Court Opinion

ID: 9472397
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:59:04.172666+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:54.808174
License: Public Domain

EUGENE A. WRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority holds that Rule 36 may be used only to conform the sentence to the term which the record indicates was intended. While it may be correct that the court’s originál intention was to include the missing counts in the two groups of counts on which it did pass sentence, it is at least as likely that the original intention was to impose additional time on those counts.
There is no evidence that the trial judge intended to suspend sentence or impose concurrent sentences on the unmentioned counts. On the contrary, that he explicitly sentenced Kaye on 17 other counts, some to run concurrently, suggests that his failure to sentence on the three counts (including the two at issue here) was due to oversight rather than plan.
The inadvertence that characterized the entry of judgment was noted sua sponte by this court in our earlier opinion:
VII. Sentencing of Kaye
Our review of the record reveals the trial court, through inadvertence, failed to sentence defendant Kaye on counts 3, 6, and 10. Because the verdict and sentence are inconsistent, this appears to be a clerical error which may be corrected at any time. Fed.R.Crim.P. 36. We have reversed Kaye’s conviction on count 10, and we remand for sentencing on counts 3 and 6.
United States v. DeLuca, 692 F.2d 1277, 1286 (9th Cir.1982). The district judge responded by doing what we requested and imposed sentence on the other counts.
The trial judge may have merely overlooked the missed counts because counsel did not bring them to his attention, and would have imposed six months had he realized the omission. This type of judicial oversight cannot be categorized literally as either a “legal” or a “clerical” error. The majority holds that this kind of error is substantive and not correctable. I disagree.
The majority reasons that “[a] criminal defendant is entitled to at least as much protection from such judicial afterthoughts as a civil defendant.” Although analogy to Civil Rule 60 has merit, the ability to correct judicial inadvertence is no clearer in the civil than in the criminal context. I am not convinced that the rationale of the Rule 60(a) cases cited by the majority would not permit a judge to increase a damage award upon discovery that an element of damages was overlooked in calculating the award.
In Huey v. Teledyne, 608 F.2d 1234 (9th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 458 U.S. 1106, 102 S.Ct. 3484, 73 L.Ed.2d 1367 (1982), this court approved as a Rule 60(a) correction the trial judge’s amendment of a written order to conform to his earlier oral ruling. In Kelley v. Bank Building & Equipment Corp., 453 F.2d 774, 778 (10th Cir.1972), Rule 60(a) was used to incorporate the terms of a prior agreement into the judgment, so that it conformed to the parties’ expectations. United States v. Stuart, 392 F.2d 60, 62 (3d Cir.1968), held that Rule 60(a) “permits, inter alia, reasonable additions to the record,” such as addition of documents inadvertently omitted.
These cases do not provide a clear distinction between so-called “substantive errors,” which may not be corrected under Rule 60(a) and oversights or “errors of only clerical significance,” which may be corrected under Rule 60(a). They do sug*493gest that, although Rule 60(a) may not be used to change a deliberate judicial action, “[i]t is axiomatic that courts have the power and the duty to correct ... judgments issued due to inadvertence or mistake.” Security Mutual Casualty Co. v. Century Casualty Co., 621 F.2d 1062, 1065 (10th Cir.1980) (quoting American Trucking Ass’ns v. Frisco Transportation Co., 358 U.S. 133, 145, 79 S.Ct. 170, 177, 3 L.Ed.2d 172 (1958)).
In the civil context, Rule 60(b) provides for relief from final judgment for reasons including “mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect.” This suggests that the relief provided in Rule 60(a) does not cover judicial inadvertencies. If Criminal Rule 36 were limited to clerical and not judicial action, however, a criminal trial court would have no means to correct inadvertencies, except by reducing sentence under Rule 35.
We recently refused to bind a trial court to its mistake in the case of an inadvertently dismissed indictment. United States v. Rubio, 727 F.2d 786 (9th Cir.1983).
The Supreme Court ... has recognized that “[ejvery court must be presumed to exercise those powers belonging to it which are necessary for the promotion of public justice; and we do not doubt that this court possesses the power to reinstate any cause dismissed by mistake.” The Palmrya, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 1, 10, 6 L.Ed. 531, 534 (1827).
... We cannot conceive that Congress intended, by failing to provide a criminal counterpart to Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b), to strip a court of its inherent jurisdiction to vacate or modify an' order inadvertently made through mistake in a criminal proceeding. This is a matter within the trial court’s discretion, subject only to review by this court for abuse thereof ____
Rubio, 727 F.2d at 798-99.
The majority suggests that the defendant’s “right to the judgment at the time it was entered” does not attach until the defendant has exercised, or waived the exercise of, all appeal rights. But initiation of the appeal is only a jurisdictional bar to correction of a clerical error, at least in the civil context. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(a); Huey, 608 F.2d at 1237. Thus, we could have remanded sua sponte for correction, and then considered the appeal of the corrected judgment on the merits.
Under the majority’s analysis, once a defendant has appealed, a trial judge could not, after entering judgment and sentence, increase the sentence upon his' own discovery that he had inadvertently failed to sentence on several counts, “The Constitution does not require that sentencing should be a game in which a wrong move by the judge means immunity for the prisoner.” United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U.S. 117, 135, 101 S.Ct. 426, 436, 66 L.Ed.2d 328 (1980) (quoting Bozza v. United States, 330 U.S. 160, 166-67, 67 S.Ct. 645, 648-49, 91 L.Ed. 818 (1947)).
I see no reason why a void in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure should preclude a trial judge from correcting an inadvertent failure to sentence. We seem to have a situation that calls for clarification of the rules.