United States v. Baker, Crim. No. 15758

• Citation: 158 F. Supp. 842
• Decision Date: 31 January 1958
• Docket Number: 15759 and 15765.,Crim. No. 15758
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Orie Floyd BAKER, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Arkansas

158 F. Supp. 842

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Orie Floyd BAKER, Defendant.

Crim. Nos. 15758, 15759 and 15765.

United States District Court E. D. Arkansas, W. D.

January 31, 1958.

Osro Cobb, U. S. Atty., and Milton D. Bowers, Asst. U. S. Atty., Little Rock, Ark., for plaintiff-respondent.

Orie Floyd Baker, defendant-petitioner, pro se.

LEMLEY, Chief Judge.

These cases are before the Court upon the verified petition of the defendant, Orie Floyd Baker, who is now confined in the Wisconsin State Penitentiary, to vacate the judgments and sentences of this Court rendered herein on June 14, 1955. The history of these proceedings is as follows:

In 1953, while petitioner was at large, two indictments were returned against him by a federal grand jury for the Southern District of Illinois charging him with uttering three postal money orders, the endorsements of the payees of which had been forged, and with theft of mail matter. Sometime in 1954 petitioner in Columbia County, Arkansas, forged a commercial check; he was apprehended at Minden, Louisiana, was turned over to Arkansas authorities, and was sentenced to two years in the Arkansas State Penitentiary. While confined in that institution, he corresponded with the United States Attorney at Springfield, Illinois and with the United States Attorney at Little Rock, Arkansas, with the end in view of having the two Illinois cases transferred to the Western Division of the Eastern District of Arkansas, where the Arkansas State Penitentiary is located, for plea and sentence under Rule 20 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, 18 U.S.C.A. That procedure being agreeable to the Government, the United States Attorney at Springfield prepared and mailed to the defendant two consents to transfer, which he executed, and also copies of the two indictments. In the meantime, a third indictment had been returned in the Southern District of Illinois charging him with the forgery of the payee's endorsement on a United States treasury check; petitioner was furnished with a copy of that indictment and with a consent to transfer the case, which consent he also signed, thus bringing all three of the Illinois cases before this Court for further proceedings under the Rule that has been mentioned.¹

On June 13, 1955 petitioner was brought before the Court for arraignment, he being represented by appointed counsel, namely, Mr. John Dugan of the Little Rock Bar. Prior to his formal arraignment a colloquy took place between petitioner and his attorney, on the one hand, and the Assistant United States Attorney in charge of the case, Mr. Milton D. Bowers, on the other hand, in which the steps leading up to the transfer of the cases were reviewed. Thereafter, the petitioner was formally arraigned, and pleaded guilty to all of the charges contained in the three indictments, in which pleas his attorney fully concurred.²

On the following day the petitioner appeared with his attorney for sentence, and in the course of the proceedings it developed that the offenses to which the former had pleaded guilty represented steps or transactions in a large scale criminal operation, extending through several states, in which petitioner, his wife, a brother, and another person had been involved. In that connection, Mr. James Lewis, an agent of the United States Secret Service, stated without contradiction in the presence of the defendant and his attorney, that according to the statement given to him by the petitioner he, his wife, brother, and the other person that has been mentioned started stealing Government checks and other mail in 1953, that their operations extended through Missouri, Iowa and Illinois and into Wisconsin, that petitioner had no idea of how many checks or how many pieces of mail had been stolen, but that probably between 100 and 200 checks were involved; that some of the parties would steal the checks and the others would forge the endorsements thereon, and vice versa.

It was further developed that petitioner had an extensive criminal record, dating back to 1938 or 1939,³ that he was wanted by Indiana authorities as a parole violator, and that those authorities had lodged a detainer against him at the Arkansas penitentiary.

