United States v. Marrin
| Decision Date | 22 October 1915 |
| Docket Number | 44-46. |
| Citation | 227 F. 314 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES v. MARRIN. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
John H Hall, Asst. U.S. Atty., and Francis Fisher Kane, U.S. Atty both of Philadelphia, Pa.
John G Kaufman and V. Gilpin Robinson, both of Philadelphia, Pa for defendant.
An outline statement of a few facts will be helpful to enable us to understand in what way the questions discussed in this case arise, and to follow the course which the discussion has taken:
Frank C. Marrin, the defendant, was convicted in this court on October 5, 1907, and on March 18, 1908, was sentenced to the payment of a fine and four years' imprisonment. He took an appeal from the judgment of conviction, and was admitted to bail pending its disposition. The appeal was unsuccessful, and on March 10, 1909, a mandate came down from the Circuit Court of Appeals affirming the judgment of conviction, and remanding the record of the case to this court to have the sentence carried into execution. The defendant failed to appear, and his bail failed to produce him. In consequence his recognizance was forfeited. This forfeiture the court refused to remit. United States v. Marrin (D.C.) 170 F. 476. On September 10, 1915, he was found in the state of New York and was taken into custody, and by order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York was remanded to this jurisdiction, and is now in the custody of the United States marshal here. The authority of the marshal for holding him is implied in the part of the record of the case above quoted.
This court was then asked to issue the usual order of commitment. This is asked for on the basis of the defendant being a fugitive from justice following a forfeiture of his recognizance to appear here to submit himself to commitment to have the sentence imposed carried into execution. This application is met by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. This petition in its turn is based upon the following state of facts:
There is a denial of the fact that the defendant has absconded. Before his indictment for the offense of which he was here convicted, the defendant had been indicted in a state court of Kings county, N.Y., for an offense alleged to have been previously committed against the laws of the state of New York. For this he had not at that time been tried. Pending the decision of the appeal above referred to, and while within the jurisdiction of this court, he was arrested by the New York state authorities, with a view to have him sent to Kings county, N.Y., for trial under the indictment there found against him. He thereupon made application to this court for a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that, being in the custody of this court, through the bail entered by him, this court should not permit him to be taken out of its custody into another jurisdiction. The writ was allowed, and the defendant relieved of this arrest and remanded to the custody of his bail.
With matters in this situation, the defendant voluntarily, and presumably with the consent of his bail, expressed or implied, left this jurisdiction and went into the state of New York. He was there again taken into custody by the New York state authorities with a view to his trial under the indictment above mentioned, found against him in Kings county. He made application for his discharge from that arrest on the plea that he was subject to the control of this court and of the Circuit Court of Appeals of this circuit until his appeal should have been finally disposed of and the sentence of this court reversed or carried into effect. In this application he was unsuccessful. The ruling appears to have been based upon the ground that the question of to which court he should be answerable was a question, not of the right of the defendant, but of comity in the exercise of the powers of the court of each of these respective jurisdictions. The court therefore declined to order his release unless either the authorities of the United States or the bail should intervene to ask it. Both the United States authorities and the bail refused to interfere, or at least stood mute and did not interpose in the proceedings. The opinion of Judge Chatfield accompanying this ruling is reported in 164 F. 631.
Marrin was accordingly tried, convicted, and the conviction on appeal affirmed, and he was sentenced to an indeterminate term of from 15 to 20 years in the proper prison of the state of New York. Another effort to be relieved of imprisonment in the state of New York was made by the defendant. This was in the form of an application to transfer the custody of defendant to this court. This was refused; the opinion of Judge Gavegan planting the refusal on the ground of lack of power. People v. Benham, 71 Misc.Rep. 345, 128 N.Y.Supp. 610.
It may be well to make clear by explicit statement, what is implied in the foregoing, that the two offenses to which we have referred were in every sense distinct and separate, and there is no connection in any way between the two. Following the conviction last referred to Marrin was committed in pursuance of the sentence then imposed, and remained in prison for a period of nearly 7 years.
By the provisions of the New York statutes certain convicts become entitled to what is the practical equivalent of a commutation of sentence through and by the parole system which is in vogue in that state. Marrin was made the recipient of the benefits of this parole provision of the statute. He was also given the benefit of the exercise of executive clemency. The precise form in which this benefit was conferred is argued to be of importance here, and so far as of importance to this discussion will be referred to later.
It should be interpolated at this point that the authorities of the United States, while not intervening to interfere with either the trial, sentence, or the carrying out of the sentence of the New York state court after the commitment of the defendant under that sentence, lodged with the authorities of the prison in which he was incarcerated the usual detainer for the purpose of holding him to answer to his sentence here. Upon release of Marrin from actual detention within his prison walls, the authorities of the United States claimed the detainer to have come into operation and took him into custody.
The defendant again had recourse to habeas corpus proceedings, in which he raised the question of the legality of his arrest. He raised also substantially the same question by opposition to the application to have him sent into this jurisdiction. The result of these several efforts is shown by the fact of his presence here under an order of removal.
In his present application he re-raises the same questions and reasserts his position. To fully present them, it is necessary to include a statement of the provisions of the New York Code on the subject of parole. All of them need not be quoted, as one may be taken as typical of all. That is the provision that a condition of the parole is that the paroled convict shall not go outside of the territorial limits of the state of New York, and shall, at stated times, report to the New York state prison authorities, and that these reports shall be vised by the person in whose custody the order of parole has placed the convict. That very practical predicament is presented. The sentence of the New York state court may result in an imprisonment for 20 years. Although released upon parole, if the condition referred to is violated, the relator may incur as a consequence 13 years additional servitude.
The questions presented by him through this application, and earnestly and forcibly urged by his counsel, are in substance and effect two. We will invert the order of their presentation. One is that in legal effect and intendment Marrin is still in the custody of the New York state authorities, or, as the point made may for emphasis be put, he is still in a New York prison. The proposition presented is that to take him away from the New York authorities and to bring him here is in legal intendment and effect the same as if he were taken while within the walls of the New York state prison there serving the sentence imposed upon him. The point made is that, while as a physical fact he has been brought within this jurisdiction, the whole process by which he was brought was unwarranted and illegal, and that this court should therefore refuse to further detain him, but should remand him to the custody of the authorities of the state of New York, from whose custody he was thus unlawfully taken.
The other proposition presented is that there is no authority of law to commit Marrin to prison here,...
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