Court Opinion

ID: 9444698
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:09:10.304005+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:58.280911
License: Public Domain

MAGRUDER, Chief Judge
(concurring) .
As regards the first point considered in the opinion of the court, I agree that the second offender provisions of the Act of November 2, 1951, require that the accused must have been “convicted” of an earlier offense prior to the date of the commission of the subsequent offense.
In regard to the second point of the court’s opinion, I am more doubtful; it could be plausibly contended that the plea of guilty to the earlier offense, made on February 12, 1952, and accepted by the court as disclosed by the journal *437entry in the district court as of that date, constituted a “conviction” of the earlier offense within the meaning of the Act. See Kercheval v. United States, 1927, 274 U.S. 220, 223, 47 S.Ct. 582, 71 L.Ed. 1009. Certainly such a plea of guilty, accepted by the court, was an event which conferred upon the court, without more, the power to impose penal sanctions. But though I am not free from doubt, I do not dissent from the court’s conclusion, especially in view of the provision of Rule 32(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure that a “judgment of conviction shall set forth the plea, the verdict or findings, and the adjudication and sentence.” It may be that there is not the requisite finality to a plea of guilty, standing alone, considering the relative ease with which such a plea may be withdrawn, by leave of court, pursuant to a motion filed at any time “before sentence is imposed or imposition of sentence is suspended”. Rule 32(d).
I shall only add that as I understand the mandate of this court, appellant’s victory may turn out to be a hollow one indeed. In No. 7039, Criminal, the information filed against the accused contained eight counts, each charging a separate offense, to all of which the accused entered a plea of guilty. Thereupon the district court imposed a sentence of ten years on the first count and eight years each on the seven other counts, all of the eight-year sentences to run concurrently with the sentence on the first count. Of course it was a matter of grace that the district court did not choose to impose consecutive sentences. We are vacating the judgment of conviction in No. 7039, Criminal, for lack of power in the district court to impose a second offender penalty in excess of five years’ imprisonment. The case therefore goes back to the district court for re-sentence within the limits provided by law as applicable to a first offender. These limits are that, for each of the eight offenses charged in the information, the accused “shall be fined not more than $2,000 and imprisoned not less than two or more than five years.” Within these limits, determining the matter of the appropriate sentences de novo, it will be within the discretion of the district court to decide whether the sentences shall run concurrently or consecutively.