Court Opinion

ID: 9653432
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:46:36.470058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:59.174285
License: Public Domain

SIBLEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
In 1938 it was generally supposed that 12 Ü.S.C.A. § 588b(a) and (S) defined separate and distinct offenses, and the district judge in this case treated counts 1 and 2 as charging an offense under § 588b(a), committed in two ways, and imposed a sentence of 10 years for it. Likewise he treated counts 3 and 4 as charging an offense under § 588b (b), committed in two ways, and imposed a sentence of 15 years for it. He decreed expressly that the ten-year sentence should first be served and then the 15-year sentence. The record shows that commitment issued at once and the marshal’s return shows that Gant was the next day, Feb. 9, 1938, delivered under it to the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta. His present motion is signed by him and gives his address, with his prison number, as Alcatraz, California. His affidavit dated Feb. 28, 1947, is attested by E. J. Miller, Associate Warden United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz, California. It is fairly inferable that Gant has been in the penitentiary under this conviction for nine years.
It is now settled that § 588b(a) and (b) define only one offense, committed in two ways; so the indictment here, and the verdict of guilt on all counts, mean only that Gant is guilty of one offense of bank robbery, described in four ways. Pie could be condemned under the Constitution and Ex parte Lange, 18 Wall. 163, 21 L.Ed. 872, to only one punishment for it, though both were attempted to be imposed by the same judicial act. The first term of imprisonment for 10 years was entirely legal and valid and has nearly been served. The second term, expressly made to take effect after the first, is illegal and void. The motion here is not to set aside the sentence m *798a whole, but to expunge the latter term of imprisonment because illegal. The motion ought to have been granted.
The judge has no power, the defendant not having so moved, after service of the 10-year term validly imposed has been entered on, to set it aside, and raise it to 15 years, even if done during the term of court at which it was imposed. 15 Am.Jur., Criminal Law, § 473, 474 ; 24 C.J.S., Criminal Law, § 1589. This fundamental principle is fully recognized in Ex parte Lange, supra; United States v. Benz, 282 U.S. 304, 307, 51 S.Ct. 113, 75 L.Ed. 354; Roberts v. United States, 320 U.S. 264, 64 S.Ct. 113, 88 L.Ed. 41; and was applied by this court in Blackman v. United States, 5 Cir., 250 F. 449; Simmons v. United States, 5 Cir., 89 F.2d 591; and Rutledge v. United States, 5 Cir., 146 F.2d 199. See also King v. United States, 69 App.D.C. 10, 98 F.2d 291. An extreme application was made in Hickman v. Fenton, 120 Neb. 66, 231 N.W. 510, 70 A.L.R. 819, where the sentence was for less than the minimum fixed by law and in that sense illegal; but the court held it was erroneous only and not void, and could not be raised after service of it had begun.
Rule of Criminal Procedure 35, “The court may correct an illegal sentence at any time”, as the notes of the Committee proposing it set forth, states the existing law. By the 'existing law the sentence, if to be increased, must be void. 15 Am.Jur., Criminal Law, § 477, 24 C.J.S., Criminal Law, § 1589 (b). The Rule further provides for the reduction of a sentence which is not void, but significantly makes no provision for increasing it. The question here, however, is rooted in a Constitutional right, which the Rule could not abridge if it was intended to do so.
The present question was not considered in Durrett v. United States, 5 Cir., 107 F.2d 438. That was an ordinary appeal in which the whole matter of the sentence appealed from was still fluid. Nor in Wells v. United States, 5 Cir., 124 F.2d 334. Wells moved to vacate all the sentences imposed on him and that he be resentenced. It was not urged that he had served any imprisonment. In Holiday v. United States, 8 Cir., 130 F.2d 988, there may have been imprisonment, but the court did not notice it. The decision concludes: “It is not conceivable to us that Holiday can avoid the judgment imposed under the second count merely because the court imposed consecutive rather than concurrent sentences.” The court would hardly have spoken thus had it been facing this question after service of the first sentence.