United States v. Candelaria

• Decision Date: 04 April 1955
• Docket Number: Crim. A. No. 24036.
• Citation: 131 F. Supp. 797
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of California
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Manuel Duran CANDELARIA, Defendant.

131 F. Supp. 797

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Manuel Duran CANDELARIA, Defendant.

Crim. A. No. 24036.

United States District Court, S. D. California, Central Division.

April 4, 1955.

Laughlin E. Waters, U. S. Atty., for the Southern Dist. of Cal., Los Angeles, Cal., by Louis Lee Abbott, and Cecil Hicks, Jr., Asst. U. S. Attys., Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff.

John J. Bradley (Court Appointed), Los Angeles, Cal., for defendant.

TOLIN, District Judge.

This case is now before the Court on the Court's own motion, it having learned of facts which indicate that modification of sentence should be considered.

Defendant pleaded Guilty in this Court to an indictment which charged robbery of a National bank with use of a deadly weapon. Although it is the custom of the Court to impose heavier sentences, Candelaria's case appeared to require but little more than is customarily served by prisoners convicted of crimes in the Courts of California.¹

Defendant's past life, while certainly not exemplary,² does show a record of industry and ambition mixed with bad conduct indicative of immaturity, lack of education and supervision, yet with strong possibilities of rehabilitation. The defendant is in need of a moderate term of prison discipline and education with supervision after his release.

By a system of farms, factories and schools coupled with institutional discipline and finally parole, or conditional release, toward the end of the term, the Federal Prison System has done much to rehabilitate the young offenders³ as well as to provide exceedingly long terms, sometimes permanent isolation from society, for those felons who have demonstrated either an inability or an apparently incurable aversion to the minimum rules of free life.

This defendant definitely appeared to the Court as one who most probably would respond to rehabilitation treatment in a Federal institution and, on February 7, 1955, was sentenced to custody for a term of five years. By application of the good behavior credits⁴ which reasonably could be expected, the prisoner would serve 48 months in prison followed by 12 months supervision while on conditional release⁵. It is exceedingly unlikely that he would be paroled at any time, but sometimes unforeseen circumstances arise indicating that parole is proper, and although it is rarely granted in cases of this character⁶, the possibility that a man might earn, or at least not be conclusively barred from parole in the latter part of his term, has been found an incentive to improvement in prisoners, all of whom are needful of some such incentive.

After the prisoner had been transported to McNeil Island Penitentiary, the Court received a letter from him.⁷ The prisoner is now subject to a detainer because local authorities have decided to prosecute him for the same crime.⁸

Because of the detainer, the prisoner must be denied the privilege of work in the portions of the prison which are not within the walls (farms, fishery, etc.) and cannot be granted parole at any time, nor may he be a trusty and have the privileges and responsibilities connected with such a position.

If his case for employment by Federal Prison Industries, Inc.⁹ is borderline, he might not be hired by that "within the walls" employer. In short, the privileges which cooperative acceptance of prison life usually bring to a prisoner are to be denied him throughout his term because California wants to again imprison him upon release from the Federal prison for the very same offense for which he is now being punished.¹⁰

While it is manifestly proper that a robber serve a prison term, it is not in keeping with fair administration of justice that one defendant serve two terms for one offense.

Disturbed at the interruption of Federal rehabilitative procedure brought about by the Detainer, the Court directed a letter to the Chief of Police of Los Angeles¹¹ and another to the District Attorney of Los Angeles County.¹²

The Chief of Police has not replied. The District Attorney sent a Deputy who left a form letter¹³ and indicated his office refused to recall the detainer.

In the early days of the Union it was generally thought prosecution by one of two Governments having concurrent jurisdiction was a bar to prosecution by the other. In Houston v. Moore, 1820, 5 Wheat. 1, 72, 18 U.S. 1, 72, 5 L.Ed. 19, Mr. Justice Story wrote that successive prosecutions for a single act, even though by distinct sovereignties, each acting under its own laws would violate both "* * the principles of the common law, and the genius of our free government." On another occasion such a procedure was labeled "* * * contrary to the express letter of the constitution * * * (and) * * * the unerring principles of justice."¹⁴

The Constitution seemed to bear this out¹⁵ and was generally thought to do so until United States v. Lanza¹⁶, in which the two sovereignties doctrine, in combination with the common law concept of crime as an offense against the sovereignty of the government, resulted in a different conclusion. In that case, the Court said:

"An act denounced as a crime by both national and state sovereignties is an offense against the peace and dignity of both and may be punished by each."

