Court Opinion

ID: 9637676
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:14:59.984133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:58.963574
License: Public Domain

COTTERAL, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The majority opinion ascribes too much importance to the order of probation. It is not of more force than a sentence, on which credit is allowed. If appellee had been serving his sentence, he might, with the consent of the Attorney General, have been tried for another offense. The probation ought not to prevent it. The practice of subjecting prisoners to a second trial is well settled. It does not, as the District .Judge appears to have ruled, interfere with the control- of the defendant. It would not constitute a breach of any of the conditions of the probation.
It is noted by the majority that there was no application for the privilege of trying the defendant in the state court. In form, it was not made, but there is no reason to hold that the proceeding to bring the defendant to' trial for the state offense did not have that effect. Such was not the ground of refusing that trial. If the probation acts are meant to preclude any other trial, they ought to be speedily amended. But no such purpose was intended.
As that trial may be had consistently with the probation in the federal court, it should have been permitted, and to refuse it means only that the evidence touching the state offense may be lost meantime, and the state prosecution frustrated. And if the District Court still insists on retaining constructive control of the defendant, during the probation term, then his sentence in the state court, in case of conviction, would begin at the end of probation. To hold otherwise is to maintain that probation for one offense in the federal court is a complete grant of immunity from all other prosecutions. I cannot assent to any such doctrine.