Court Opinion

ID: 9459955
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:36:20.393485+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:24.442927
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON REHEARING
Before FAHY, Senior Circuit Judge, and WRIGHT and ROBINSON, Circuit Judges.
FAHY, Senior Circuit Judge:'
The several questions raised by appellant in his long effort to have the courts set aside the revocation of his parole, were decided against him in Baker v. Sard and Sheehy, 158 U.S.App.D.C.-, 486 F.2d 415 (1972), but our decision was on the assumption that we were bound, on the question of appellant’s right to appointed counsel at the revocation hearing, by Hyser v. Reed, 115 U. S.App.D.C. 254, 318 F.2d 225 (en banc), cert, denied, sub nom. Jamison v. Chap-pell, 375 U.S. 957, 84 S.Ct. 447, 11 L. Ed.2d 316 (1963). We expressed the view that intervening decisions of the Supreme Court cast doubt upon the correctness of Hyser on the counsel question, whereupon, on application to that end, our court decided to reconsider the matter en banc. Pending reconsideration the Supreme Court granted certio-rari in Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 408 U.S. 921, 92 S.Ct. 2490, 33 L.Ed.2d 331 (1972), involving the right of an indigent to appointed counsel at a hearing on the revocation of probation. In view of this development the en banc order was vacated and the case was left with this division of the court to await the outcome of Scarpelli, our jurisdiction being maintained by withholding the mandate in Baker. Following the decision of the Supreme Court in Scarpelli, 1973, 411 U.S. 778, 93 S.Ct. 1756, 36 L. Ed.2d 656 counsel for the appellee Board of Parole, and for appellant, in response to our request have submitted memoran-da to assist us in disposing of the case.
I.
In Scarpelli the Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel did not attach to a hearing on revocation of probation or parole, but that since a deprivation of liberty might result due process of law would require in some instances that the Board of Parole appoint counsel to represent an indigent at the hearing. The Court relied heavily upon its recent decision in Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972), also decided subsequent to Baker, in which several characteristics of parole revocation proceedings were considered, although the problem of an indigent’s right to appointed counsel was not then before the Court for decision. In Scar-pelli the Court held that no distinction was to be drawn with respect to the counsel issue between revocation of probation and parole. The right of an indigent to appointed counsel at the hearing, the Court held, is not absolute, but is to be decided in terms of due process of law on a case-by-case basis. The decision in the first instance is to be by the body to conduct the hearing, aided by certain non-exclusive guidelines which the Court set forth.
*424Baker was conditionally released from Lorton Reformatory April 14, 1964. Ten days later a warrant issued declaring him in violation of his conditional release. He was taken in custody on this warrant May 7, 1968, and six months later, December 12, 1968, the ap-pellee Board held a revocation hearing. His request for appointed counsel was denied by the Board,1 which revoked his parole. During the ensuing litigation challenging this action Baker completed service of the unexpired term of his original sentence.2
II.
Neither the Board nor Baker suggests that it is feasible to require the Board to determine now under the standards of Scarpelli whether or not Baker was entitled to counsel at the hearing of December 12, 1968. In this connection the Board points out that the record, including the findings of the District Court left undisturbed by this court in Baker, supra, should lead the court now to hold that Baker was not entitled to appointed counsel and, since in any event he is no longer in custody, no practical relief is available to him. Baker contends that we should hold on the basis of the same record that under Scarpelli he was entitled to counsel. He further contends that, having been denied due process of law by being deprived of his liberty without such required assistance, the revocation of his parole should be set aside. This relief he emphasizes is feasible, for he is presently deprived, due to the revocation, of his voting rights in this jurisdiction of his residence. 1 D. C. Code § 1102(7)(A) (Supp. V, 1972).3
III.
There is no clear solution to a case in this posture. A certain weakness in the Board’s position, however, indirectly strengthens that of Baker. The weakness is that it cannot be said with confidence that if Baker had been represented by counsel,at the hearing the Board’s finding that he had violated his parole would have been made, or, if made, that the Board would not have been persuaded to restore him again to the liberty of parole, pursuant to the broad discretionary powers available to the Board. 24 D. C.Code § 206 (1967). Neither of these possibilities is obviated by the subsequent proceedings in the District Court considered in our Baker decision, for we there have held open until now the counsel question, including what effect our decision in that regard might have upon all that has gone before in the absence of counsel. In its careful analysis of the vital part of the parole system in the administration of justice, in the interests of both the individual directly affected and the community where the Board seeks a place for the offender, free of his past anti-social conduct, the Supreme Court encourages Board action other than revocation. The Court states,
“Revocation . . .is, if anything, commonly treated as a failure of supervision. While presumably it would be inappropriate for a field agent never to revoke, the whole thrust of the *425probation-parole movement is to keep men in the community, working with adjustment problems there, and using revocation only as a last resort when treatment has failed or is about to fail.” 9
Gagnon v. Scarpelli, supra, 411 U.S. at 785, 93 S.Ct. at 1761.
Baker’s situation falls well within this approach. The violation of parole charged to him was not conduct affecting another person or property. It was that when paroled in April, 1964, he left this jurisdiction without reporting to the office of the Board for instructions and without Board approval. He remained at liberty four years, until April, 1968, when he was arrested in California, He had a job there, and had acquired no criminal record in the intervening years. Insofar as appears, he had made community adjustment. Moreover, his parole in April, 1964, was mandatory because during his prison service for nine years under his maximum 13-year sentence he had merited “good time” deductions from the term of his sentence. With counsel at the revocation hearing Baker might well have escaped further loss of liberty. He might well have been restored to parole on such conditions as the Board might have formulated with the assistance of his counsel, or required to serve a part rather than all of the remainder of the maximum term for which he was sentenced. The long, faithful and admirable devotion of his present counsel, appointed by the court, gives strong support to the belief that counsel could have been materially helpful to the Board.
IV.
While under Scarpelli it cannot be held with certainty that Baker would have been held by the Board to have been entitled to appointed counsel at the hearing, neither can it be held otherwise. Having borne the consequences of revocation which might have been avoided if represented by counsel it would seem only just that doubts should be resolved in his favor since the passage of time and intervening events preclude a reconstruction of the past with certainty. So resolving, the practical relief of setting aside the revocation, accompanied by its finding of parole violation, emerges. We find support for this position in Glenn v. Reed, 110 U.S.App.D.C. 85, 289 F.2d 462 (1961). We there held that the revocation of Glenn’s parole had been illegally accomplished because he neither had nor had been offered counsel at the hearing which resulted in revocation. The court said:
The error . . . cannot be corrected, because the illegal imprisonment that resulted from it [from the revocation of parole] cannot be undone. If counsel had been present at the . . . hearing as the law requires, there might have been no revocation of parole and no subsequent imprisonment.
Though it cannot undo the wrong, we think we should order appellant released.
110 U.S.App.D.C. at 86, 289 F.2d at 463.4 The remedy we adopt is action *426implicitly within the greater remedy of release ordered in Glenn, and is no less appropriate.
We also rely upon 28 U.S.C. § 2106 (1970),5 in the unusual situation before us. While the general grant of authority in section 2106 is cautiously to be used, perhaps never when a clearly defined legal principle calls for a particular course of action, no such definitive principle points to a different solution of Baker’s case than that we adopt. Moreover, this course avoids the constitutional question whether denial of the right to appointed counsel for Baker at the revocation hearing deprived him of the equal protection of the laws by reason of the provision of 24 D.C.Code § 206 (1967). Under that provision a prisoner who has been retaken upon a warrant issued by the Board of Parole shall be given an opportunity to appear before the Board, a member thereof or an executive designated by the Board. At the hearing he may be represented by counsel.6 There is a serious question whether by reason of the conference of this right of representation an indigent can be denied a like right consistently with the equal protection of the laws and, consequently, with due process of law.
An appropriate order will be entered.

