Court Opinion

ID: 9450197
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:38:04.261111+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:11.416943
License: Public Domain

*737ALDRICH, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the main in the court’s opinion, but I cannot with regard to what the court defines as the refusal of credit for time served in the state court on a void sentence. The question is whether an unjust result is to be accepted because a statute permits no other; at least I read in the court’s opinion no belief that its result is fair, but only that it is dictated.
The 25-year sentence which Green is now serving was imposed by the district court in October 1952 to commence after a sentence then being served in the state court. In October 1953 Green received another federal sentence, but this one was for three years, and was ordered to be served concurrently with the state court sentence. In December 1954 Green’s state court sentence was vacated, sub. nom. Commonwealth v. Domanski, 332 Mass. 66, 123 N.E.2d 368, but he was continued in state custody until released in May 1955, at which time he was given over to the United States Marshal. Green asks for a declaration that service of his present sentence be regarded as having commenced not in May 1955, but in October 1952, or, at the latest, in October 1953.
Had he been all the while in a federal penitentiary Green’s result would certainly have been reached upon the voiding of the first of consecutive sentences. Ekberg v. United States, 1 Cir., 1948, 167 F.2d 380. The court’s position is that the case at bar is different in that since Green was in state prison, whether lawfully or not, he had not been “received at the penitentiary, reformatory or jail for service of said [federal] sentence. * * ” 18 U.S.C. § 3568. However, it may be noted that Green did not need to be in a federal institution to satisfy the requirements of that section. Under 18 U.S.C. § 4082 he could have been confined in any state or federal institution designated by the Attorney General. And, in fact, commencing in October 1953, in conformity with the recommendation of concurrency made by the district court in its second sentence, cf. Montos v. United States, 7 Cir., 1958, 261 F.2d 39, the Attorney General did designate the state institution. The government record in the file recognizes that service of the second federal sentence began forthwith.
From and after October 1953 I see only the most technical, if any, difference between this ease and Ekberg. It is true that Green was not serving the first federal sentence at the time that he was in the state prison, but only the second. But by the same token Ekberg was not serving the second federal sentence when he was in the federal penitentiary pursuant to the first. McNally v. Hill, Warden, 1934, 293 U.S. 131, 55 S.Ct. 24, 79 L.Ed. 238; Kay v. United States, 6 Cir., 1960, 279 F.2d 734. The result in the Ekberg case was not reached on technical, legal grounds, but on grounds of justice.
Furthermore, I would not have Green’s credit date back simply to October 1953. As a matter of principle it should go back to October 1952. Indeed, if it were to go back only to 1953 this would establish a singular rule that a man who is given a second federal sentence is better off than one who received only one. It is my view that a prisoner who has served what proves to be bad time under a void sentence should be entitled on familiar equitable principles to have that time applied to a pending * on and after *738'sentence, and that to deny this by drawing state and federal lines is unjustifiable.
I find nothing in the cases cited by the court, or in the further similar cases cited by the district court, 198 F.Supp. 380 at 383, to the contrary. In those cases a prisoner was given a federal sentence, service to commence upon release from state custody under a state sentence then being served. Thereafter he was given a second state sentence, and held in further state custody. The rejection of his argument that he was to be regarded as having started serving his federal sentence when his first state sentence terminated, i. e., concurrently with the subsequently imposed second state séntenee, seems to me both sound and distinguishable from the present case.

 I do not mean by this that the federal sentence is to relate back to include the whole of the state court sentence, but only to the date that the federal service would have commenced had it been realized that the state court sentence was void. The former might be socially just, but I think the latter is supportable legally as well, on the grounds of mistake. Nor would I suggest that it was open to a prisoner to bring federal proceedings claiming that a state court sentence should have been held void in order to obtain the benefit of this rule. The principle of fairness that I suggest is limited to the case where a sentence is voided as of course by the jurisdiction that imposed it, and not reimposed.