United States v. Carter, Crim. No. 908-63.

• Decision Date: 13 January 1964
• Docket Number: Crim. No. 908-63.
• Citation: 225 F. Supp. 566
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Percy CARTER, Jr.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

225 F. Supp. 566

UNITED STATES of America v. Percy CARTER, Jr.

Crim. No. 908-63.

United States District Court District of Columbia.

January 13, 1964.

Harold H. Titus, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., for the United States.

Benjamin F. Amos, Washington, D. C., for defendant.

YOUNGDAHL, District Judge.

After a trial before this Court, defendant Carter was found guilty of robbery by a jury on November 21, 1963, on which date he was referred to the Probation Office for a pre-sentence report pursuant to Rule 32, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. As of the date of the jury verdict, defendant was twenty-one years old. On December 13, 1963, he became twenty-two. On December 18, 1963, the probation officer completed a pre-sentence report, and defendant was sentenced after the Christmas recess, on January 7, 1963.

The Court sentenced the defendant under the Federal Youth Corrections Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 5005-5024, pursuant to the indeterminate sentence provisions of § 5010(b) of that Act "in lieu of the penalty of imprisonment otherwise provided by law." Defendant was thus committed to the custody of the Attorney General "for treatment and supervision" in a youth institution as a youth offender.

Section 5006(e) of the Act defines a "youth offender" as "a person under the age of twenty-two years at the time of conviction." This Court is convinced that for the purposes of determining whether a defendant qualifies as a "youth offender," the time of "conviction" is the time the verdict is returned or a plea of guilty is taken. This interpretation is in accord with the construction of the word "conviction" in the Youth Act in the recent case of Standley v. United States, 318 F.2d 700, 701 (9th Cir. 1963), where the court stated that a defendant was a certain age "on the date of his `conviction,' i. e., his plea of guilty."¹ For the purpose of determining the time of "conviction," a plea is obviously identical to a verdict.

The defendant has not objected to the sentence imposed by the Court; in fact, he and his attorney both asked for commitment under the Youth Act, and specifically gave their consent to such sentence. But since consent may not cure a jurisdictional defect in the power of the court, this Court is taking this opportunity to state why it is clear to the Court that the sentence is a legal one.

It is true, of course, that the Youth Act defines "conviction" to mean "the judgment on a verdict or finding of guilty, a plea of guilty, or a plea of nolo contendere." 18 U.S.C. § 5006(h). For some purposes, the "judgment" on a verdict or plea is the sentence, making the date of judgment the date on which sentence is imposed. This is true, for example, for the purpose of computing the time during which an appeal is permitted, Rule 37, Fed.R.Crim.P., since Rule 32, Fed.R.Crim.P., specifically provides that "a judgment of conviction shall set forth the plea, the verdict or findings, and the adjudication and sentence," and since it makes sense to require that the defendant know his sentence before he decides whether or not to appeal. The date of judgment is also the date on which sentence is imposed for some purposes within the Youth Act itself. Thus 18 U.S.C. § 5017(c) provides that for a defendant sentenced under section 5010 (b), the youth offender 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." Since one of the purposes of the Youth Act is to give the Youth Correction Division of the Board of Parole a flexible amount of time during which strenuous efforts may be made to rehabilitate the youth offender, it makes sense to let this time period begin to run when the youth offender is actually sentenced to the custody of the Attorney General — namely, on the date the sentence is imposed. It was primarily this situation which the Congress must have had in mind...