U.S. v. Crawley

• Decision Date: 07 January 1988
• Docket Number: No. 87-1967,87-1967
• Citation: 837 F.2d 291
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John Allan CRAWLEY, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 291

837 F.2d 291

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John Allan CRAWLEY, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 87-1967.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Submitted Nov. 2, 1987.

Decided Jan. 7, 1988.

David J. Ryan, Danville, Ill., for defendant-appellant.

Frances C. Hulin, U.S. Atty. Office, Danville, Ill., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

In an unpublished order issued today, we affirm the district court's order revoking defendant Crawley's probation and sentencing him to three years in prison. This opinion is confined to the question whether, in United States v. Yancey, 827 F.2d 83, 89 (7th Cir.1987), a panel of this court changed the standard of proof in revocation cases. In United States v. Smith, 571 F.2d 370, 372 and n. 2 (7th Cir.1978), we had held that a district court may revoke probation if "reasonably satisfied" that the probationer has violated a condition of his probation. In United States v. Torrez-Flores, 624 F.2d 776, 781 (7th Cir.1980), we referred approvingly to the standard, although its propriety had not been put in issue in that case. Every other circuit to consider the question has adopted the "reasonably satisfied" standard. See, e.g., United States v. Rice, 671 F.2d 455, 458 (11th Cir.1982). However, in Yancey we said that the evidence presented in the revocation hearing that Yancey had violated a condition of his probation, although it "might not be sufficient to find Yancey guilty of the act charged in a criminal case, ... satisfies the requirement for proof by a preponderance necessary in probation revocation hearings." 827 F.2d at 89. Shortly afterward, without citing Yancey, we reiterated the "reasonably satisfied" standard, even remarking that "the district court went further than necessary when it evaluated the evidence before it under a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard." United States v. Warner, 830 F.2d 651, 655 (7th Cir.1987); see also United States v. Rife, 835 F.2d 154, 155 (7th Cir.1987). The district court applied the "reasonably satisfied" standard in this case, not the preponderance standard.

The statement in Yancey was a dictum, a term variously defined. We have defined dictum as "a statement in a judicial opinion that could have been deleted without seriously impairing the analytical foundations of the holding--that, being peripheral, may not have received the full and careful consideration of the court that uttered it." Sarnoff v. American Home Products Corp., 798 F.2d 1075, 1084 (7th Cir.1986). "[D]ictum is a general argument or observation unnecessary to the decision.... The basic formula [for distinguishing holding from dictum] is to take account of facts treated by the judge as material and determine whether the contested opinion is based upon them." Local 8599, United Steelworkers of America v. Board of Education, 162 Cal.App.3d 823, 834, 209 Cal.Rptr. 16, 21 (1984). A dictum is "any statement made by a court for use in argument, illustration, analogy or suggestion. It is a remark, an aside, concerning some rule of law or legal proposition that is not necessarily essential to the decision and lacks the authority of adjudication." Stover v. Stover, 60 Md.App. 470, 476, 483 A.2d 783, 786 (1984). It is "a statement not addressed to the question before the court or necessary for its decision." American Family Mutual Ins. Co. v. Shannon, 120 Wis.2d 560, 565, 356 N.W.2d 175, 178 (1984). As often in dealing with complex terms, the definitions (those above, and others w...