Court Opinion

ID: 9464694
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:40:06.608355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:45.910462
License: Public Domain

GIBBONS, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I join in the majority’s opinion except to the extent that it holds that we should not reach the question whether the counts alleging repeated calls to the Hatlens are multiplicitous. I respectfully dissent from the majority’s reliance upon Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 85, 63 S.Ct. 1375, 87 L.Ed. 1774 (1943), to dispose of that contention. Moreover, I have considered the appellant’s multiplicity contention and find it to be meritorious. Therefore, I dissent from the judgment affirming Lampley’s conviction on all of the counts.
I. THE CONCURRENT SENTENCE DOCTRINE
The October Term, 1942, was not a vintage year for the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence of individual rights and due process of law. Preoccupied with a threat to the country’s external security, the Court countenanced many assaults on individual liberty which, with the benefit of hindsight, we now know were both intolerable and unnecessary. Among the more egregious examples of the Court’s yielding to temporary hysteria were the decisions in St. Pierre v. United States, 319 U.S. 41, 63 S.Ct. 910, 87 L.Ed. 1199 (1943), and Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 63 S.Ct. 1375, 87 L.Ed. 1774 (1943). In St. Pierre, the petitioner had been imprisoned for five months for contempt for refusing to divulge to a grand jury the name of the person whose money he had embezzled. The Court avoided the sharp conflict between Judges Jerome Frank and Learned Hand on the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination by holding, indefensibly I submit, that the expiration of the petitioner’s sentence mooted the appeal from the criminal contempt conviction, even though the government intended to force St. Pierre to testify before another grand jury, thereby raising the possibility of a subsequent conviction and sentence. In Hirabayashi, the Court avoided deciding whether American citizens could by military order be placed in concentration camps solely because of their race or nationality. The Court held that because the American citizen defendant, a senior at the University of Washington, had received a concurrent sentence for violation of a lawful curfew order,1 it was unnecessary to consider whether his conviction for failing to report to the concentration camp was valid. The only merit of Hirabayashi’s concurrent sentence holding is that, by resorting to that device, the Court avoided the worse courses of explicitly overruling Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2, 18 L.Ed. 281 (1867), or of explicitly endorsing the power of military authorities to place American citizens in concentration camps on account of their race or national ancestry.
With a return to normalcy, the twin disasters of St. Pierre and Hirabayashi were, I submit, repudiated in Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 1556, 20 L.Ed.2d 554 (1968), and Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968). Their demise was anticipated in Fiswick v. United States, 329 U.S. 211, 67 S.Ct. 224, 91 L.Ed. 196 (1946), United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502, 74 S.Ct. 247, 98 L.Ed. 248 (1954), and Pollard v. United States, 352 U.S. 354, 77 S.Ct. 481, 1 L.Ed.2d 393 (1957). Each of these cases recognized that when by a conviction a government brands a person a criminal, that person is affected by the branding and thus should be heard to complain, whether or not the conviction resulted in custody. The Court distinguished St. Pierre and Hirabayashi by presuming that collateral legal consequences would flow from the mere existence of a conviction. *791See Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 55, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968).
In the instant case Lampley may challenge any criminal conviction on direct appeal unless the government can overcome that presumption and show “that there is no possibility that any collateral legal consequences will be imposed on the basis of the challenged conviction.” 392 U.S. at 57, 88 S.Ct. at 1900. No such showing has been made here. Indeed, when compared with a single conviction, several convictions for violating 47 U.S.C. § 223(1)(D) could certainly have different legal consequences in the future. If Lampley should violate probation and be incarcerated, the number of convictions will affect his eligibility for parole. Moreover, the multiple convictions might count for purposes of multiple-offender statutes if Lampley is again convicted.
While the presumption of collateral legal consequences was the device by which the Supreme Court rid itself of the embarrassments of St. Pierre and Hirabayashi, that presumption seems to me an unnecessary complication. In any sanctioning system which provides for appellate review, a defendant ought to be able to assert the invalidity of any charge that a sovereignty has laid upon him. The executive branch has resorted to the judicial system to brand the defendant a wrongdoer and has received the benefit of the judiciary’s participation in that branding. While the conviction stands, the legitimating effect of the judiciary’s concurrence remains. I would much prefer to eliminate speculation about collateral legal consequences. Thus, I would hold that a defendant always has standing to challenge on appeal the validity of any conviction. For legal realists, I suggest, that is what Sibron v. New York really means. But even if we search for possible collateral legal consequences, such consequences are readily apparent here. Accordingly, we should consider the multiplicity challenge on the merits.
