Court Opinion

ID: 9636048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:14:21.802716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:41.268812
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I think the District Judge was right in the view he took, that when under the terms of the statute allowing good time the first sentence was fully served, and service of the *381second sentence had begun, the first sentence was both in law and in fact served, and the good time earned on it had become irrevocable.
The view which the majority takes not only runs counter to the words of the statute which in the most definite way provide that the allowance is to be deducted from the term of the prisoner’s “sentence,” but, since the section allowing the aggregate of several sentences to be the basis of the good time applies generally to all sentences which the prisoner is serving, whether imposed by one or several courts, it gives the impossible effect to the statute of coalescing into one sentences which have no legal relation to each other. Besides, it introduces into cumulative sentences an element of uncertainty as to when one ends and the other begins which the law neither intends nor countenances.
That, as to each sentence, the good time becomes fixed upon the expiration of its term, 1 regard as settled by Howard v. United States (C. C. A.) 75 F. 986, 987, 994, 34 L. R. A. 509, in which the court said, of the contention there made, that a cumulative sentence was uncertain and impossible of execution, since the allowance of good time being optional, the precise time when the first or any subsequent sentence would expire and the sentence next in order would begin, could not be determined: “There is no uncertainty by reason of this in the judgment and sentence. That is for a definite fixed time; and the statute is mandatory, giving the convict a right to the credit for the good time, provided his conduct has been such as to deserve it; and it is made the positive duty of the warden of the penitentiary, if the conduct of the convict has been good, to enter a certificate on the warrant of commitment showing the fact. The time fixed by the sentence of the court remains just as fixed until the time expires, less the deduction for good time, when the fact whether the sentence is to be cut down is determined by inspection of the certificate on the warrant of commitment.”
Ebeling v. Biddle (C. C. A.) 291 F. 567, it seems to me, undertakes to write more than it does to construe the statute. By rationalizing on the evils resulting from giving effect to the statute as written, it in effect writes the statute as it thinks it ought to be. The same kind of reasoning is, I think, responsible for the majority opinion. The statute does not aggregate sentences to make one sentence out of two. It does not in terms or by implication declare that the prisoner’s several sentences are made one. It in terms treats of the sentences as remaining separate. It speaks of a prisoner’s “two or more sentences,” of his “several sentences.” It nowhere speaks of the sentence as one. It merely extends to the prisoner the grace of a good time allowance rate based upon the time he has actually to serve. It cannot, I think, and stand as written, be read to say that a prisoner who, having two sentences, one beginning only after another has been fully served, has served the first sentence and begun to servo the second, may, through the device of canceling the good time already definitely earned and finally allowed, be made to serve again some part oí the sentence already fully served. Howard v. U. S. (C. C. A.) 75 F. 986, 994, 34 L. R. A. 509.
I respectfully dissent.