Rawls v. United States

• Decision Date: 27 May 1963
• Docket Number: No. 14301-1.,14301-1.
• Citation: 218 F. Supp. 849
• Parties: David Joseph RAWLS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Missouri

218 F. Supp. 849

David Joseph RAWLS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent.

No. 14301-1.

United States District Court W. D. Missouri, W. D.

May 27, 1963.

David Joseph Rawls, pro se.

F. Russell Millin, U. S. Dist. Atty., Kansas City, Mo., for respondent.

JOHN W. OLIVER, District Judge.

This habeas corpus proceeding presents, as a matter of first impression, the question of whether Chapter 313 of Title 18 United States Code (18 U.S.C.A. §§ 4241-4248, inclusive), relating to mental defectives, is applicable to persons sentenced pursuant to the Youth Corrections Act as it appears in Chapter 402 of Title 18 United States Code (18 U.S.C.A. §§ 5005-5026, inclusive).

While this is the fourth petition for habeas corpus filed by petitioner in this Court, this is the first case in which the question presented has been ripe for adjudication.¹

Petitioner was sentenced by the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on January 16, 1959, upon his plea of guilty to a violation of the Dyer Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 2312) under Section 4209 of Title 18 United States Code,² as a young adult offender for an indefinite term under § 5010(b) of Title 18 United States Code. Service of that sentence commenced February 5, 1959.

§ 5010(b) of Title 18 United States Code, provides:

"If the court shall find that a convicted person is a youth offender, and the offense is punishable by imprisonment under applicable provisions of law other than this subsection, the court may, in lieu of the penalty of imprisonment otherwise provided by law, sentence the youth offender to the custody of the Attorney General for treatment and supervision pursuant to this chapter until discharged by the Division as provided in section 5017(c) of this chapter; * * *."

§ 5017(c) of Title 18 United States Code, provides:

"A youth offender committed under section 5010(b) of this chapter shall be released conditionally under supervision on or before the expiration of four years from the date of his conviction and shall be discharged unconditionally on or before six years from the date of his conviction."

Petitioner alleges that "he is now entitled to be released from custody * * * having served the entirity sic of the sentence imposed upon him, to-wit: four (4) years imposed by the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana". Petitioner suggests that since "Section 5017(c) definitely states that persons sentenced under the provisions of Section 5010(b) shall be released conditionally under supervision on or before the expiration of four (4) years" that "persons sentenced under § 5010(b) has sic served the sentence in its entirety, in so far as the custody is concerned, at the expiration of four years from the date of conviction, unless he has been released in accordance with Section 5017(c) and later returned to custody pursuant to Section 5020, 18 U.S. C." Petitioner accordingly contends that "he was entitled to be released from custody on the 5th day of February, 1963, and that he is now being held in custody unlawfully and in violation of the Constitution".

On January 25, 1963, before the expiration of the initial four year period, the Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, acting pursuant to Section 4247 of Title 18 United States Code, filed with the Clerk of this Court a certificate of mental incompetency asserting the probable dangerousness of petitioner in the event of his release. In accordance with Section 4247, a hearing of that matter was commenced on the 4th day of February, 1963. On February 8, 1963, we dismissed the Section 4247 proceeding for the reason that some time on February 4, 1963, but not as a part of the hearing being conducted pursuant to Section 4247, the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, acting for the Attorney General, executed a certification under the provisions of Section 4241, Title 18 United States Code. That certification had long ago been recommended by the Board of Examiners of the Federal Correctional Institute at Texarkana, Texas, on February 15, 1961. The report and recommendation of the Board of Examiners was accepted by the Director of the Bureau of Prisons for the Attorney General on February 4, 1963, but the acceptance was ante-dated: "Nunc pro tunc, 3-8-61". It is clear, however, that the acceptance of the report and recommendation under Section 4241 was not in fact made until February 4, 1963.

In our order of February 8, 1963 dismissing the Section 4247 proceeding we expressly found that the certification under Section 4241 made the issues presented in that proceeding moot. The Government's petition under Section 4247 accordingly was dismissed without prejudice. Petitioner's present petition for habeas corpus seeks to test the validity of his confinement pursuant to Section 4241.