Nor am I convinced that we should attach to the footnote in Barnes v. United States, 412 U.S. 837, 848 n.6, 93 S.Ct. 2357, 37 L.Ed.2d 380 (1973), the significance the majority attaches to it. The Supreme Court, in reviewing federal convictions, exercises a discretionary certiorari jurisdiction, and its interest in granting certiorari is primarily with respect to particular issues. The discretionary application of the concurrent sentence doctrine in a case of discretionary review is no justification for its application by a court in which review is a matter of right. I can think of no reason which would justify its application in this case, even as a matter of discretion, when as recently as 1975 we declined to do so. United States v. Keller, 512 F.2d 182 (3d Cir. 1975). Even exercises of discretion should be principled.
II. THE MULTIPLICITY CLAIM
Counts III through XIII of the superseding indictment charge the appellant with violations of 47 U.S.C. § 223(1)(D), which provides:
Whoever
(1) in interstate communication by means of telephone—
(D) makes repeated telephone calls, during which conversation ensues, solely to harass any person at the number called .
shall be fined not more than $500 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
(emphasis added). As the majority opinion discloses, other parts of § 223 make criminal the single use of an interstate telephone, as long as the defendant acted with the requisite specific intention. The distinguishing feature of § 223(1)(D) is that it proscribes use, i. e., a course of conduct — and not single calls. Lampley contends that the government’s indictment arbitrarily divided the single course of conduct proscribed by the statute into eleven separate courses of conduct.
Pursuant to that contention, Lampley brought a motion to compel the government to elect among multiplicitous counts under § 223(1)(D). Multiplicity refers to the practice of charging the commission of a single offense in more than one count. See Unit *792ed States v. Allied Chemical Corp., 420 F.Supp. 122 (E.D.Va.1976). It should be distinguished from duplicity, which is the joining of two offenses in a single count. See United States v. Starks, 515 F.2d 112, 116 & n.5 (3d Cir. 1975). The vices of multiplicity are: (1) that it may result in multiple sentences for the same offense; (2) that it may have an adverse psychological effect on the jury by suggesting that many offenses took place, see Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure § 142, at 311 (1969 ed.); and (3) that it creates a more negative record of convictions and thus produces greater likelihood of collateral legal consequences. A multiplicity problem usually arises when a defendant has engaged in continuing or repeated illegal conduct and the government attempts in its indictment to divide that course of conduct into separate and distinguishable illegal acts. If the court finds that the defendant’s acts constituted only one illegal course of conduct, the appropriate remedy is to compel the prosecution to elect among the multiplicitous counts. See, e. g., United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 344 U.S. 218, 220, 73 S.Ct. 227, 229, 97 L.Ed. 260 (1952) (§ 15 of the Fair Labor Standards Act punishes a “course of conduct rather than separate items in such course”).
When a statute refers explicitly to a course of conduct as the offense, the test for multiplicity obviously should be even more stringently applied than in contexts such as the Fair Labor Standards Act. No single isolated telephone call could be a violation of § 223(1)(D). Nor would a series of isolated, unrelated calls suffice. Judge Newcomer has construed § 223(1)(D) as follows:
First, the phone calls must be “repeated”. The court takes this to mean repeated in close enough proximity to another to rightly be called a single episode, and not separated by periods of months or years. This condition both requires the repeatedness as an element of the legally cognizable charge, and at the same time insures that the courts will not be flooded with complaints growing out of a single unpleasant call with some acquaintance. Second, the repeated calls must be made “solely to harass” and not merely to “annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass” as in the case of any anonymous phone call under § 223(1)(B).
United States v. Darsey, 342 F.Supp. 311, 313 (E.D.Pa.1972).
