Court Opinion

ID: 9644388
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:54:49.764424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:12.816301
License: Public Domain

WOODROUGH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The crime of bank robbery accomplished by putting the lives of the bank’s employees in jeopardy with deadly weapons was Charged against these appellants in the second count of the indictment against them, and on their plea of guilty to that count the court was apprised of the full measure of their offending. The court thereupon became vested with the power and duty to fix the term of imprisonment for that offense and fixed it at five years. That determination of the court has been executed and the appellants have served the full term of five years imprisonment fixed by the court. I can not concur in this court’s direction to “vacate the five year sentence.” The five years of penal servitude which appellants have suffered can not be wiped out. It constitutes expiation of their crime and it seems clear to me that any process or proceeding by any of the agencies of government to inflict further punishment for the crime so expiated attempts double jeopardy forbidden by the constitution. I see no merit in the arguments which have been based on the fact that appellants had not fully completed their five year sentence at the time when they made their motion in the district court. That motion did not suspend their penal servitude or lessen its rigors in any way. Appellants continued to serve in the penitentiary during its pendency exactly the same as before. The motion could not operate to reinvest the court with power to fix the punishment for the crime. That power had been exercised and exhausted and the term on the second count was five years. The expiration of the five year term, when such expiration occurred, was patent to the court on the face of its own record, as was the fact that the crime had then been fully expiated. The single duty then devolving upon the court was to order the discharge of appellants and to protect them against any other jeopardy on account of the crime they had committed, confessed and expiated.
I do not think that pendency of any sort of proceedings in any court anywhere could excuse failure to perform that duty to free convicts whose crime was expiated. On the contrary, if any such proceedings appeared to stand in the way of appellants’ discharge, the duty to abate such proceedings was clearly a necessary incident to the duty to set them free. The constitution’s prohibition against double jeopardy is an absolute fundamental in our system of government.
*654I have, of course, considered the fact that the court, when it exercised its power to sentence these appellants, committed error by assuming to impose two sentences. The crime charged in the second count included the felonious acts of the first count and only the one sentence imposed under the second count was justified. The other was a nullity and the court’s error is rendered harmless by so regarding it. However we may differ about how much imprisonment bank robbers ought to suffer, there is no cognizable error in fixing five years imprisonment for the single offense committed by appellants, charged against them in the second count and confessed by their plea of guilty thereto. That sentence was within the statute and the court’s power and the court’s conscience, and it has been fully served.
I think decision here conflicts with In re Bradley, 318 U.S. 50, 63 S.Ct. 470, 87 L.Ed. -. In that case, exactly as in this one, the court, being empowered to assess one penalty for defendant’s crime, assumed to assess two. Under the statute it could fine or imprison, but it sentenced the defendant to both fine and imprisonment. The defendant paid the fine, and it was then attempted, as in this case, to vacate part of the sentence (the fine) and to inflict the imprisonment. The arguments for such a course were more cogent than any presented for the government here. As was pointed out in the dissent of the Chief Justice, the fine money in that case could have been returned and defendant would suffer nothing. Here they have suffered five years imprisonment. In this case the five year sentence is in strict accord with law and only the invalid part of the sentence is to be dealt with, while in that case no such distinction could be drawn between the parts of the sentence. But it appeared to the Supreme Court that defendant’s crime had been expiated, and it ordered his discharge. Constitutional prosecution must end with expiation.
It is too late to write direction into the records now to vacate the five year sentence. I think our duty here is the same as that which the expiation of the crime imposed upon the district court — the duty to discharge the appellants from their imprisonment and to protect them from any and all further governmental molestation for the same crime.