The precise question raised by that petition is whether the petitioner may, under the authority of Section 4241, be kept "* * * in the United States hospital for defective delinquents the Springfield Medical Center for Federal Prisoners * * * until, in the judgment of the superintendent of said hospital, the prisoner shall be restored to sanity or health or until the maximum sentence, without * * * commutation of sentence, shall have been served".³ The answer to that question turns on whether Chapter 313 is applicable to persons sentenced under the Youth Corrections Act and whether Congress intended that those two acts should be read together.

Section 5017(c) provides that youth offenders committed under Section 5010 (b), as was petitioner in this case, "shall be released conditionally under supervision on or before the expiration of four years from the date of his conviction and shall be discharged unconditionally on or before six years from the date of his conviction". What did the Congress mean by the language "shall be released conditionally at the end of four years" and "discharged unconditionally" at the end of six?

Did Congress intend that a prisoner should serve a possible maximum of six years in the event a valid certificate is made under Section 4241? In that event, may the Attorney General legally order, pursuant to Section 4241, that the prisoner "be kept until, in the judgment of the superintendent of the hospital, the prisoner shall be restored to sanity or health or until the maximum sentence, without deductions for * * * commutation of sentence, shall have been served"? Did Congress intend the provision relating to conditional release at the end of four years in Section 5017 (c) to be considered as "commutation of sentence" within the meaning of Section 4241? Did Congress intend that the two years between conditional release and unconditional discharge might be taken away from a particular prisoner by a proper certification and directive made pursuant to Section 4241?

At least part of the answer to those questions will be found in ascertaining what meaning must be given to the Congressional language "without deduction for * * * commutation of sentence" as it appears in Section 4241. Words such as "commutation of sentence", "conditional release", and "unconditional discharge" are not words of purchase as used in the criminal statutes of the United States. We have noted elsewhere that the language used by those who administer the criminal law and the language used by the statutes and by the courts is not always the same. See Clark v. Settle, W.D.Mo.1962, 206 F.Supp. 74, 77.

Careful study of the statutes and of the cases demonstrates that administrative language sometimes is first accepted by court decisions and that the language of the cases then finds its way into the statutory law. The statutes relating to good time allowance as found in Chapter 309 of Title 18 United States Code, illustrate the point. Section 4163 of that chapter, for example, provides that "a prisoner shall be released at the expiration of his term of sentence less the time deducted for good conduct". And Section 4164 provides that such a prisoner "shall, upon release, be deemed as if released on parole until the expiration of the maximum term or terms for which he was sentenced less one hundred and eighty days."

Nothing is said in either of those statutes (or in any other statute relating to the subject) about a prisoner being given a "conditional release". But even a slight acquaintance with the cases teaches that courts began to accept and use the quite descriptive administrative language that a prisoner released under those statutes was "released conditionally", or "on conditional release", as distinguished from being "discharged unconditionally" or "released outright". See Wipf v. King, 8 Cir.1942, 131 F.2d 33, and Urban v. Settle, 8 Cir.1962, 298 F.2d 592, for only two of the numerous examples in which such releases are so described.

We therefore not unexpectedly find the words "released conditionally" and "discharged unconditionally" are used by the Congress in Section 5017(c) to describe a form of legislative commutation contained in that statute. The word "commutation" has been subject to the same looseness of language that we have noted. Bouvier defines "commutation" as "the change of a punishment to which a person has been condemned into a less severe one". Generally speaking, that definition is legally quite accurate. But when Bouvier adds, upon the authority of three old state cases, that "this can be granted only by the authority in which the pardoning power resides", he encourages a confusion of concepts. The latter statement reflects the absence of preciseness in the technical use and understanding of the words "commute" or "commutation". We read in the newspaper, for further example, that "the President (or the Governor) commutes a death sentence to life imprisonment". Only in the sense that a lesser penalty resulted from the President's or Governor's action can it be said the chief executive "commuted" the sentence.

Legally speaking, of course, the...