Court Opinion

ID: 9718493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:25:30.259147+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:59.677560
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Flood, J.:
I cannot agree that this matter is moot while the relator remains in prison as a result of the conviction which the court below found to be the result of an invalid trial in Pennsylvania.
This is not merely a question of rehabilitating the reputation of one who has already served his sentence. The setting aside of the Pennsylvania conviction will probably do little for Garner’s reputation or social standing. The question involved is whether he is validly imprisoned.
If the defendant’s petition is believed, he was convicted in New York in 1956 of carrying a weapon, which is, for a first offender, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of one year under the New York Penal Law, §§1897, 1937. He would, therefore, have long since completed his maximum sentence in New York, were it not for his prior Pennsylvania conviction for attempted robbery. Section 1897, supra, makes carrying a weapon a felony instead of a misdemeanor if the defendant had previously been convicted of “any crime”. A felony carries a maximum penalty of seven years under §1935 of the New York Penal Code. In the case of a second felony, which Garner’s New York crime became because of his Pennsylvania conviction, the maximum sentence may be fourteen years. As a matter of fact, instead of the maximum of one year which he could have been given if the New York conviction stood alone, he is serving, because of the effect of the Pennsylvania conviction, a sentence of thirteen to fourteen years.
*235The New York court cannot grant a new trial in a Pennsylvania case, although conceivably it might hold the Pennsylvania conviction unconstitutional and invalid and therefore no basis for a second offender sentence. It seems appropriate, if not necessary, that the matter should be determined here. Whether or not the decision in United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502, 74 S. Ct. 247, 98 L. ed. 248 (1954), is binding upon state courts, its reasoning is persuasive. Procedural rules or rules of convenience denying a remedy must give way when constitutional rights are involved.
I would affirm the order of the court below.