Court Opinion

ID: 9652416
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:23:30.619361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:51.191754
License: Public Domain

MACK, Associate Judge, Retired,
dissenting, with whom NEWMAN, Associate Judge, joins:
Today our court, in one “fell swoop” dashes the hopes of Mr. Holt, and awards me the dubious distinction of having my dissent in another case overruled. See United States v. Young, 376 A.2d 809 (D.C.1977) (Mack, J., dissenting). Thus our en banc majority in this (the Holt) case, having convened ostensibly to consider the validity of United States v. Young (which the division in Holt questioned on the facts but nevertheless thought controlling), in effect has not merely reaffirmed the majority holding in Young but rather added new legal dimensions to buttress the questionable holding of Young.1
The division in Young reversed an order of the trial court which had dismissed an indictment brought under D.C.Code § 22-2307, for its failure to allege “specific intent to extort.” The trial court found that this felony statute, if interpreted to prohibit no more egregious conduct than that of the misdemeanor statute (D.C.Code § 22-507), raised constitutional infirmities growing out of disparate punishments, and gave the prosecutor unbridled discretion. In reversing the trial court, our Young division looked only to the plain language of § 22-507 — thus declining to even consider legislative history. Today, however, the en banc majority, in a rather reverse analysis, milks all that it can, and more, from that legislative history in refusing to overrule Young and in affirming Mr. Holt’s conviction.
The problem here is that the legislative history does not support, but rather negates, the majority’s position. Thus having examined at length the “Tydings amendment” in the Senate and the “Whitener bill” in the House — with the repeated references to extortion or commerce or the protection of businesses, the majority tells us that the legislative history relied upon by Mr. Holt (whose only crime was to say “I’m going to get you bitch”) “does not support his interpretation strong enough to override the plain meaning of the statutory language.”
The net result of the majority’s analysis is to create an “absurd result.” Citizens Association of Georgetown v. Zoning *977Commission of the District of Columbia, 392 A.2d 1027, 1033 (D.C.1978) (en banc). The attempt to share this absurdity with the District of Columbia Council (because of a revision of the D.C.Code) is, I am sure, unwarranted and unwanted.
I respectfully dissent.2
APPENDIX

. The majority also takes pains to weaken another division opinion, Ball v. United States, 429 A.2d 1353 (D.C.1981), which had also called into question the validity of Young.

. I append hereto (for purposes of ease in referring to the legislative history of § 22-2307), the concurring opinion of the division in this case — a decision vacated at the time of the granting of en banc petition.