Of the eleven counts charging repeated telephone calls in the instant case, all referred to calls from a telephone in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. All but one referred to calls to a specific number (608-992 — 4976) in Evansville, Wisconsin. The remaining count referred to calls to a different number (901-986-3160) in Hollow Rock, Tennessee. The Hollow Rock telephone number belongs to Mrs. Simmons, the mother of Elizabeth Hatlen, the object of Lampley’s peculiar obsession. The Evansville, Wisconsin, number belongs to Elizabeth Hatlen. I agree with the majority that Count XI, charging repeated calls to Mrs. Simmons’s number, sets forth a distinct offense. But all of the other counts refer to repeated calls to Mrs. Hatlen’s number between May 14, 1974, and March 16, 1975. Except for Count III, which charges “repeated” calls “on or about May 14, 1974, to on or about May 16, 1974,” each of the counts dealing with “repeated” calls to the Evansville number refers to such calls on or about a specific date. Nothing in the superseding indictment suggests why calls on these dates were regarded as separate episodes. The evidence establishes that there were many other calls on dates not mentioned in the indictment. The Hatlens’ testimony strongly suggests that they regarded all of the phone calls between May, 1974, and March, 1975, including calls on dates not mentioned in the indictment, as one continuing harassment. Mrs. Hatlen testified that there always were about ten to twelve calls per week. Trial Transcript, at 107-08. Mr. Hatlen testified that the calls averaged ten calls a week throughout that period. Trial Transcript, at 120. Many of these calls were placed as “collect” calls to “Elizabeth Lampley” or “Judy Lampley” and thus did not appear on Lampley’s telephone bills. The evidence *793suggests that the calls which did not appear on Lampley’s telephone bill for his Downingtown, Pennsylvania, telephone bridged the time intervals between the dates selected by the government for separate prosecution. The dates set forth in the separate counts of the indictment as separate episodes are nothing more than the dates of calls billed to Lampley’s number.
Clearly the evidence permitted a finding that an average of ten calls a week between May of 1974 and March of 1975 constituted an illegal course of conduct proscribed by § 223(1)(D). But nothing either in the indictment or in the record suggests that Lampley engaged in several courses of conduct directed toward Mrs. Hatlen rather than just one. The dates appearing on Lampley’s phone bill do not turn a continuing course of conduct into separate and distinguishable acts. If there had been a significant lapse of time between series of phone calls, if the motivation for one series had differed in some manner from the motivation for another, or if the objects of the harassment had been different, it might be possible to treat the separate series of calls as separate episodes. But here the motivation, Lampley’s obsessive fixation on Mrs. Hatlen as an object of affection, was constant. In addition, the calls constantly focused on Mrs. Hatlen as the object of harassment, and they never ceased. By way of contrast, the calls to Mrs. Simmons were intended to harass her rather than her daughter. Thus, while those calls grew out of the same diseased fixation as the calls to the Hatlens, they were not part of the same illegal course of conduct.
The government urges that we should not consider the district court’s denial of Lampley’s motion to elect among the counts in the superseding indictment because he had moved earlier to dismiss Count II of the original indictment. That count had charged the defendant with making harassing phone calls to the Hatlens between May 5, 1974, and February 9, 1975. Lampley based his motion on the argument that from the wording of the indictment he was unable to determine the pattern of conduct with which he had been charged and thus was unable to prepare an effective defense. The government would have us construe Lampley’s vagueness motion as a motion to cure a duplicitous complaint and thus as a concession that he had made multiple separate series of offending phone calls. For two reasons I cannot accept the government’s argument. First, it misstates the thrust of Lampley’s vagueness motion. Second, even if the government’s argument accurately characterized Lampley’s motion, the fact that he made the motion would not relieve the government of its burden of charging and establishing how many separate courses of conduct took place.
Since the court charged, that the jury should treat each series of calls separately, the jury never considered whether there was a single course of conduct. But the court did charge that in order to convict the defendant on any count, the jury had to find multiple calls and a sole intent to harass. Thus the verdict necessarily required a finding on all the elements of the § 223(1)(D) offense. Ordinarily, because of the possibility of jury prejudice arising from more numerous charges, the remedy for the failure to grant a motion to elect among multiplicitous counts would be a new trial. In this instance, however, the same evidence of telephone calls would have been admissible even if the election motion had been granted. Lampley’s only defense was that he did not make the calls. Under these circumstances I would conclude that while his convictions on more than one § 223(1)(D) count should not stand, one such conviction can survive and no new trial is required.
I would vacate the judgment of sentence on all but two of the § 223(1)(D) counts, but would otherwise affirm.

. Even that part of the Court’s decision upholding the curfew order is of dubious validity.