Court Opinion

ID: 9687263
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:20:38.368019+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:25.203434
License: Public Domain

Robert W. Hansen, J.
(dissenting). The court majority examines the Uniform Detainer Act, adopted in *591thirty-nine jurisdictions,1 and finds three flaws in the fabric, each of constitutional proportions. The three imperfections are asserted to be: (1) Lack of adequate notice; (2) denial of equal protection; and (3) lack of due process. Each is discussed in turn.
I. Lack of notice.
The challenge on the ground that notice to the prisoner is not adequately required is to the law on its face, not to the law as applied to the petitioner. The majority opinion footnotes that: “. . . The record does indicate he [the petitioner] was informed of the detainer.” It does, and he was.
Turning to the law itself, and the Uniform Detainer Agreement, which it authorizes, we find that the Uniform Detainer Agreement (Form V) provides and requires: “Five copies. Signed copies must be sent to the prisoner and to the official who has the prisoner in custody. . . .” (Emphasis supplied.)
Despite this specific provision in the Uniform De-tainer Agreement, the majority opinion finds that the act has . . no provision requiring the prompt notification by correctional officials of detainers lodged against a prisoner to the warden of an institution. Thus the warden cannot in his turn ‘promptly’ inform the prisoner thereof as he is required under Art. Ill (c).”
Aside from the mandate of the cited provision of the Uniform Detainer Agreement, the act itself provides that, when the governor of this state receives under the act a written request for temporary custody or availability of a prisoner in this state, “. . . there shall be a period of 30 days after receipt by the appropriate au*592thorities before the request is honored . ...” 2 The same section provides that the governor may disapprove the request for temporary custody or availability under the act “. . . either upon his own motion or upon motion of the prisoner.” (Emphasis supplied.)
The only reasonable construction of the provision giving a prisoner the right to move the governor to disapprove the request is that it also includes a requirement of notice that a request has been filed and that the prisoner may petition the governor. How could the right to challenge by motion be exercised if notice was not also assured? Seeing statutory construction as designed to save, not scuttle,3 the writer would hold both notice and right to move the governor for disapproval required by the act, exactly as set forth in the Uniform Detainer Agreement it authorizes. The writer sees no foundation to the claim that the Uniform Detainer Act does not provide for notice to the prisoner, timely and adequate.
II. “Equal protection.”
The majority opinion holds the Uniform Detainer Act to violate the “equal protection” assurance of the United States Constitution. The Uniform Detainer Act and the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act are placed side-by-side. The majority notes that either act was available to the requesting state in this case. The conclusion is that use of the Uniform Detainer Act denied rights the prisoner would have had under the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act procedure. Therefore, as compared to prisoners against whom the extradition act procedure was followed, there is, the majority asserts, an “arbitrary classification” and “unequal protection.”
*593If this approach, based on balancing, has validity, the writer finds it a challenge to the constitutionality of the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act, not to the Uniform Detainer Act.
The majority opinion devotes considerable space to discussing the adequacy of provisions for the notice to the prisoner of the filing of a request for detainer provided in the Uniform Detainer Act. It does not mention that no notice at all is given the prisoner of the filing of a request for detainer under the extradition act. There the rights given the prisoner commence only after the issuance of the governor’s warrant, not before.4
Also, there is no right under the extradition act for the prisoner to move the governor to deny the request. The extradition act states, as to rights of the person being extradited: “. . . No person arrested upon such [governor’s] warrant shall be delivered over to the agent . . . appointed to receive him unless . . .” such person has been accorded the rights thereinafter listed.5 The rights granted become operative only after the governor has acted and his warrant issued. Thus the detainer act creates and gives to prisoners two substantive rights not found in the extradition act — the right to notice and to move the governor to deny the request for temporary custody before it is granted.
It is true that the extradition act provides that, after the governor has acted and the warrant is issued and the person arrested, such person shall be taken before a *594judge who is to inform him of the demand made for his surrender and of the crime with which he is charged, of his right to counsel and to bring a writ of habeas corpus to test the legality of his arrest. Appointing counsel or the public defender to represent the prisoner against whom a detainer is filed under the detainer act would give the prisoner the same information, plus the opportunity to challenge the issuance of a governor’s warrant before it is issued. The extradition act gives him the information but at a much later point in time and only after the governor has acted.
Put on the detainer act side of the scales the requirement of right to notice and to challenge and to counsel before the governor has acted. Put on the extradition act side of the scales the requirement of being judicially informed of one’s situation after the governor has issued a warrant. This is like balancing two large stones against one small pebble. Where two substantive rights have been added and one information procedure has been eliminated, we see no “equal protection” argument, at least not against the new law and procedure.
III. “Lack of due process.”
The majority opinion finds “a hearing procedure similar to that provided for in the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act” necessary to “cure” a “due-process” as well as the “equal-protection” defect in the Uniform Detain-er Act. The reference to “hearing procedure” relates to the appearance before a judge, after the governor’s warrant has been issued and the person named placed under arrest, as provided for in the extradition act. It is not easy to see how the extradition act court appearance can be termed a hearing at all. What happens, and all that happens, is that the judge informs the defendant of the demand for extradition, the nature of the charge, the right to counsel and the right to test legality by writ. *595How this fits into an extradition proceeding — after a governor’s warrant has been issued and after the person has been arrested and before he is turned over to the agent of the requesting state — is clear. How this fits— or why such postwarrant appearance is needed where, under the detainer act, the prisoner has the earlier rights to notice and to challenge and to counsel even before the governor has acted, plus the right to challenge the governor’s action by writ through his counsel — is not at all clear.
Even less clear is how what this court did in the Huebner Case 6 can be analogized and used as the basis for what is mandated here. In Huebner, the determination of whether a defendant was or was not a sex deviate in need of specialized treatment, was held to be “. . . an independent proceeding which determines such important rights of the defendant . . . that due process requires a hearing thereon . ...” 7
In the visit to the judge which the majority now mandates in detainer act cases, no rights at all are to be determined. The prisoner is to be told of his situation and rights to counsel and challenge by writ the legality of his arrest. Under the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act, this judicial informing is to take place only after the issuance of a governor’s warrant and the person’s arrest. Where, under the Uniform Detainer Act, far earlier rights to notice, to move the governor to disapprove the request before he has acted, plus right to counsel in making such motion, are provided, can it be said that what is done in extradition act cases is constitutionally required in detainer act cases? The writer thinks there is no such constitutional requirement.
Unfortunately, the term “due process” has come to have an accordion-like quality, expanding or contracting *596to fit the public policy predilections of the jurist defining it. However, it is stretched beyond reasonable limit when it is held to require a prisoner in detainer act proceedings must be brought before a judge to be given certain information. Where the Uniform Detainer Act requires notice to the prisoner and gives the opportunity to make a motion, certainly through legal counsel, for disapproval even before the governor has acted, the writer would hold the constitutional requirements of due process have been met.
It is to be added only that the Uniform Detainer Act was intended and serves to facilitate trials on pending warrants or indictments of persons confined in prisons in other states. This is an aid to timely and efficient processing of pending criminal cases. Also, it is an opportunity for persons imprisoned in one state to have resolved charges pending against them in other states. Any assumption that prisoner interests are served by one sentence being served in one state, before matters pending in other states are resolved, is erroneous. The Uniform Detainer Act, authorizing transfer of temporary custody to a requesting state for trial purposes, permits a clearing of the decks so that the person confined does not face a series of unresolved charges upon release.8 The Uniform Detainer Act serves both the cause of timely prosecutions and of timely resolution of all charges pending against a prisoner.
The writer would deny the petition for writ of mandamus, holding the challenges to the constitutionality of the Uniform Detainer Act to be without merit and *597the challenges to the application of the act to the petitioner in this case to be without substance. • ■
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Leo B. Hanley joins in this dissent.

