Court Opinion

ID: 9442235
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:41:01.73062+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:01.524994
License: Public Domain

WALLER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In my study of this case the following viewpoints have developed:
1. The appellees were lawfully paroled.
2. Between the dates of their parole and their re-arrest and reincarceration, they had committed no violation of the conditions of their parole.
3. That the Parole Board, neither at the time of the issuance of the warrant declaring the parolees to have violated the conditions of the parole and to be fugitives from justice, nor at the time of revocation of parole, had any “reliable information”, or information of any kind, that the parolees had violated the conditions of parole.
4. That the provisions of the statute requiring the Board after the issuance of a warrant and before revocation of parole, to afford parolees an opportunity to appear before the Board, were intended to require the Board to comply with the Constitutional prohibition against the deprivation of liberty without an opportunity to be heard, and the appearance allowed parolees in this case afforded no such opportunity to be heard as the law and the Constitution contemplate.
5. That one who has rightfully earned and lawfully achieved parole has a status— call it what you will — which he has the right to defend and of which he cannot be deprived except by due process of law, to be afforded either by the Board or, upon its failure, by the courts.
6. Neither adverse newspaper criticism of the granting of parole or a demand or request by a sub-committee of the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Department of 'Congress can lawfull supplant the requirement of the statute for “reliable information of violation of parole”.
7. That the Parole Board cannot rights fully revoke a parole lawfully granted without cause or grounds for such revocation and the failure of the Board to acquaint either the parolees or the 'Court below with any grounds for the revocation of the parole should be taken as proof not only that there were no such grounds but also *48should be taken as a deprivation of liberty without due process.
8. The case must be judged by the law as it existed July 1, 1948, or at the time of the issuance of the warrants for the arrest, and not by the New Judicial Code of September 1, 1948, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq.
9. The fact that a criminal trial may be lawful despite the fact that the defendant was taken on an invalid warrant of arrest, as analogized in the majority opinion, seems inapt here. The trial in a criminal case is on an indictment or information whereby, if conviction results, the defendant may be deprived of his liberty. It is the indictment or information that informs the defendant of the charges and what he shall be expected to meet. In a revocation of parole it is the warrant of arrest that deprives him of his liberty and that should acquaint him of the thing with which he is charged.
10. Neither newspapers, sub-committees, political repercussions, whims, or capriciousness, singly or collectively, without more, justifies the incarceration or re-incarceration of an individual longer than it is reasonably necessary to afford him a full and fair hearing on charges adduced against him.
11. Notwithstanding the pronouncement of the Board to the sub-committee that it, like Pilate, found no fault in the parolees since their release, and notwithstanding the refusal of the Board members to answer interrogatories or to divulge, either to the parolees or to the lower Court, any reliable information as to any violation of parole, these men have been cast back into custody from which no relief can come if the Board is above the law.
The facts, as found by the Court below, are without any contradiction in the evidence and I think that its judgment should be affirmed.