Court Opinion

ID: 9466744
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:26:10.180317+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:55.757464
License: Public Domain

ALDISERT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent from the court’s holding that appellant may be convicted of a criminal offense without notice of a criminal charge, and at the same time that a new criminal sentence may interrupt for half a year the running of a four year sentence that appellant had begun serving some eight and one-half months earlier. I thus agree with Chief Judge Seitz that without notice appellant’s contempt proceedings may not be considered criminal in nature. Moreover, I do not approve of the practice of permitting a contempt sentence to interrupt the running of a current criminal sentence under any circumstances, whether the contempt is civil or criminal. In a case of criminal contempt, such as the majority finds here, interruption of a current criminal term, rather than imposition of a concurrent or consecutive criminal sentence, is unwarranted and unprecedented.
I have previously expressed my disapproval of the sandwiching of a contempt sentence in the midst of the service of a criminal sentence. In re Grand Jury Investigation (Hartzell), 542 F.2d 166, 169 (Aldisert, J., concurring and dissenting), rehearing denied, 542 F.2d 173, 174 (3d Cir. 1976) (Aldisert, J., opinion sur denial of petition for rehearing), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1047, 97 S.Ct. 755, 50 L.Ed.2d 762 (1977). I reaffirm my view that a district court lacks jurisdiction so to alter a criminal sentence. See Rule 35, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 1 and my opinions in Hartzell. Rule 35 clearly limits the power of a district court to touch a criminal sentence after 120 days. In this case appellant, after pleading guilty, was sentenced on November 8, 1978. After 120 days, or after March 8, 1979, the district court no longer had jurisdiction to modify that sentence. The district court proceeded, however, to suspend the running of the sentence on July 13,1979, for a term of six months. For the reasons expressed in my dissenting opinions in Hartzell, I would reverse the order of the district court.
Since Hartzell my position has been strengthened by the opinion of the Supreme Court in United States v. Addonizio, 442 U.S. 178, 99 S.Ct. 2235, 60 L.Ed.2d 805 (1979). In that case the Court said:
[Ojnce a sentence has been imposed, the trial judge’s authority to modify it is circumscribed. Federal Rule Crim.Proc. 35 now authorizes District Courts to reduce a sentence within 120 days after it is imposed or after it has been affirmed on appeal. The time peri*1267od, however, is jurisdictional and may not be extended.
442 U.S. at 189, 99 S.Ct. at 2242 (emphasis added). See Fed.R.Crim.P. 45(b); United States v. Robinson, 361 U.S. 220, 80 S.Ct. 282, 4 L.Ed.2d 259 (1960). Footnote sixteen of Addonizio noted:
Prior to the adoption of Rule 35, the trial courts had no such authority. “The beginning of the service of the sentence in a criminal case ends the power of the court even in the same term to change it.” United States v. Murray, 275 U.S. 347, 358 [48 S.Ct. 146, 149, 72 L.Ed. 309], This rule was applied even though the change related only to the second of a pair of consecutive sentences which itself was not being served at the time. Affronti v. United States, 350 U.S. 79, 76 S.Ct. 171, 100 L.Ed. 62.
442 U.S. at 189 n. 16, 99 S.Ct. at 2242 n. 16. Because the issue turns on a question of jurisdiction, it comes to this: if a defendant may not invoke the jurisdiction of a court to reduce his sentence after 120 days, a fortiori, the government may not invoke that same jurisdiction to increase or interrupt that sentence, directly or indirectly, by sandwiching into it a new term of criminal contempt.
I recognize that I stand in a minority,2 but I believe, in light of Rule 35(b) and Addonizio, that the cases that have approved the interruption of criminal sentences have been wrongly decided.
Accordingly, I would reverse the order of the district court.

. Fed.R.Crim.P. 35(b), effective Aug. 1, 1979, provides:
Reduction of Sentence. — The court may reduce a sentence within 120 days after the sentence is imposed, or within 120 days after receipt by the court of a mandate issued upon affirmance of the judgment or dismissal of the appeal, or within 120 days after entry of any order or judgment of the Supreme
Court denying review of, or having the effect of upholding, a judgment of conviction. The court may also reduce a sentence upon revocation of probation as provided by law. Changing a sentence from a sentence of incarceration to a grant of probation shall constitute a permissible reduction of sentence under this subdivision.

. Eight courts of appeals, including ours, permit sandwiching of contempt sentences. United States v. Dien, 598 F.2d 743 (2d Cir. 1979); In re Grand Jury Investigation (Hartzell), 542 F.2d 166 (3d Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1047, 97 S.Ct. 755, 50 L.Ed.2d 762 (1977); In re Grand Jury Proceedings (Marshall), 532 F.2d 410 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 924, 97 S.Ct. 354, 50 L.Ed.2d 309 (1976); Williamson v. Saxbe, 513 F.2d 1309 (6th Cir. 1975); Anglin v. Johnston, 504 F.2d 1165 (7th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 962, 95 S.Ct. 1353, 43 L.Ed.2d 440 (1975); Martin v. United States, 517 F.2d 906 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 856, 96 S.Ct. 105, 46 L.Ed.2d 81 (1975); In re Garmon, 572 F.2d 1373 (9th Cir. 1978); United States v. Liddy, 510 F.2d 669 (D.C.Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 980, 95 S.Ct. 1408, 43 L.Ed.2d 661 (1975). See also United States v. Wilson, 421 U.S. 309, 320, 95 S.Ct. 1802, 1808, 44 L.Ed.2d 186 (1975) (Blackmun, J., joined by Rehnquist, J., concurring). In Wilson Justice Blackmun noted in dictum that “despite the fact that respondents were already incarcerated for substantive criminal offenses, it appears to be clear that service of their sentences could have been interrupted to compel them to serve an intervening sentence for contempt.” Id. at 321 n. 2, 95 S.Ct. at 1809 n. 2.