U.S. v. Grimes

Decision Date04 November 1980
Docket NumberNo. 79-1244,79-1244
Citation641 F.2d 96
PartiesUNITED STATES of America v. Robert GRIMES, Iodis Robinson, Shahid Ali, formerly known as Iodis X. Robinson, Appellant. . Submitted under Third Circuit Rule 12(6) on
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

Robert J. Del Tufo, U. S. Atty., Maryanne T. Desmond, Chief, Appeals Division, Asst. U. S. Atty., Newark, N. J., for appellee- Warren R. Hamilton, Philadelphia, Pa., for appellant.

; Samuel Rosenthal, Asst. U. S. Atty., Newark, N. J., on the brief.

Before ADAMS and SLOVITER, Circuit Judges, and KNOX, District Judge. *

OPINION OF THE COURT

ADAMS, Circuit Judge.

This appeal from a district court denial of a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion to vacate a criminal conviction and sentence involves a five-pronged attack on both the underlying conviction and twenty year sentence for armed robbery. 1 Appellant, Shahid Ali, has challenged his conviction and sentence on the grounds that (1) he was denied a fair trial because of insufficient access to an adequate legal library; (2) he was unable to conduct his defense competently on account of withdrawal from a prior narcotic addiction; (3) he was refused credit on his federal sentence for the time spent in state custody prior to the federal trial; (4) he was denied credit on his federal sentence for time spent in state custody serving various state sentences imposed after the federal sentence; and (5) successive state and federal prosecutions for the same armed bank robbery violated the Double Jeopardy Clause.

Although we are troubled by the double jeopardy issue, we cannot say that the district court erred in disposing of the appellant's motion, and therefore affirm.

I.

Shahid Ali, formerly known as Iodis X Robinson, was arrested on February 24, 1974 for the robbery of the Llewellyn-Edison Savings and Loan Association of West Orange, New Jersey. It appears that FBI agents as well as Newark police officials interrogated him and that both federal and state authorities thereafter filed charges against him. On March 12, 1974 Ali and a co-defendant, Robert Grimes, were indicted by a federal grand jury for (a) robbing the savings and loan association and (b) putting lives in jeopardy with a dangerous weapon in the course of the robbery, all in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) and (d).

Approximately a month later, on April 8, 1974, a state grand jury indicted Ali on a charge of armed robbery of a liquor store. The following week, two more state indictments were returned, charging Ali with the armed robbery of the savings and loan association, the same act which had formed the basis of the federal indictment, and with armed robbery of a second liquor store.

Ali first went to trial in federal court and was convicted by a jury on June 26, 1974 on both § 2113 counts. The district judge sentenced him to a blanket twenty year prison term, and this Court later affirmed the judgment. After imposition of the federal sentence, Ali on December 17, 1974 pleaded guilty to all three state robbery indictments. The state sentences resulted in an aggregate twenty-two and one-half to twenty-four year term of incarceration, with the savings and loan robbery sentence to run concurrently with one of the liquor store robbery sentences. 2

Persistent attempts have been made by Ali to have his state and federal sentences served concurrently or credited against each other. In May 1976 he wrote the United States Attorney General requesting confinement in a New Jersey state penal facility for service of his federal sentence and simultaneous credit on the federal sentence for time spent in the state institution. Ali also wrote to the district court, in July 1976, seeking similar relief; the district court responded that it had sentenced Ali to a consecutive term. On February 9, 1979, Ali filed a motion for reduction of his federal sentence pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 35, setting forth many of the same contentions raised here. After his Rule 35 motion was denied, Ali brought the present motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate his federal sentence and conviction. Without conducting a hearing, the district court denied the request in a letter opinion dated January 9, 1979. This appeal followed.

Although we affirm the district court's order, we believe it is appropriate to address briefly the merits of Ali's various contentions as well as the underlying issue of the permissibility of successive state-federal prosecutions on which the convictions in question rest.

II.

Ali's first claim, that as a pro se litigant he was denied a fair trial because of inadequate access to legal materials, was fully addressed by the district court. Before the trial the district judge had warned Ali of the hazards of proceeding pro se and had done everything within reason to insure that Ali had access to the lawbooks that were necessary for the preparation of his defense. As described by the district court in denying Ali's motion:

(p)rior to trial, the Court ordered the United States Attorney to provide Ali with an entire set of Title 18 of the United States Code Annotated, including those volumes containing the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The Court also arranged for Ali to have access to the courthouse library before each day's proceedings. Indeed, the Court offered to let Ali use books from the Court's own chambers. The Court also made inquiry into the books available to Ali at the Trenton State Prison where he had been held prior to trial and ordered the Federal Detention Center where he was held during trial to allow Ali full use of its library. Finally, at several points during the proceedings the Court reminded Ali that Mr. Brown was available to do legal research for him.

