Court Opinion

ID: 9443919
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:33:57.52655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:38.779496
License: Public Domain

WASHINGTON, Circuit Judge.
I am obliged to dissent. Richards, a citizen and resident of Virginia, was charged under a Virginia indictment which said that he had removed a mortgaged car from the state “on or about January 1, 1952.” Actually, he says, he removed the car on December 5, 1951. His counsel conceded in the District Court that the Virginia courts would not allow him to escape conviction on the ground of the variation between the two dates. This court would hardly do so, either, if a similar case arose in this jurisdiction. Miller v. United States, 1927, 57 App.D.C. 228, 19 F.2d 702. “Ordinarily, proof of any day before the finding of the indictment, and within the statute of limitations, will be sufficient.” Ledbetter v. United States, 1898, 170 U. S. 606, 612, 18 S.Ct. 774, 776, 42 L.Ed. 1162. The indictment thus adequately states the date of the offense, for purposes of trial and conviction. A fortiori, it is adequate for purposes of extradition : the technical sufficiency of an indictment is not open to inquiry in an extradition proceeding. Pierce v. Creecy, 1908, 210 U.S. 387, 403, 28 S.Ct. 714, 52 L.Ed. 1113. But the majority of the court nevertheless concludes that Richards should not be extradited. Why? Because, it is said, “What Richards was actually charged with was committing an offense against the laws of Virginia at a time when he was not in that State.” With deference, I submit that this conclusion is unwarranted.
As I read the record and briefs, Virginia plainly charges Richards with committing a crime at a time when he was in the state. Virginia contends that the crime took place on the day the car was removed, whether that day was December 5, 1951, or some other day in the “neighborhood” of January 1, 1952. (Government’s Br. 5) It complains of the removal, and nothing else. It charges that the removal was fraudulent, felonious and unlawful. There is nothing to indicate that Virginia concedes that removal of the car on December 5th was not at that time a crime, or that criminality would depend on whether the note was then in default. The indictment says nothing about the state of Richards’ payments. The fact that on December 11 a payment became due and was not paid was not mentioned in the indictment — nor need it have been. Circumstances such as that are purely evi-dentiary. They may bear on the defendant’s intent, and hence on his guilt or innocence of the crime charged. But we cannot inquire into such matters. That is for the courts of Virginia.1
In these circumstances, the Hyatt case, cited and relied on by the majority, does not support the result reached. It simply is not in point. There the relator was not within the demanding state either on the dates named in the indictment or on the dates when the acts alleged to constitute the crime actually occurred.2 *233Here it is undisputed that the relator was within the demanding state on the date when the acts alleged to constitute the crime took place, and that the date given in the indictment was adequately stated for purposes of trial and conviction. The Supreme Court has never released a relator under such circumstances, and I am confident it never will. Technical objections are commonly the only ones available to persons who seek to resist extradition: any discrepancies which can be found in the prosecution’s allegations regarding time, place, and the like, are promptly seized upon. But the Supreme Court has consistently rejected tactics of that sort, and has emphasized the obligation of the courts to favor — rather than defeat — the constitutional and statutory mandate for extradition.3
If a homicide or a kidnapping had been involved here, I have little doubt that the court would order Richards’ return. It would leave the merits of his story as to good motives and lack of criminal intent to be decided by the Virginia courts, as they should be. In contrast, we have in this case an alleged infringement of an economic enactment, bearing harshly on debtors; we have a debtor who tells an appealing story. But it is not our function to question the merits of the statute, or to select the laws we wish to honor in the observance. Our duty under the Constitution is to return fugitives for trial. Two judges of the District Court have held in this case that Richards should be returned: Chief Judge Laws in his executive capacity, and Judge Schweinhaut in the habeas corpus proceeding. I think they were right, and I would affirm.

. The proof at the trial might show that in fact Richards removed the car in advance of the date the payment was due, with the intent to avoid any payment at all. As Judge Schweinhaut pungently remarked: “ * * * if you can’t extradite a man who borrows money on an automobile and then flees the jurisdiction, intending never to go near it again and intending never to pay for the automobile, he has practically a free automobile, because he says to himself, ‘They can’t get me out of New York, the District of Columbia, or anywhere. All I have to do is borrow the money, get out of Virginia, and I am safe.’ ” (App. 23) Whether appellant violated the statute depends primarily on his intent in removing the car. That, of course, is an issue we cannot try.

. In Hyatt there was “no claim of any error in the dates named in the indictment”, and “no proof, or offer of proof, to show that the crimes were in truth committed on some other day than those named in the indictments, and that the dates therein named were erroneously stated”. 188 U.S. at page 711, 23 S.Ct. at page 459, 47 L.Ed. 657. Exactly the contrary is true in this case. By the best of proof, relator’s own admission, *233it is shown that the acts alleged to constitute the crime took place on a day other than (though in the neighborhood of) the day named in the indictment. Compare Strassheim v. Daily, 1911, 221 U.S. 280, 286, 31 S.Ct. 558, 55 L.Ed. 735.

. See, for example, State of South Carolina v. Bailey, 1933, 289 U.S. 412, 53 S.Ct. 667, 77 L.Ed. 1292; Strassheim v. Daily, supra, note 2, Appleyard v. State of Massachusetts, 1906, 203 U.S. 222, 27 S.Ct. 122, 51 L.Ed. 161; Munsey v. Clough, 1905, 196 U.S. 364, 25 S.Ct. 282, 49 L.Ed. 515; Roberts v. Reilly, 1885, 116 U.S. 80, 97, 6 S.Ct. 291, 29 L.Ed. 544; Ex parte Reggel, 1885, 114 U.S. 642, 653, 5 S.Ct. 1148, 29 L.Ed. 250. See also, Stumpf v. Matthews, 1952, 90 U.S.App.D.C. 177, 195 F.2d 35, and cases there cited and relied on, especially United States ex rel. Jackson v. Meyering, 7 Cir., 1931, 54 F.2d 621, certiorari denied 286 U.S. 542, 52 S.Ct. 498, 76 L.Ed. 1280 (nine year variation between date of crime and date alleged in indictment; extradition ordered). See, further, cases cited in my dissenting opinion in Fowler v. Ross, 1952, 90 U.S.App.D.C. 305, 318, 196 F.2d 25, 38. In Munsey v. Clongh, supra, a woman was charged in a Massachusetts indictment with forging a will on November 20, 1901. She was found in New Hampshire. A Massachusetts citizen presented to the Governor of Now Hampshire an affidavit saying that the woman committed the crime while in Massachusetts; it also said that she fled Massachusetts on or about November 4, 1901, which of course was more than two weeks before the date of the crime as alleged in the indictment. The Supreme Court held this affidavit to be a sufficient basis for ex-tradiction, in the absence of any other explanation of the facts. In so doing, the Court dismissed the relator’s objection, largely based on the Hyatt case, as “technical.” 196 U.S. at page 373, 25 S.Ct. 282, 49 L.Ed. 515.