Court Opinion

ID: 9426021
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:31.609653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.675855
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Marshall join,
dissenting.
If the shortcomings of the challenged Texas statute were only those addressed by the Court, I could join the Court’s opinion. For I agree that Art. 44.09 is not rendered unconstitutional by its more lenient treatment of escaped felons under sentence of death or life imprisonment, nor by its asserted “underinclusive” inapplicability to a felon who escapes and is returned to custody involuntarily before his appeal is filed. But I think the Court has failed to come to grips with the real constitutional defect in the challenged statute.
*543In summarily reversing the judgment before us the Court relies upon decisions establishing the long-settled “practice of declining to review the convictions of escaped criminal defendants.” Ante, at 537. See Smith v. United States, 94 U. S. 97 (1876); Bonahan v. Nebraska, 125 U. S. 692 (1887); Molinaro v. New Jersey, 396 U. S. 365 (1970). See also Allen v. Georgia, 166 U. S. 138 (1897). But these decisions have universally been understood to mean only that a court may properly dismiss an appeal of a fugitive convict when, and because, he is not within the custody and control of the court. Until today, this Court has never intimated that under the rule of Smith, Bonahan, and Molinaro a court might dismiss an appeal of an escaped criminal defendant at a time when he has been returned to custody, and thus to the court’s power and control.*
The rationale for the dismissal of an appeal when the appellant is at large is clearly stated in the Smith decision:
“It is clearly within our discretion to refuse to hear a criminal case in error, unless the convicted party, suing out the writ, is where he can be made to respond to any judgment we may render. In this case it is admitted that the plaintiff in error *544has escaped, and is not within the control of the court below, either actually, by being in custody, or constructively, by being out on bail. If we affirm the judgment, he is not likely to appear to submit to his sentence. If we reverse it and order a new trial, he will appear or not, as he may consider most for his interest. Under such circumstances, we are not inclined to hear and decide what may prove to be only a moot case.” 94 U. S., at 97.
See also Bonahan v. Nebraska, 125 U. S. 692 (1887).
Here, as the Court notes, Dorrough was recaptured two days after his flight. And, as the Court also notes, his appeal was dismissed after his recapture. In this situation, the rule of Smith-Bonahan-Molinaro provides no support whatever for the Texas law that deprived Dorrough of his right to appeal.
If the challenged statute can be sustained, it must rest upon the alternative ground advanced by the Court— that, as a punitive and deterrent measure enacted in the exercise of the State’s police power, it “discourages the felony of escape and encourages voluntary surrenders.” But the statute imposes totally irrational punishments upon those subject to its application. If an escaped felon has been convicted in violation of law, the loss of his right to appeal results in his serving a sentence that under law was erroneously imposed. If, on the other hand, his trial was free of reversible error, the loss of his right to appeal results in no punishment at all. And those whose convictions would have been reversed if their appeals had not been dismissed serve totally disparate sentences, dependent not upon the circumstances of their escape, but upon whatever sentences may have been meted out under their invalid convictions. In my view, this random pattern of punishment cannot be considered a rational means of enforcing the State’s interest *545in deterring and punishing escapes. Cf. McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184, 191 (1964); Rinaldi v. Yeager, 384 U. S. 305, 309 (1966); U. S. Dept. of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U. S. 528, 538 (1973).
A closely analogous case was considered by the Supreme Court of Idaho in In re Mallon, 16 Idaho 737, 740-741, 102 P. 374 (1909). There the court considered a statute providing:
“ ‘. . . Every state prisoner confined in the state prison for a term less than for life, who escapes therefrom, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for a term equal in length to the term he was serving at the time of such escape; said second term of imprisonment to commence from the time he would otherwise have been discharged from said prison.’ ”
The court concluded that the statute at issue was unconstitutional. Similarly the Supreme Court of Kansas in State v. Lewin, 53 Kan. 679, 37 P. 168 (1894), held unconstitutional a statute providing that upon escape a convict was to be punished by imposition of the full term of the sentence under which he had initially been imprisoned, without credit for any time served before the escape.
Under these Idaho and Kansas statutes, two men escaping at the same time and in the same manner could receive wholly different sentences, not related at all to the gravity of the offense of escape. That is precisely the vice of the Texas statute at issue in the present case.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

The Court in Molinaro v. New Jersey relied upon a Note, 18 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 427, 430 (1950), which is cited in the Court’s opinion today. Ante, at 537. The rule and its rationale are correctly stated in that Note: “A review of criminal appeal cases both in state and federal courts shows that when an appellant has escaped from custody and cannot be brought before the court, his case is not left pending indefinitely. In the absence of any statutory regulation, dismissal is granted in some form .... The basic theory behind all criminal cases has always been that there must be a defendant in the power and under the control of the court, and that there be someone who can respond to the judgment.” 18 Geo. Wash. L. Rev., at 428-429.