Court Opinion

ID: 9641402
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:30:56.060673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:37.345952
License: Public Domain

LINDLEY, District Judge
(concurring).
Of course the statutory provision that no indictment shall be deemed insufficient by reasoii of any defect in matter of form only, which shall not tend to the prejudice of the defendant, 18 U.S.C.A. § 556, grants power to the court to ignore only formal imperfections. To extend its intent further would violate the constitutional mandate of the Fifth Amendment that “no person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentation or indictment of a Grand Jury.” The act of Congress providing that “on the hearing of any appeal * * * the court shall give judgment * * * without regard to technical errors * * which do not affect the substantial rights of the parties,” 28 U.S.C.A. § 391, must likewise be interpreted to authorize the court to ignore only formal or technical defects, for to extend it to include the further power to permit amendment of an indictment in any matter of substance would offend against the same constitutional provision. It follows necessarily, then, that the amendment, if proper, must have been purely formal in character; otherwise defendant’s constitutional rights have not been preserved.
Here one count correctly named defendant as Denny, the other as Kenny. He was arrested under the name included in Count I, Denny, and then moved in abatement of Count II, on the ground that his true name was Gordon Keith Denny and not Gordon Keith Kenny. The Government, by verified pleading agreed with defendant’s statement of fact, saying that he was correctly named in Count I and that in Count II an error arose from a typist’s inadvertantly striking K instead of D on her typewriter. This error the court permitted to be corrected. This seems to me, in view of the fact that defendant was correctly named in the first count and arrested under that name, as Judge Kerner has announced, a purely formal correction, which prejudiced defendant in not the slightest degree. It effectuated nothing more than does the historic rule abiding in cases of idem son-ans.
I agree that the judgment should be affirmed.