Court Opinion

ID: 9452348
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:37:45.443995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:10.587049
License: Public Domain

ALBERT V. BRYAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I would affirm Judge Butzner’s refusal to interfere with the State courts’ computation of this State convict’s term of imprisonment when it was not shown to be discriminatory, unfair, or excessive punishment.
It was computed, after several reviews, by the Virginia penitentiary administration at 8 years. This, too, is the computation of the judge who. passed the sentences, in the Hustings Court of the City of Newport News. Thereafter the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia refused to disturb the 8-year determination.
Thus, the meaning of the State sentences has been established by the State courts. Uniformly and rightly Federal courts are required to accept the State courts’ interpretations of State laws and proceedings. Yet now this court holds that the State courts do not know what their own sentences mean, even State-wise.
Again, it is not what we think that controls. We may disapprove the splitting or arrangement of the sentences; we may deem the meaning given them by the State courts to be wrong; but all this is of no consequence. So long as the imposition and effect of the sentences do not offend Constitutional guarantees of due process or equality of treatment — and none is intimated here- — there is no justification for Federal intervention.
However, if we are to undertake to ascertain the incarceration required by the sentences, I concur with the District Court’s agreement with the State’s application of them. The prisoner was committed to serve 1 year by the Circuit Court of York County. Thereafter, in the Newport News Hustings Court he was ordered confined for 2 years on each of 5 indictments, but each of these 2-year terms was made to run concurrently with the 1-year York sentence. The Hustings Court sentences are not ordered to run concurrently with each other, and in the absence of such a direction the statute requires they be served consecutively. Va.Code, 1950, sec. 19.1-294. This meant that each of the 2-year terms would be credited with the 1 year as served under the York sentence. Hence, the prisoner had 1 year left to be served on each of the Hustings Court’s 5 sentences, or a net of 5 years.
The York sentence of 1 year plus the Hustings Court’s 5 years, gives a total of 6 years. Another 2 years, concededly, is added on account of a sentence of that length in the Circuit Court of the City of Hampton, Virginia. Thus the sentences directed an aggregate detention of 8 years.
With the District Court and the State, I cannot see how a 2-year term can run completely concurrently with a 1-year term. They can be coextensive for 1 year only. To repeat, the Virginia statute declares that the Hustings sentences shall not run simultaneously when, as here, they do not carry a provision for coincidence. But by resort to algebra the majority telescopes time and transcends the statutory bar per saltum. Nothing in the cited case of Conner v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 207 Va., 455, 150 S.E. 2d 478 (decided October 10, 1966) or other Virginia decisions do I see sustaining the decision of the court.
The Virginia courts are more expert in reading Virginia judgments than are we. For this reason, and because I am deeply concerned about the continual and ready conversion of State questions into Federal issues, I would affirm.