Court Opinion

ID: 9449561
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:15:12.805695+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:52.899562
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
While I am in full agreement with the Court’s opinion that the evidence of guilt was overwhelmingly established, that Overstreet did not, and could not have sustained any harm from the manner in which the trial Court disposed of the cases; of his codefendants and that the sentence imposed here was within the maximum permitted under 21 U.S.C.A. § 176a, so that from the part of the indictment remaining after the “severance” resorted to by the Court to correct the ambiguities of the indictment, Over-street suffered no injury, I think the case must nevertheless be reversed.
Neither the District Judge nor the United States Attorney is the Grand Jury. Neither can determine what the Grand Jury might have done. Each is bound by what the Grand Jury has done. Here the conspiracy charges the violation of two different laws, one having a greater maximum punishment than the other for precisely the same actions. Obviously the Grand Jury could not have intended that contradictory result. Then what did the Grand Jury intend? Was the offense to be the one with the greater punishment — as selected by the District Attorney and the Court? Or was it to be the one with the lesser punishment— the one the District Court “severed” on motion of the Government?
We now are recently reminded that the indictment by a Grand Jury serves more than the substantive office of (a) advising the accused of the crime charged, and (b) identifying clearly the crime charged to prevent double jeopardy. A major role is the protection of the citizen against the charge of crime. Since no one can now tell whether the Grand Jury would have indicted Overstreet for *463the greater offense alone, the Court lacked the power to make the choice which was initially that of the Grand Jury. Russell v. United States, 1962, 369 U.S. 749, 770, 82 S.Ct. 1038, 8 L.Ed.2d 240; Smith v. United States, 1959, 360 U.S. 1, 9, 79 S.Ct. 991, 3 L.Ed.2d 1041; Hat-taway v. United States, 5 Cir., 1962, 304 F.2d 5, 12; Van Liew v. United States, 5 Cir., 1963, 321 F.2d 664. The vital function of the Grand Jury ought not to be whittled down to extricate prosecutors from the consequences of slovenly draftsmanship.
I therefore respectfully dissent.