Gottfried v. Cronin, No. 26934

• Docket Nº: No. 26934
• Citation: 555 P.2d 969, 192 Colo. 25
• Case Date: October 18, 1976
• Court: Supreme Court of Colorado

Page 969

555 P.2d 969 192 Colo. 25 William D. GOTTFRIED, Petitioner-Appellant,
v.
Dan CRONIN, Manager of Safety, and ExOfficio Sheriff of
Denver, and Wayne K. patterson, Warden of the
Jail, City and county of Denver, State
of Colorado, Respondents-Appellees. No. 26934. Supreme Court of Colorado, En Banc. Oct. 18, 1976.

[192 Colo. 27]

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Brenman, Sobol & Baum, Leo T. Zuckerman, Denver, for petitioner-appellant.

J. D. MacFarlane, Atty. Gen., Jean E. Dubofsky, Deputy Atty. Gen., Edward G. Donovan, Sol. Gen., Thomas J. Tomazin, Asst. Atty. Gen., Denver, for respondents-appellees.

HODGES, Justice.

Appellant William Gottfried is being held in Colorado pursuant to extradition proceedings initiated by California. He petitioned the trial court for a writ of habeas corpus. He argued that he should be released from custody because the California requisition failed to show that he was a fugitive from justice. The trial court discharged the writ of habeas corpus and ordered Gottfried to be returned to California. We affirm.

Gottfried was arrested in California and charged with aggravated robbery. He pled guilty to the charge but failed to appear at a probation and sentencing hearing. He was subsequently arrested for robbery in Iowa, convicted, and sentenced to a term of twenty-five years in the Iowa State Penitentiary.

Thereafter, Gottfried was sent back to California, over his objection, to stand trial for escape and to be sentenced for his earlier aggravated robbery conviction. His transfer was accomplished pursuant to the Interstate Agreement on Detainers which permits the transfer of a prisoner from

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one state to another for purposes of prosecuting him on a charge pending in [192 Colo. 28] the other state. ¹ In California, Gottfried pled guilty to the escape charge. He was given a five-year to life sentence for robbery, and a six-month to five-year sentence for escape. The sentences were to run concurrently with any unexpired sentences previously imposed in other states. Gottfried was therefore returned to Iowa to begin serving his sentences there.

On his return to Iowa, Gottfried was released from the Iowa penitentiary after his Iowa conviction was reversed. He refused to waive extradition back to California. While on bond in Iowa, pending extradition proceedings, the petitioner was arrested in Denver, Colorado.

The Governor of California formally requested Colorado to return Gottfried to California pursuant to the United States Constitution, as well as the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act, which has been enacted in both California and Colorado. The requisition stated that Gottfried was present in California when he committed the crimes of robbery and escape; that he was convicted and sentenced; that he violated the terms of his sentence; and that he fled from the justice of the state.

I.

Gottfried asserts that the demand by California does not state adequate grounds for extraditing him under the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act as enacted in Colorado. He argues that section 16--19--104, C.R.S.1973, authorizes the extradition of a person convicted of a crime only if the demanding state alleges that he 'escaped from confinement or has broken the terms of his bail, probation, or parole.' ² California, he reasons, cannot make such a claim because it voluntarily released him to Iowa to serve out his unexpired California sentence there.

However, we do not believe that such an interpretation of the Act is consistent with other portions of the Act or with its manifest purposes. For example, section 16--19--103, C.R.S.1973, states that, in accord with U.S.Const. art. IV, § 2, cl. 2, and 18 U.S.C. § 3182 (1970), it shall be the duty of the governor to deliver up any person charged in a demanding state with a crime who has fled from justice and is found in Colorado. [192 Colo. 29] We have previously held the clause 'any person charged with a crime' includes a person whose judgment of conviction remains unsatisfied. Travis v. People, 135 Colo. 141, 308 P.2d 997 (1957). Moreover, the phrase 'fled from justice' has generally been interpreted to cover individuals who are merely absent from the state when they are sought to answer for a crime, irrespective of their manner of leaving the state. See, e.g., Hogan v. O'Neill, 255 U.S. 52, 41 S.Ct.

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222, 65 L.Ed. 497 (1921); Roberts v. Reilly, 116 U.S. 80, 6 S.Ct. 291, 29 L.Ed. 544 (1885). See also 31 Am.Jur.2d Extradition § 15 and 35 C.J.S. Extradition § 10. Thus, under section 16--19--103, there is little question that Gottfried can be classified as a fugitive from justice.

Furthermore, the extradition law is designed to prevent the successful escape of all persons accused to cirme, whether convicted or not, and to secure their return to the state from which they fled for their due punishment. Travis v. People, supra. See also Boyd v. Van Cleave, 180 Colo. 403, 505 P.2d 1305 (1973). Consequently, we have held that the extradition statutes should not be so narrowly construed as to enable offenders against the laws of a state to find permanent asylum in another state. Glenn v. Baker, 184 Colo. 211, 519 P.2d 349 (1974). See also In re Strauss, 197 U.S. 324, 25 S.Ct. 535, 49 L.Ed. 774 (1905).

In light of section 16--19--103 and the Act's purposes, we believe that section 16--19--104 does not limit the extradition of an individual convicted of a crime to instances where he has 'escapaed from confinement or has broken the terms of his bail, probation, or parole.' Such language was only meant to be illustrative, but not exhaustive, of the occasions when a convicted person can be considered to have fled...