Ali's motion discloses little that would lead us to question the district court's assessment of the situation that a prison inmate's constitutional right of access to the courts set forth in Younger v. Gilmore, 3 and adumbrated in Bounds v. Smith 4 was properly observed here. In light of the trial court's intimate knowledge of the case, we cannot find an abuse of discretion in its failure to grant a hearing on the access issue.

Nor do we find that the district court erred in refusing to hold an evidentiary hearing to resolve Ali's contention that his prior narcotics addiction precluded him from competently conducting his defense. The trial court, at a pre-trial hearing, had specifically found Ali to be a "fully competent individual." As the court's letter opinion indicates, Ali did not raise incompetency concerns then or at trial, and "nothing occurred at trial to cast bona fide doubts on petitioner's competency to stand trial." (App. 3) Ali's case is distinguishable from Machibroda v. United States, 5 which involved occurrences outside the courtroom that the judge could not resolve by drawing upon his own knowledge. It is also distinguishable from Sanders v. United States, where the allegedly mentally incompetent petitioner appeared before the judge without counsel and "but briefly." 373 U.S. 1, 20, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 1079, 10 L.Ed.2d 148 (1963). In the present case, the trial judge's lengthy exchanges with Ali provide a basis to "conclusively show," as required by § 2255, that the incompetency claim is without merit.

Careful scrutiny also illuminates flaws in Ali's two arguments relating to the computation of the time that he is to serve under his federal sentence. Ali's insistence that he is being penalized for financial inability to post state bail is in essence a demand that federal bail should have been set and federal custody should have been completed prior to the imposition of state bail and custody. Judicial satisfaction of such a claim, however, would constitute an interference with executive discretion. Insofar as Ali simply seeks credit on his federal sentence for time spent in state custody prior to the federal trial, he must first establish that he has not already received credit on his unrelated state sentences for that time period. 6 Under Federal Prison Bureau Policy, "ordinarily, if a sentence results from the state charges, there will be a presumption that the prisoner did receive credit for presentence time, however, this may be rebutted if the prisoner can demonstrate that the state did not credit the time." Bureau of Prison Policy Statement 5880.24 (Sept. 5, 1979), § 5(c)(2)(a); Emig v. Bell, 456 F.Supp. 24, 28 (D.Conn.1978). Ali has not carried that burden, and would have to exhaust state remedies on this point before raising it in federal court, where the proper avenue, should Ali pursue it, would be under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. Soyka v. Alldredge, 481 F.2d 303 (3d Cir. 1973). 7

Ali's related claim, that he is entitled to federal credit for time spent serving his state sentences, was at most tangentially presented to the district court so that the merits of this contention are not properly before us. 8 Moreover, this claim, like the previous one, is a challenge to the sentence as executed by the prison and parole authorities and should be made on a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2241, not under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 whose terms cover challenges to sentences as imposed. See Gomori v. Arnold, 533 F.2d 871 (3d Cir. 1976); Soyka v. Alldredge, 481 F.2d 303 (3d Cir. 1973). In any event, this Court's recent holding in United States v. Campisi, 622 F.2d 697 (3d Cir. 1980), forecloses Ali's claim in this regard. Campisi, like Ali, asserted that the federal sentence should be deemed to commence immediately after its imposition, at the time the sentenced defendant is returned to the state prison. This Court held that such an interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 3568 would effectively prevent a district court from imposing a term of punishment to be served consecutively to an existing sentence, and would overrule prior decisions by this Court which held that a federal district court "has no power to direct that a federal sentence shall run...

To continue reading

Request your trial
48 cases
  • Evans v. State
    • United States
    • Court of Appeals of Maryland
    • September 1, 1983
    ...system). Unless and until the Supreme Court overturns Abbate, appellant's double jeopardy claim must fail." See United States v. Grimes, 641 F.2d 96, 101 n. 14 (3d Cir.1981). Thus, the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment presents no obstacle to the defendants' trials in Maryland D......
  • Peterkin v. Jeffes
    • United States
    • United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (3rd Circuit)
    • August 23, 1988
    ...has repeatedly analyzed access to courts and legal assistance claims without reference to an actual injury showing. United States v. Grimes, 641 F.2d 96, 98 (3d Cir.1981), we found no abuse of discretion in the district court's failure to grant a hearing on the defendant's claim that he was......
  • U.S. v. Wilson, 04-1918.
    • United States
    • United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (3rd Circuit)
    • July 1, 2005
    ...that prosecution of the same crime in both the federal and state systems does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause. See generally Grimes, 641 F.2d at 100-04 (questioning continuing vitality of that jurisprudence particularly because the seminal cases were decided prior to Benton v. Maryla......
  • U.S. v. Angleton
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Southern District of Texas
    • July 19, 2002
    ......Grimes, 641 F.2d 96, 101 (3d Cir.1981); United States v. Claiborne, 92 F.Supp.2d 503, 509 (E.D.Va.2000) ("Where the Commerce Clause has been broadly ......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT