reveals a substantially incomplete card. Manifestly defendant no longer “possessed” that card.
Nor did defendant’s own position permit the suggestion that what was burned was a duplicate of a card still in his possession. Defendant himself introduced and read to the jury his statement to his draft board that he could not “in good conscience carry what is called a draft card.” Afterwards the court offered him probation if he would apply for and carry a card but he replied, “I couldn’t in good conscience do that,” and chose confinement instead. We will not, on such a record, grant rehearing to consider whether defendant was carrying a proper draft card in his possession.
Petition denied.