Brosius v. Botkin, 7658.
Decision Date | 24 June 1940 |
Docket Number | No. 7658.,7658. |
Parties | BROSIUS v. BOTKIN, Superintendent of D. C. Reformatory. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
Jack Brosius, in pro. per., for appellant.
Edward M. Curran, U. S. Atty., and Allen J. Krouse and Arthur B. Caldwell, Asst. U. S. Attys., all of Washington, D. C., for appellee.
Before GRONER, Chief Justice and EDGERTON and VINSON, Associate Justices.
In November, 1938, appellant pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to two felony indictments. One charged robbery in May, 1938; the other assault with a dangerous weapon in June, 1938. For each offense he was sentenced to serve a term "in an institution of the Jail type" from six months to a year, the second sentence to begin at the end of service of the first. The total period of confinement embraced in the two sentences was two years, unless shortened by parole. Appellant was first confined in the Washington City Jail, but subsequently was removed to the Lorton Reformatory in Virginia. He applied to the United States District Court in Eastern Virginia for a writ of habeas corpus, claiming that his confinement in the reformatory was unlawful. Judge Way sustained the writ, on the ground that the two jail sentences, aggregating, as they did, a period in excess of one year, were illegal under the provisions of D.C.Code, Tit. 6, Sec. 401, and remanded appellant "to the District of Columbia authorities for further proceedings in accordance with law." Appellant was thereafter brought before the District Court and the former sentences were corrected by striking out the provision for confinement in an institution of the "jail type" and substituting "penitentiary type," and appellant was then returned to the reformatory. The power of the District Court to correct the sentence to conform to the statute, is not challenged. De Benque v. United States, 66 App.D.C. 36, 85 F.2d 202, 106 A.L.R. 839.
In January, 1940, appellant filed in the court below a habeas corpus petition, setting out these facts and contending that his imprisonment in an institution of the penitentiary type was unlawful. That court, after hearing, discharged the writ and dismissed the petition, and this appeal followed.
The argument is that, although D.C.Code, Tit. 6, Sec. 401, is applicable to certain types of cumulative sentences aggregating more than one year, it is not applicable to sentences imposed for two separate and distinct violations of law committed on two separate and distinct dates, arising out of two separate and distinct transactions. The section is only a part of Sec. 934 of the 1901 Code, still in effect, which in its entirety reads as follows:
Appellant relies on Harris v. Lang, 27 App.D.C. 84, 7 L.R.A.,N.S., 124, 7 Ann. Cas. 141. That case, like this, was an appeal in habeas corpus. There the petitioner was sentenced in the District of Columbia Police Court in June, 1904, to pay a fine of $200 and in default to be committed to jail for the term of 364 days. In the following March, 1905, while in jail, he was sentenced in the police court upon a different information for a different offense to imprisonment for 180 days "to take effect upon the expiration of sentence" previously imposed. The question was whether, because the sentences aggregated more than one year, the police court had exceeded its jurisdiction. We held it had not, and while the opinion undoubtedly...
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Phillips v. United States
...supporting the view that a District Court may suspend the execution of the unserved parts of a cumulative sentence, Brosius v. Botkin, 72 App.D.C. 279, 114 F.2d 22, 23, which a prisoner has commenced to serve. In 1926 the District Court of the District of Arizona, in United States v. Chafin......
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...to the right of the court to impose cumulative indeterminate sentences. This court has sanctioned such sentences in Brosius v. Botkin, 1940, 72 App.D.C. 279, 114 F.2d 22, and in Watson v. United States, 1948, 84 U.S.App. D.C. 86, 174 F.2d 253. Likewise, as to the reference to "sentence in C......
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Williams v. United States, 1969.
...does not thereby extend or exceed the Municipal Court's jurisdiction, for as former Chief Judge Groner stated in Brosius v. Botkin, 1940, 72 App. D.C. 279, 280, 114 F.2d 22, 23, "* * * the police court's jurisdiction, though limited to crimes `not punishable by imprisonment in the penitenti......