Court Opinion

ID: 9450547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:51:32.050441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:22.342688
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Appellant was admitted to bail pending appeal from a conviction of mail fraud. On April 4, 1963, we dismissed the appeal and revoked the bail. On April 9, 1963, appellant not having surrendered, the District Court declared his bail forfeited. He was arrested on June 24, 1963.
“Whoever, having been admitted to bail * * * incurs a forfeiture of the bail and willfully fails to surrender himself within thirty days following the date of such forfeiture, shall” be fined or imprisoned as provided. 18 U.S.C. § 3146 (“Jumping bail”). But the District Court may “direct that a forfeiture be set aside, upon such conditions as the court may impose, if it appears that justice does not require the enforcement of the forfeiture.” F.R.Crim.P. Rule 46(f) (2). Appellant’s surety moved that the forfeiture be set aside and on July 9, 1963, the District Court “Ordered, That the forfeiture of the bail bond in the sum of Three Thousand Dollars ($3,000.00), forfeited on the 9th day of April, 1963, be and is hereby set aside; * * * ” The order imposed no condition. It was absolute. It subtracted nothing by adding “and it is further Ordered, That the Clerk of this Court pay to Harold F. Hawken, attorney for the United Bonding Insurance Company, the sum of Three Thousand Dollars ($3,-000.00), the surety having paid the United States Marshal his costs of returning the defendant to the District of Columbia from Newark, New Jersey * * * ” Several weeks later, on August 12, 1963, appellant was indicted on a charge of jumping bail. He was convicted and brought this appeal.
In Migdol v. United States, 298 F.2d 513, 91 A.L.R.2d 1283 (9th Cir. 1961), the facts were essentially similar. There, as here, the District Court imposed no condition in its order setting aside a forfeiture of bail. There the appellant Migdol and not his surety had moved that the forfeiture be set aside, but the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit attached no importance to this fact. It held that “When the forfeiture was set aside, it was annulled and made void, just as if it had never been”, and therefore could not be “used as the foundation for a charge of bail jumping.” The court observed that if the trial judge had “not intended appellant to enjoy the benefits of the setting aside of the forfeiture, he was authorized by Rule 46(f) (2) to *923impose conditions, one of which could have been that his order operate only for the benefit of the sureties, and not appellant.” 298 F.2d at 516.
Despite the discretion Buie 46(f) (2) gives district courts to impose conditions in setting aside forfeitures, this court questions whether it would have been proper for the District Court expressly to impose a condition that its order was “not to affect a possible Section 3146 indictment”. (P. 920.) Yet this is the very condition this court decides is inherent in orders setting aside forfeitures of bail even though the orders do not express it. If this construction of such orders is correct, expressing the condition in the orders would do no harm and would serve the useful purpose of promoting clarity and certainty. And if, as I think, this court’s construction of such orders is not correct, they must express the condition if they are not to benefit the defendant as well as the surety.
Nothing in Buie 46(f) or the District Court’s order suggests to my mind that the words “set aside” are used in a restricted sense which excludes the defendant from the benefit of the order. I think the District Court’s order, absolute in form, should be construed as absolute in substance. I think this construction would not, as the court suggests, “have serious consequences for the public, for persons seeking release on bail, and for their sureties as well.” (P. 921.) I do not think it would follow from this construction that “either remissions would rarely be granted or the statutory deterrent to bail jumping would be rendered much less effective.” (P. 921.) Bemis-sions of bail forfeitures could be freely granted without rendering the statutory deterrent to bail jumping less effective by simply including in the order setting aside the forfeiture the condition that it is to operate for the benefit of the surety only or, in other words, is not to prevent a possible § 3146 indictment. And if on occasion the court thinks it desirable to protect the defendant as well as his surety from the consequences of the forfeiture, the court need only enter an unqualified order setting aside the forfeiture, as it did in this case.
This prosecution seems to me not essentially different from one based on a statute in effect at the time a defendant acted but afterwards repealed. In a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Hughes, the Supreme Court said in 1934: “The continuance of the prosecution of the defendants after the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment * * * would involve an attempt to continue the application of the statutory provisions after they had been deprived of force. This consequence is not altered by the fact that the crimes in question were alleged to have been committed while the National Prohibition Act was in effect. * * * In case a statute is repealed or rendered inoperative, no further proceedings can be had to enforce it in pending prosecutions unless competent authority has kept the statute alive for that purpose * * * In Yeaton v. United States, 5 Cranch 281, 283 [3 L.Ed. 101], * * * Chief Justice Marshall said that ‘it has long been settled, on general principles, that after the expiration or repeal of a law, no penalty can be enforced, nor punishment inflicted, for violations of the law committed while it was in force, unless some special provision be made for that purpose by statute.’ * * * In United States v. Tynen, 11 Wall. 88, 95 [20 L. Ed. 153], the Court thus stated the principle applicable to criminal proceedings: ‘There can be no legal conviction, nor any valid judgment pronounced upon conviction, unless the law creating the offence be at the time in existence. By the repeal the legislative will is expressed that no further proceedings be had under the Act repealed.’ ” United States v. Chambers, 291 U.S. 217, 222-223, 54 S.Ct. 434, 78 L.Ed. 763 (1934). Similarly in the present case, by setting aside the forfeiture the judicial will was expressed that no further proceedings be had under the forfeiture. Since the forfeiture, like the statute, is no longer in effect, like the statute it can no longer be enforced. The question who asked the court to set aside a forfeiture seems to me no more *924relevant than the question who asked the legislature to repeal a statute.
I do not reach the question, which I should probably answer in the negative, whether it appeared that the appellant “willfully” failed to surrender within thirty days following the date of the forfeiture. I think the conviction should be reversed and the indictment dismissed because the forfeiture was set aside before the indictment was returned.