Court Opinion

ID: 9460640
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:56:52.41046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:43.300603
License: Public Domain

LEVENTHAL, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
In accordance with a course I have followed on occasion,* I have written a separate concurring opinion notwithstanding that it was I who prepared the opinion for the court, because it contains comments not necessary for the judgment. Yet a concurring opinion that is not binding on the court may have utility in calling the attention of bench and bar to a legal approach that might have been developed in a case but was not, because such observations may help to focus on or clarify an area of the law that profits from reflection and attention. This prompted, for example, my concurring opinion United States v. (William) Dixon, 135 U.S.App.D.C. 401, 403, 419 F.2d 288, 290 (1969), which led, in due course, to a change in jury instructions in this circuit.
As to the present case, I think it may be helpful, in the event a legally similar *626problem arises again, to point out that our holding that consecutive sentences for murder were unavailable to the trial judge does not mean that no other sentencing alternatives were at his disposal. In appropriate cases, the trial judge could explore the possibility of conditioning his acceptance of the guilty plea to second degree murder on the count charging premeditated murder, upon an additional plea, on the count charging felony murder, to the lesser included offense of the underlying felony, in this case rape. Whether such a course would be lawful and appropriate would depend on the implicating facts, and on the trial judge’s reasons. In the case at bar, there was no attempt by the trial judge to explore any such alternatives. The proffered plea was simply rejected outright. Subsequent events — the results at trial, the conviction of the hired gun, and the decision in Furman v. Georgia— preclude any comprehensible attempt to reconstruct matters as they might have stood.

 United States v. Poole, 161 U.S.App.D.C. -, 495 F.2d 115 (1974); Bellei v. Rusk, 296 F.Supp. 1247, 1252 (D.D.C.1969, 3-judge district court), reversed 401 U.S. 815, 91 S.Ct. 1060, 28 L.Ed.2d 499 (1971).