Court Opinion

ID: 9481312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:14:49.695591+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:13.497733
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
How permitting Hoyvald to travel to Europe to see his elderly mother but not to go job hunting will promote his rehabilitation I do not see. Neither the probation office, *610which agreed to the work-seeking tour, nor the Government, which did not oppose Hoy-vald’s request, could see it either. How the district court could have thought it would promote his rehabilitation escapes me.
There is no suggestion in the record or otherwise that Hoyvald’s being on probation constituted a threat to the public; indeed, if the district court thought otherwise it could not have in good conscience agreed to the plea agreement. Moreover, Hoyvald had performed that agreement to the letter, earning the praise of the New Jersey Department of Human Services for his work in connection with the corporate hiring of disabled persons, (“Mr. Hoyvald deserves to be credited for his absolute reliability, always friendly and courteous disposition, remarkable adaptability to assorted assignments and projects ... excellent rapport ... exceptional quality and value.”), and the award of a plaque or certificate therefor. The man has an international executive expertise marred only by this concededly serious crime of having his company sell adulterated food, a crime for which he has paid a lot and is unlikely to repeat.
I am left with the only reason for the denial of permission as the one the district court, honestly if disingenuously, gave for it — that Hoyvald “got an extraordinary break” and “should have [been] given the same or as stringent a sentence” as his codefendant. The court said, drawing on what authority, Supreme Court or otherwise, we have been unable to find, “I view his probation the same way the Supreme Court said probation was, jail without the four walls.” 1
I thought probation was something different and that the Supreme Court had said so. Over fifty years ago it was called by Justice Roberts a “system of tutelage,” Frad v. Kelly, 302 U.S. 312, 318, 58 S.Ct. 188, 192, 82 L.Ed. 282 (1937), and by Chief Justice Hughes as being “concerned with rehabilitation, not with the determination of guilt.” Berman v. United States, 302 U.S. 211, 213, 58 S.Ct. 164, 166, 82 L.Ed. 204 (1937). We have more recently said as much. See United States v. Tolla, 781 F.2d 29, 33 (2d Cir.1986) (“Once a court lawfully determines that a defendant should be placed on probation, the focus of its concern must of necessity shift away from issues of guilt and punishment to those of rehabilitation and protection of the public.”).
Under this standard, once the plea agreement was accepted and probation imposed, punishment could no longer be the guiding hand on the supervisory wheel. To the extent that the district court permitted it to be such, the court acted arbitrarily. I need not reach the question whether due process was thereby violated. I would simply in the exercise of this Court’s supervisory power overturn the district court’s action.
I accordingly dissent.

. Perhaps this was a literary allusion to Richard Lovelace's
Stone walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage.
R. Lovelace, To Althea From Prison (1642). On the other hand, the court may have looked at probation with (for present purposes inapplicable) Sentencing Guidelines Commission glasses. See United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual, ch. 5, Part B (listing the purposes of probation as "promoting respect for law, providing just punishment for the offense, achieving general deterrence, and protecting the public from further crimes by the defendant,” but failing to mention the purpose of rehabilitation).