Court Opinion

ID: 9421327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:57:51.628264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:42.569911
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Warren,
with whom Mr. Justice Black, Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Clark join,
dissenting.
The petitioner, Parr, was indicted for income tax evasion in the United States District Court at Corpus Christi, Texas. He asked and obtained a transfer of the proceeding to Laredo, Texas, on the ground that he could not obtain a fair and impartial trial in Corpus Christi. The Government was dissatisfied with the transfer but had no right under law to ask that the case be transferred to some other district. In this situation, the Government conceived the idea of having Parr indicted at Austin, Texas, thereafter dismissing the case against him in Laredo. Parr protested on the ground that he had a right to be tried, if at all, in Laredo, the place where the District Court had already determined a fair trial could be obtained. His protest was overruled. Parr then appealed to the Court of Appeals. That court dismissed the appeal on the ground that there was no final appeal-able judgment under 28 U. S. C. § 1291. The Court today affirms that holding without reaching the merits of the District Court’s action in dismissing the indictment. We think the judgment is appealable under § 1291 and *522that it was error for the District Court to dismiss the case in Laredo.
The dismissal of the indictment, if valid, was a “final” decision of the Laredo Court in that case. This is true even if a new indictment could be obtained in the Laredo District Court or in some other court. In fact, a new indictment was obtained in the Austin District Court before the Laredo Court dismissed the indictment in this case. But this new indictment made the dismissal of the Laredo indictment against Parr no less “final.” For the Laredo case, after dismissal, did not remain “open, unfinished or inconclusive”; nor was the decision dismissing it “tentative, informal or incomplete.” Cohen v. Beneficial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541, 546. There was nothing interlocutory about the dismissal. It was not simply an indecisive step in the course of a case which might ultimately result in conviction of Parr. For if Parr is to be convicted on the charge made in the Laredo indictment, it will have to come from the institution of a new case. The time for Parr to appeal from the dismissal of this case against him in Laredo, if ever, was after its “final” disposition by the judge at Laredo. It would appear to be almost a fantastic interpretation of “finality” to hold otherwise.
The majority contend that, even if the dismissal had the requisite finality, petitioner may not appeal it because he was not aggrieved thereby, relying upon Lewis v. United States, 216 U. S. 611. But that case should not control here, since no new indictment had been returned against Lewis before or after the dismissal of the indictment he sought to have reviewed, and an applicable statute of limitations barred any further effort to indict him. Here, a new indictment was returned against petitioner before the dismissal. If he had, as we believe he had, a right to be tried in Laredo or not at all, clearly he was aggrieved by the dismissal under the circumstances.
*523It seems to be intimated, however, that Parr might be able to raise the question somehow after trial at Austin if he should be convicted in the new and different case brought there. This Court can write law to that effect. We do not think it should. We countenance plain harassment if we require Parr to be tried under what may turn out to be an invalid indictment at Austin before he can obtain appellate review of dismissal of the Laredo case. Should this occur, Parr would have been required to undergo two trials, one at Austin and another at Laredo. Section 1291 should not be construed so as to bring about such a result.
We think it was error for the District Court at Laredo to dismiss the case there. Rule 21 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure allows defendants to obtain changes of venue in order to get fair and impartial trial. No rule or statute grants such a privilege to the United States. The Government can and probably frequently does shop around to find a court it deems most favorable to try defendants. Here, the Government selected Corpus Christi as the forum in which to prosecute Parr, although, for the last 20 years preceding, the Government had filed all tax-evasion cases arising in that district in Austin. Here, after the Government’s choice for trial was found by the District Court to be unfair to the defendant, and Laredo was found to provide a fair place for trial, the Government is being allowed to frustrate the court’s selection of Laredo by filing a new indictment in a new case in Austin. We think the Government should not be allowed to circumvent the court’s order in that fashion. Rule 21 (c) provides that, after transfer under that rule, “the prosecution shall continue” in the place to which the case has been transferred. There is no finding of any kind that the Government will not get a fair trial at Laredo. The finding was expressly *524to the contrary. The specific purpose of Rule 21 is to have trials that can be fair and impartial. The object of the Government here is to escape from a court where it has been decided after a full hearing that a fair and impartial trial will be given. There is no reason that we can see why Rule 21 should not be given its full effect by requiring trial to take place in the district court to which it has been removed in the interest of fairness. We would reverse this case.