Court Opinion

ID: 9640264
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:01:57.781911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:28.706089
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The application for rehearing in this case is lengthy but raises only one point that requires consideration. It is alleged that the court was illegally organized for the purpose of hearing the appeal because Judge SIBLEY, who sat on the hearing of the appeal, had rendered judgment in the District Court denying an application by Lee for a writ of habeas corpus. It is contended Judge SIBLEY was ineligible under section 120, Jud.Code (28 U.S.C.A. § 216), which provides: “No judge before whom a cause or question may have been tried or heard in a district court, or existing circuit court, shall sit on the trial or hearing of such cause or question in the circuit court of appeals.”
Construing the statute, which alone governs, in Rexford v. Brunswick, 228 U.S. 339, 33 S.Ct. 515, 517, 57 L.Ed. 864, the Supreme Court said: “The terms of the statute, before quoted, are both direct and comprehensive. Its manifest purpose is to require that the circuit court of appeals be composed in every hearing of judges none of whom will be in the attitude of passing upon the propriety, scope, or effect of any ruling of his own made in the progress of the cause in the court of first instance.”
From an unpublished opinion by Judge SIBLEY in the habeas corpus case it appears that the grounds on which habeas corpus was sought were that the trial was a nullity because defendant was insane, at *332the time of the trial and that he was not present in the courtroom at the time that some of the testimony was introduced. Judge SIBLEY discussed these contentions in his opinion, but the decision was put mainly upon the ground that a motion for new trial was pending in the case, the judgment had not become final and would be subject to appeal.
The appeal in this case was from the judgment of conviction. One of the assignments of error pressed was the denial of a motion in arrest of judgment on the ground that appellant was insane. Conceding that Judge SIBLEY passed upon a similar question affecting appellant in the habeas corpus case, that is immaterial. In order to invoke the statute it must be shown that the question decided in the District Court was in the same case and is also presented for decision on appeal. The question considered and decided by Judge SIBLEY in the District Court was that the petitioner was not entitled to be released on habeas corpus and was in a separate and distinct case. ' That question was not presented on this appeal at all.
Appellant was represented by counsel on the hearing of this appeal. The case was elaborately argued and a voluminous brief was filed. Objection was not made to Judge SIBLEY’S sitting on the appeal and the impropriety of his having done so is raised for the first time on the motion for rehearing. No doubt, had the slightest suggestion been made at the hearing on the appeal as to the impropriety, or even indelicacy, of Judge SIBLEY’S sitting, he would have stepped aside, although not required to do so. It is too late to raise that question now after the case has finally been decided on appeal. Manifestly it was intended only to delay the ultimate decision of the case.
We consider that no question' presented on the appeal was tried or heard by Judge SIBLEY in the District Court, within the letter or intent of the statute, and he was not ineligible to sit on the hearing of the appeal in this case. Delaney v. U. S., 263 U.S. 586, 44 S.Ct. 206, 68 L.Ed. 462; Tinkoff v. U. S. (C.C.A.) 86 F.(2d) 868-883.
The petition for rehearing is denied.
SIBLEY, Circuit Judge, took- no part in the* decision on the motion for rehearing.' •