Court Opinion

ID: 9457155
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:14:07.009655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:14.379531
License: Public Domain

BROWNING, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The rationale of Dunn and Stapf, adopted by the majority, is that since during the 1960-1966 period the statute provided that persons sentenced to a minimum mandatory term must be given credit for time spent in custody before sentence through inability to post bail, the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment requires that persons sentenced during this period to other than minimum mandatory terms must also be given such credit because there is no rational basis for a difference in treatment in this respect between these two classes of persons. See Stapf v. United States, 367 F.2d at 328-329; Dunn v. United States, 376 F.2d at 193-194.
It is conceded, therefore, that appellant had an absolute constitutional right to credit for the 284 days served before sentence was imposed. The only question is whether he received it.
No one suggests that the Attorney General credited appellant with this time. It is also clear that the sentencing judge did not.
Before the judge imposed sentence on the section 2113(a) charge, he told appellant and his co-defendant that they were going to receive “exactly the same sentence” he had earlier decided to give them before they withdrew their guilty *235pleas to a section 2113(b) charge.* He then sentenced each defendant to ten years.
Two things are immediately apparent. Because the ten-year sentence that the judge said he had earlier intended to impose on the section 2113(b) charge was the maximum that could be imposed on that charge, he did not intend to give appellant credit for the time appellant had then spent in jail. In the second place, because the judge gave “exactly the same sentence” that he intended to give earlier on the section 2113(b) charge, he did not give appellant credit for the presentence time served after withdrawal of the guilty plea to the section 2113(b) charge. Since appellant was entitled to such credit as a matter of right, and since if given this credit he has now completed his sentence, he should be discharged.
The majority notes that since the maximum sentence under section 2113(a) is twenty years and appellant was sentenced to ten, it is “mathematically possible” that the judge gave appellant credit for the 284 days served before sentence. Many courts, including ours, have said that in these circumstances it is “conclusively” presumed that credit was given.
The majority apparently rejects this view, for the concluding paragraph of the opinion assumes that the presumption that the judge credited appellant with time served would fail if the record reflected the contrary. Our disagreement, therefore, is over the meaning of the record.
It should be added, however, that the majority’s implied rejection of the “conclusive” presumption that credit was given is sound. The district court is entitled to the benefit of a presumption of regularity, which is only to say that its judgment is to be affirmed unless the record reflects error. But if error affirmatively appears on the record, obviously the presumption of regularity is displaced.
The reason advanced to support the presumption that credit was given does not apply where the record shows that credit was in fact not given. This reason is that “the problems and expenditure of resources which would be caused by allowing each prisoner to attempt to demonstrate that in his particular case credit was not given * * * outweigh any possible unfairness.” Stapf v. United States, 367 F.2d at 330. Where, as here, the determination that credit was not given may be made from the record itself, no more problems are created and no more resources expended by granting a prisoner’s application for credit than by denying it.
Moreover, a “conclusive” presumption is, in fact, a rule of substantive law. To say that the giving of credit is “conclusively” presumed if mathematically possible is only to say that credit need not be given if the sentence imposed plus the time already served is less than the statutory maximum. Consequently, a “conclusive” presumption simply subjects a different class of persons to the same arbitrary and irrational discrimination held unconstitutional in Stapf.
Despite language to the contrary, our court has not in fact held the presumption “conclusive.” In Lee v. United States, 400 F.2d 185, 188 (1968), we declined “to infer an intent to give credit for a few days or weeks of pre-sentence custody from a failure to confine a defendant for an additional five years by *236ordering the sentences to run consecutively.” In Aldridge v. United States, 405 F.2d 831 (1969), and Williams v. United States, 399 F.2d 492, 494 (1968), we noted that the sentencing judge stated that he had taken presentence time served into account in fixing sentence.

 The judge said, in relevant part:
“Now Myers and Parker both know that they were right on the threshold of being brought before the court for sentence in connection with their plea of Guilty and to the lesser included offense, in a sense of the word. And the Court had at that time determined what it thought would be the best thing for society and these two men.
I am, going to tell them, right now that they are going to receive exactly the same sentence that I had in mind at that time, * * *.
* * ¡I: *
So as I said, you are going to receive exactly the same sentence today after trial for a greater offense than you would have received on your plea of guilty * * * ” (emphasis added).