Court Opinion

ID: 9446685
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:16:15.648523+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:44.759447
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
What happened here may be swiftly and graphically told:
(1) Defendant was sentenced
*813(2) Immediately after sentence, his attorney gave notice of appeal in open court
(3) The Court, through the Judge, accepted the notice of appeal
(4) The Court, through its Official Reporter, recorded the notice of appeal
(5) The Court, through the Clerk, accepted and recorded the notice of appeal in the docket entries of the case
(6) The Clerk, as the rule requires, sent written notice to Government counsel of the notice of appeal.
But because this was not further evidenced by a written paper signed by the same counsel who spoke for the defendant, we hold that the defendant through this error of his counsel has forfeited the valuable right of appeal.
That such a result could occur in this age of judicial enlightenment amazes me.
Lest the emphatic overtones of such language be equated with softhearted or softheaded indulgence of those whom society must rightfully protect itself against, I must quickly state what I do not contend.
First, I am in full agreement with the Court that time is the absolute and imperative determinant. The time rnajr not be extended. 1 therefore agree with Judge Miller’s dissent in Robinson v. United States, D.C.Cir., 1958, 260 F.2d 718, 720, now pending after grant of writ of certiorari.
Second, timely notice of appeal is jurisdictional and cannot be waived or disregarded.
But the question here is not whether notice of appeal was given in time. Immediately after sentence was, of course, within the ten-day period allowed. F. R.Cr.P. 37.
The question is whether that notice must be in writing and is altogether ineffectual if, though given, it is not in writing. Since there is now an abundant written record of the notice of appeal (the Court Reporter’s transcript, Clerk’s docket sheet, Clerk’s letter to all counsel), it narrows it down even further. The question is finally: must the notice bear the signature of the lawyer?
We are not here dealing with a situation in which there is any doubt as to what occurred. I am as firm as the majority in the holding that tardy appeals may not be allowed because of uncertainty on what transpired. I agree with the unexpressed but implicit conviction that the time may not be extended because doubt exists. Indeed, I would go so far as to hold that the formal, signed, written notice of appeal may be excused only where, as is true here, the Court, the Clerk, the defendant, and all counsel know that notice of appeal has been purposefully given — although in a different mode — and the Court and Clerk have accepted and acted on it as though given in precise compliance with the rules.
As I understand it, the purpose of Rule 37 and 45(b) was to do two things. First, it was to put an absolute time limit on appeals. This was a positive, though occasionally arbitrary, way of eliminating the scandal of delay which has characterized so much of American criminal law in contrast to that of the English Commonwealth. Second, it was to eliminate all doubt or uncertainty as to the fact of (a) the giving of the notice and (b) the time it was done.
Here both of these requirements are met. It was timely. It could not have been more timely. And it was given. No one denies or disputes that it was. It was given by the one authorized generally to act in Court — defendant’s counsel — and the one specifically authorized to sign a formal, written notice. It related to the one and only judgment of conviction just announced by the Court which alone could have been the subject of an appeal. It told all what Form 26 “Notice of Appeal” would have conveyed.
*814All that was absent was one small, little pieee of paper.
This is completely out of character with what this and other Courts have done, either under this Criminal Rule or its counterpart of the Civil Rules, FRCP 73(b), which is, all concede, equally jurisdictional.
Applications for leave to appeal in forma pauperis unaccompanied by formal, written notice of appeal are universally regarded as the equivalent of the written notice of appeal. Randolph v. Randolph, 1952, 91 U.S.App.D.C. 170, 198 F.2d 956; Shannon v. United States, 1953, 93 U.S.App.D.C. 4, 206 F.2d 479; Kirksey v. United States, 1954, 94 U.S.App.D.C. 393, 219 F.2d 499; Boykin v. Huff, 1941, 73 App.D.C. 378, 121 F.2d 865. This is so because it is an “unequivocal notification of intention to appeal,” Blunt v. United States, 1957, 100 U.S.App.D.C. 266, 244 F.2d 355, 359. Likewise, a petition for leave to file a petition for writ of mandamus presented to the Court of Appeals immediately after refusal of the trial court to entertain a proceeding under 28 U.S.C.A. § 2255 was treated “as the equivalent of the taking of an appeal” sufficient to review the merits of the 2255 proceeding. Jordan v. United States, 1956, 98 U.S.App.D.C. 160, 233 F.2d 362, 364, 365.
Similarly, applications for leave to appeal in forma pauperis are universally held to be a sufficient compliance with the requirements of FRCP 73(a) which is both equally jurisdictional and equally positive in its demands for a “written” notice. Indeed, what we said in sustaining the valuable right of appeal pertaining to property rights would certainly not be out of place when a man’s liberty is at stake. “The rules have for their primary purpose the securing of speedy and inexpensive justice in a uniform and well ordered manner; they were not adopted to set traps and pitfalls by way of technicalities for unwary litigants. * * * Therefore, substantial compliance with the rules is sufficient, and appellant’s petition for leave to appeal in forma pawperis adequately met the requirements of Rule 73(a).” DesIsles v. Evans, 5 Cir., 1955, 225 F.2d 235, 236. These lofty aspirations were repeated by us in Roth v. Bird, 5 Cir., 1956, 239 F.2d 257, 259.
Such expressions are but a part of the large stream by which this Court tries mightily to grasp and make a living principle the requirement that “the Court at every stage of the proceeding must disregard any error or defect in the proceeding which does not affect the substantial rights of the parties,” FRCP 61, and “any error, defect, irregularity or variance which does not affect substantial rights shall be disregarded,” F. R.Cr.P. 52(a). This Court, long ago, and shortly after the Civil Rules were promulgated, rejected the idea that fundamental things were to be measured by such punctilious perfection. Holding a notice of appeal altogether unnecessary where it had been waived expressly, the Court in Crump v. Hill, 5 Cir., 1939, 104 F.2d 36, 38, discussed extensively 7 Moore, Federal Practice § 73.13, p. 3158, and equated in Judge Pope’s dissent, United States v. Arizona, 9 Cir., 1953, 206 F.2d 159, 161, reversed, per curiam, 346 U.S. 907, 74 S.Ct. 239, 98 L.Ed. 405, with Boykin v. Huff, supra, used language in 1939 which fits two decades later;
“But it would we think be a harking back to the formalistic rigorism of an earlier and outmoded time, as well as a travesty upon justice, to hold that the extremely simple procedure required by the Rule is itself a kind of Mumbo Jumbo, and that the failure to comply formalistically with it defeats substantial rights.”
The missing paper is small. Its message was unilluminating. Its rustle makes but a tiny noise. But it penetrates and persists. Harkening to it, I hear a reformer’s skeleton rattle. And I see scurrying about with their manifolds and foolscaps of exemplications, bails, vouchers, replications, recordáis,' demurrers, and mittimus scriveners and clerks glorying that once again things *815legal must be done in due and proper order.
I dissent.
Rehearing denied:
BROWN, Circuit Judge, dissenting.