Petitioner's attorney made a strong statement in his client's behalf urging that the Court deal leniently with him. While he did not question his client's guilt, or his criminal record as outlined by Mr. Lewis, he argued that the offenses with which he stood charged were parts of one continuous transaction, all phases of which should be treated as a unit, that his wife and the other persons implicated with him had been apprehended and had already served their terms, that petitioner had served twenty months in the Arkansas penitentiary and that upon his release from there would have to go back to Indiana to finish his term in the Indiana State Reformatory. He also called the Court's attention to the fact that petitioner had served thirty-eight months in the army and had been honorably discharged.

In each of the three cases petitioner was sentenced to a term of five years, the sentences to run concurrently, and it was provided that each sentence should begin to run "at the expiration of the sentence said defendant is now serving in the Arkansas State Penitentiary." After imposition of sentence, petitioner was returned to the Arkansas penitentiary to complete the service of his sentence there, and the Government lodged a detainer against him which, as indicated, was junior in point of time to that already lodged by the State of Indiana.

On December 10, 1955 petitioner was released from the Arkansas penitentiary to the custody of Indiana officers and was returned to the Indiana State Reformatory, a federal detainer being subsequently lodged against him at that institution. Upon his release by the Indiana authorities, he was turned over to Wisconsin officers pursuant to a detainer from that State and, according to his petition, he was sentenced by the Municipal Court of Kenosha County, Wisconsin on January 14, 1957 to serve two concurrent terms of from one to three years for larceny and forgery, and he is now confined under those sentences; he states that his present conditional release date is March 19, 1959, more than a year hence, and that his maximum discharge date is January 15, 1960. Upon his confinement in the Wisconsin State Penitentiary the Government placed a detainer against him there, which is still outstanding. From the foregoing it will be seen that petitioner has never been in the physical custody of federal officials or confined in any federal institution since the sentences of this Court were imposed upon him.

In his original petition the defendant alleges that the Government is "holding sentence against me unconstitutionally"; that the alleged acts and conduct of federal authorities in refusing to take custody of him upon his release from the Arkansas penitentiary and again upon his release from the Indiana State Reformatory were illegal; that the Government has "refused to begin sentence" as directed by this Court; that the Government "has refused to grant parole application and the mandatory time, one third of given sentence, has expired"; that the treatment accorded him is "cruel and inhuman"; that the sentence imposed upon him was too severe; that he has been subjected to "excessive inhuman treatment"; that there were three other defendants "who were sentenced on the same charge as myself," that none of them received a sentence of more than eighteen months, and that on this basis the Court is accused of prejudice. He also alleges that "the Federal Government let the State of Arkansas bring me from the State of Louisiana into the State of Arkansas, without proper extradition hearing," and that at the time he "put in a complaint to the proper officials and it was not at all honored or recognized."

Before setting forth the remaining allegation of the original petition, and without stopping now to go into the Government's response to the allegations already abstracted, we will state that if those allegations were all that the petition contained, that pleading would be subject to dismissal as failing to raise any substantial questions bearing upon the validity of our judgments and sentences. This is not a habeas corpus proceeding, and we are not concerned with the legality of petitioner's present confinement in Wisconsin, or with his previous confinements in Indiana and Arkansas, or with the manner in which he was brought into Arkansas from Louisiana where he was caught, and we have no jurisdiction with respect to parole. Moreover, even if it be assumed for purposes of argument that the failure of the Government to take physical custody of petitioner upon his release from the Arkansas penitentiary, and later upon his release from the Indiana State Reformatory, was in some way illegal,⁴ still such legality would in nowise affect the validity of our judgments.

Petitioner's charges that the sentences imposed upon him were too severe, and that the Court was prejudiced against him are plainly without merit. Said sentences were within the law and, in our estimation, were abundantly justified by the defendant's conduct and by his extremely bad criminal record; moreover, as stated, the sentences were made to run concurrently rather than consecutively, which might have been done. It may be true that petitioner's wife and his other colleagues in crime received lighter sentences than he; but those sentences were not imposed by this Court, and, further, those persons may not have had the criminal record possessed by petitioner, or there may have been other extenuating circumstances. That the others involved with him received lighter sentences from other courts affords the petitioner no ground for complaint about the sentences that he received or any basis for charging that this Court was harboring prejudice against him.

The original...