Court Opinion

ID: 9460319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:47:18.524853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:34.456511
License: Public Domain

THORNBERRY, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result):
I agree that the conviction should be affirmed. However, I cannot join in the majority opinion’s treatment of appellant’s claim that his conviction was barred by 32 CFR § 1642.41(b). That regulation, while it was in force, required the local board to contact the “person who will always know” the registrant’s address, after an induction order mailed to the registrant had been returned to the board. There was a reason for the regulation other than to indicate the method through which a local board might initiate prosecution. Where the board had not complied with the regulation, the inference might be drawn that the registrant could be reached through a “person who will always know” his whereabouts, thus dispelling the notion that the registrant deliberately failed to apprise his board of an address where mail would reach him. And in cases where the regulation applied, we could not sustain a conviction unless we could find that the board had made some compliance with it. See United States v. Chudy, 9th Cir. 1973, 474 F.2d 1069, 1071.
The majority opinion rejects the appellant’s contention by suggesting that it is immaterial whether the local board complied with the regulation, because the evidence was sufficient to show that the appellant’s “course of conduct” continued at least until some time in 1972 and thus beyond the revocation date of the regulation. My concern is the extent to which evidence of a pre-Decem-ber 10 course of conduct can be relied upon to sustain a conviction if the government has failed to comply with pre-December 10 law. The more fundamental question is the extent to which the government can retroactively diminish a defendant’s rights by the administrative removal of a substantive requirement for conviction. These are difficult questions which, in my opinion, are not properly considered by the majority opinion in its suggestion that the regulation is of no moment.
Under the circumstances of this case and viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, I would hold that the local board complied with the regulation. There is evidence in the record indicating that the board attempted to contact one or more persons listed in the appellant’s file as persons “who will always know” the appellant’s address and that these contacts were made after the appellant had failed to comply with induction orders.
I would leave the difficult questions for another day and would make no suggestion that it is immaterial whether the board complied with the regulation.