 The agreement is not only adhered to by the Congress of the United States as a party (Interstate Agreement on Detainers Act of December 9, 1970, 84 Stat. 1397-1403) but is authorized by the Crime Control Consent Act of 1934 (4 USCA, sec. 112).

 Sec. 976.05, Art. IV (a), Stats.

 It has long been recognized that an act of the legislature is to he sustained by any reasonable construction of the act. In re Appointment of Revisor (1910), 141 Wis. 592, 124 N. W. 670.

 Sec. 976.03 (10), Stats. Also note: “The Uniform Criminal Extradition Act provides that if a criminal prosecution has been instituted against a person under the laws of the asylum state and is still pending, the governor, in his discretion, may either surrender the accused, or hold him until he is tried and discharged, or convicted and punished, in the asylum state. . . .” 31 Am. Jur. 2d, Extradition, pp. 935, 936, sec. 18.

 Sec. 976.03 (10), Stats.

 Huebner v. State (1967), 33 Wis. 2d 505, 147 N. W. 2d 646.

 Id, at page 526.

 Contrast Art. Ill (a) of the detainer act which gives a prisoner the right to he brought to trial in the requesting state within 180 days of his request for a final disposition, with section 19 of the extradition act which gives the governor the discretion to prevent the prisoner from going to trial in the requesting state until after the prisoner has completed his sentence in the holding state.