Court Opinion

ID: 9447439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:35:09.257144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:02.586769
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
PER CURIAM.
Appellee has petitioned for rehearing, urging that the Court was in error in holding that “the maximum term he [Gaddis] could have received on the revocation of his probation was two years less that amount of time which he is credited for having spent in the penal institution on Count One.” The Government contends that this holding opens *337the door for a prisoner to store up a “bank” of time for future violations of probation.
In so contending the Government overlooks the fact that this case has arisen from a most peculiar factual background and its decision hinges thereon.
The Probation Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3653, provides that upon the revocation of probation the probationer may be required “to serve the sentence imposed, or any lesser sentence.”
What was the maximum term appellant could have been required to serve under the concurrent sentences, had there not been the probation on Count Two? The answer to this question is two years.
The Probation Act provides that a probation violator may be confined to serve the sentence imposed. The sentence imposed on appellant carried a total cumulative period of imprisonment of two years. He has already been imprisoned for approximately ten months under the First Count. In order to satisfy his sentence it necessarily follows that appellant could only be confined for two years less that amount of time which he is credited for having spent in the penal institution under the sentence of Count One.
Were this Court to hold otherwise we would be countenancing the imprisonment of an individual as a probation violator for a period of time which, added to that already served, would be in excess of that which he would have served had he not been put on probation in the first place.
This holding does not, in our judgment, carry with it the dire consequences which the Government attaches to it. The problem resolved herein can be very simply avoided. Should a District Court desire to place a prisoner on probation on one or more counts of a multiple count conviction, probation to commence upon the expiration of a term of imprisonment under another count, that may be achieved by providing that the sentences are to run consecutively. The 1958 amendment of the Probation Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3651, provides an analogous procedure, which a District Court may wish to utilize in proper cases.
The Petition for Rehearing is denied.