This principle of "letter of the law" construction of a Constitutional safeguard overlooks the Biblical truth that "* * the Letter of the Law Kills but the spirit gives life".¹⁷ The spirit of the rule against double jeopardy for one offense is certainly violated by allowing the State prosecution of this defendant, but the letter of the law permits it. The Court in the Lanza case minimized the possibility of actual double prosecution by the state and federal governments for the same offense. Quoting from Fox v. State of Ohio, 5 How. 410, 46 U.S. 410, 12 L.Ed. 213, they stated:

"It is almost certain, that, in the benignant spirit in which the institutions both of the state and federal systems are administered, an offender who should have suffered the penalties denounced by the one would not be subjected to a second time to punishment by the other for acts essentially the same, unless indeed this might occur in instances of peculiar enormity, or where the public safety demanded extraordinary rigor."

The dissent in the Fox v. Ohio case (Mr. Justice McLean) apparently not as convinced of the "benignant spirit" of all prosecutors, made the following observations:

"The point is not whether a State may not punish an offense under an act of Congress but whether the State may inflict, by virtue of its own sovereignty, punishment for the same act as an offense against the State which the federal government may constitutionally punish.

"If this be so, it is a great defect in our system. For the punishment under the State law would be no bar to a prosecution under the law of Congress. And to punish the same act by the two governments would violate not only the common principles of humanity, but would be repugnant to the nature of both governments. If there were a concurrent power in both governments to punish the same act, a conviction under the law of either could be pleaded in bar to a prosecution by the other. But it is not pretended that the conviction of Malinda Fox under the State law is a bar to a prosecution under the law of Congress. Each government, in prescribing the punishment, was governed by the nature of the offense, and must be supposed to have acted in reference to its own sovereignty.

"There is no principle better established by the common law, none more fully recognized in the federal and State constitutions, than that an individual shall not be put in jeopardy twice for the same offense. This, it is true, applies to the respective governments; but its spirit applies with equal force against a double punishment, for the same act, by a State and the federal government."

The Lanza case received extensive criticism.¹⁸ The State of New York even repealed its prohibition act to prevent such double prosecutions.¹⁹

A later decision²⁰ allowing double prosecution for the same offense brought further wide spread public criticism of such procedure.

"It is inconceivable that a Supreme Court — any Supreme Court — should have made such a decision only a few years back. But since Volsteadism became the law of the land many things have changed. The Anti-Saloon League and the other forces backing this most asinine of laws have succeeded in changing the dignity and standing of the judiciary. With this spirit in the courts, it is not surprising that legal doctrines which had no place in justice or in common sense should be enunciated and supported.²¹

"There are other concurrent Federal and State laws, each one subject to the same interpretation, each one certain to drag its unhappy victims back and forth across the street — from one court to another. Thus Prohibition destroys, not only the written, but the unwritten law of the land.

"The Constitution expressly forbids double jeopardy, but in the opinion of the Supreme Court this safeguard is meaningless where one violates both a Federal law and a law of a State. That is, however, much it may be against the spirit of the Constitution or even the traditional custom of courts, which usually have not practiced double jeopardy, this sinister departure from American fairness becomes a terrible reality when the chief tribunal of the land is forced to construe the meaning of concurrent jurisdiction.

"It was this intolerable condition that the makers of the Constitution had in mind when double jeopardy was forbidden. They knew very well that the zealot would never get done persecuting those who opposed him. Yet the United States Supreme Court, finding itself unable to set aside either the sovereignty of the Federal Government or that of the State, sets the Constitution aside at one point to sustain it at another.²²"

Nevertheless, it has since been well settled that prohibited conduct may give rise to both a State and a Federal p...