. The Board of Parole prior to its final refusal to appoint counsel had provided Baker with a list of agencies that might have assisted him in obtaining counsel. Baker was unable, however, to obtain counsel to represent him, notwithstanding the more than four month continuance the Board allowed for this purpose.

. That this did not render the case moot is clear from Gagnon v. Scarpelli, supra, 411 U.S. at 780, 93 S.Ct. 1756.

. We note that in Scarpelli the Court, relying on Morrissey, as well as elaborating upon the place parole occupies in our system of justice, requires both a preliminary and a final hearing in connection with the revocation of either probation or parole. 411 U.S. at 781-782, 93 S.Ct. 1756. The preliminary hearing is concerned with whether or not there is any need to go forward with possible revocation after an alleged violation. No preliminary hearing at all was afforded Baker, but we have no need to inquire into the effect of its absence, for we dispose of his case on the basis of the absence of counsel at the final hearing in the revocation proceeding.

. Remington, Newman, Kimball, Melli & Goldstein, [Criminal Justice Administration, Materials and Cases] . . . at 910 [(1969)].

. The holding in Q-lenn on the right to counsel must be considered in connection with the subsequent Hyser decision, where it is pointed out:
The decisions of this court which hold that the parolee must be advised of his right to have retained counsel present are based on judicial construction of the words ‘opportunity to appear before the Board’ in 18 U.S.C. § 4207. Glenn v. Reed, 110 U.S. App.D.C. 85, 289 F.2d 462 (1961). . . .
They do not stand for the proposition that the presence of counsel is mandatory whenever a parolee appears before the Board or that parole revocation proceedings were to become adversary proceedings.
We hold due process does not require that indigent parolees be provided with appointed counsel when they appear before the Parole Board in revocation proceedings.
*426115 U.S.App.D.C. at 267, 318 F.2d at 238. That due process would require counsel in some parole revocation hearings, though not necessarily in all, was the view of some of the judges of our court in the en banc Hyser decision. Concurring and dissenting opinion of Fahy, J, concurred in by Wright, J, 115 U.S.App.D.C. at 289, 318 F.2d at 260. And see the dissenting views of Bazelon, C. J, and Edgerton, J that an indigent is entitled to appointed counsel, else a serious problem of due process arises in light of our decisions permitting representation by retained counsel at a revocation hearing. 115 U.S.App.D.C. at 284, 318 F.2d at 255.

. Section 2106 provides:

. Since Baker’s claim of right to have had counsel appointed for him has been kept alive we have authority to decide as we do in the interest of justice, not being held within the confines of the' possible non-retroactivity of a new constitutional decision.