Court Opinion

ID: 9458648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:57:46.463218+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:50.418799
License: Public Domain

FEINBERG, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
This apparently simple appeal, which seems at first to be governed by the hoary rule that sentences are ordinarily not reviewable, actually raises disturbing issues of national importance. For what appellant Michael. Witt McCord claimed in the district court and continues to claim before us is that the Selective Service Act is being administered unfairly in a most fundamental way. Appellant’s charge is that one type of Selective Service offender — Jehovah’s *22Witnesses — gets the preferred treatment of probation in sentencing while others like appellant receive a jail sentence. At a time when we tell our young men to resort to the courts rather than to the streets to vindicate their claims based upon conscience, we cannot take such an accusation lightly. Because the district court did not treat this claim with the gravity it demands, I would remand for an evidentiary hearing and a resentencing.
The relevant facts on appeal can be stated briefly. Appellant is a conscientious objector. The sincerity of his views has been certified by his local draft board. Because of those views, however, he refused civilian work offered by his draft board, and was thereafter convicted of that offense upon a plea of guilty. Nevertheless, he has indicated a willingness to perform such work if ordered to do so by a judge, because, in his mind, he would not then be obeying the commands of military conscription. Although the distinction may seem fine to many of us, appellant apparently thought it important enough to undergo the rigors of a criminal prosecution. The distinction has also seemed sufficiently meaningful to impel many Jehovah’s Witnesses in the last few years to take the same position in the district courts of the Eastern and Southern Districts. But, according to appellant, every single member of the latter group, just because he was a Jehovah’s Witness, was given the opportunity to perform civilian work at the order of a judge, but appellant, who is not a Jehovah’s Witness, was not so treated and was given a year in jail instead.
If true, these allegations raise grave issues of fairness and justice. If appellant were black and had charged that all whites in his position had been given probation in the Southern District because they were whites, we would give any sentence that sent appellant to jail the “most rigid scrutiny.” See Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 216, 65 S.Ct. 193, 89 L.Ed. 194 (1944). Appellant’s case raises the same basic questions. In the district court the Government took the position that disparity of treatment between Jehovah’s Witnesses and others like appellant was justified because the refusal of Jehovah’s Witnesses to obey a draft board order is based upon religious grounds and appellant’s position is not. Thus, the Assistant United States Attorney opposing appellant’s motion below argued as follows :
Mr. McCord attempts to lump himself with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s quite obvious that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are an unusual' problem, and the practice has been in this District, not exclusively, to allow them to complete their work. Their objection is based on religious grounds, very deep religious grounds. A Jehovah’s Witness would rather be flogged and tortured to death, rather than obey the order of a sector of authority to serve. They serve only if it is imposed as a punishment of the Court.
This is quite different from a situation, a case like Mr. McCord’s, where his opposition is on intellectual and moral grounds. I think it is also a combination of the same naivete and intellectual arrogance for Mr. McCord to arrogate to himself all of the problems and concept^ and traditions of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in trying to demand from this Court that he be allowed to perform alternative service in a comparatively comfortable position as compared to his sentence which your Honor has given.
It is our position that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever whereby persons who are conscientious objectors who refuse to perform work should be equated in any way at all with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. [Emphasis added.]
In this court, the Government has apparently retreated from this position, as well it might. I can see no justification under United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163, 85 S.Ct. 850, 13 L.Ed.2d 733 (1965), and Welsh v. United States, 398 *23U.S. 333, 90 S.Ct. 1792, 26 L.Ed.2d 308 (1970), for distinguishing by group among concededly sincere conscientious objectors on the basis of whether their beliefs are part of the doctrine of an organized religion.1
The major question in this case is whether appellant has shown sufficient facts to justify our intervention. He claims in this court that in the past few years in the Eastern District, 16 out of 16 Jehovah’s Witnesses were given the probation denied him, and in the Southern District, at least three out of three, and probably more, Jehovah’s Witnesses were so treated. A similar claim was made in the district court.2 Even more significantly, the Government practically admitted in the district court that appellant’s accusation was correct. Thus, as already indicated, the Government stated that:
It’s quite obvious that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are an unusual problem, and the practice has been in this District, not exclusively, to allow them to complete their work.
Moreover, such a practice is not unusual. Other federal judges, both on the circuit bench and on the trial court, have referred to it.3 Indeed, this court alluded to the possible existence of the practice in Meyers v. United States, 446 F.2d 37, 39 (2d Cir. 1971), in which similar arguments were made on appeal. In that case, however, the appellant was not a conscientious objector and had simply refused to report for induction, so that there was ample basis for distinguishing between him and a Jehovah’s Witness. But in this case, there is no such distinction.
It seems clear to me that McCord has shown enough to warrant an evidentiary hearing on the question whether there is a practice in the Eastern and Southern Districts of so favoring Jehovah’s Witnesses. This would include not just an examination of what the sentences have been in Selective Service Act cases involving that particular sect, but also what recommendations the Probation Office has made in such cases and in other conscientious objector cases not involving Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, if there is a significant difference in the pattern of recommendations, whether there is a justifiable basis for it. If appellant’s accusations turn out to be true, then the district judge should reconsider appellant’s sentence and take that additional information into account. I do not for a moment even intimate that the treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses, if it is as alleged, is not sensible. But in those circumstances I would think that considerations of fair play would suggest that appellant’s sentence be no harsher than those given to Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is precedent, in this circuit and elsewhere, for asking the judge to reconsider the sentence given appellant. If the Probation Office has been following a practice of unjustifiably discriminating against certain types of Selective Service Act offenders in making its recommendations, then district judges, including the judge in this case, have received what amounts to “misinformation.” See United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 447, 92 S.Ct. 589, 30 L.Ed. 592 (1972); McGee v. United States, 462 F.2d 243, 245, (2d Cir. 1972), and cases collected therein; United States v. Malcolm, 432 F.2d 809, *24815-819 (2d Cir. 1970). Regardless of whether such a practice violates the Constitution, in the exercise of our supervisory power we should not tolerate it. See generally Frankel, Lawlessness in Sentencing, 41 U.Cin.L.Rev. 1 (1972).
Accordingly, I would remand for an evidentiary hearing and resentencing. At that time, the district court could also again consider whether the other two counts of the indictment, to which appellant also pleaded guilty,4 justified a jail sentence for an admittedly sincere conscientious objector who was willing to perform alternative service if ordered to do so by a judge.

. This is not to say that questions of the intensity with which particular views are held may not be pertinent on sentencing, but they cannot be decided on a group basis. Moreover, the district judge apparently did not doubt the sincerity of appellant’s views. ,

. Apparently, the figures given in the district court for the Eastern District were that 21 out of 21 Jehovah’s Witnesses were placed on probation.

. See United States v. Daniels (I), 429 F.2d 1273, 1274 (6th Cir. 1970) (per curiam) ; United States v. Daniels (II), 446 F.2d 967, 969 (6th Cir. 1971), and cases cited therein; Solomon, Sentences in Selective Service and Income Tax Cases, 52 F.R.D. 481, 487 (1970). Cf. W. Gaylin, In the Service of Their Country — War Resisters In Prison 327, 336 (1970).

. Both were based on McCord’s mailing his draft cards back to Selective Service authorities, apparently as part of his decisión not to cooperate with Selective Service.