United States v. Meyers, Cr. No. 1414-47.

• Decision Date: 22 July 1949
• Docket Number: Cr. No. 1414-47.
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. MEYERS.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

84 F. Supp. 766

UNITED STATES v. MEYERS.

Cr. No. 1414-47.

United States District Court District of Columbia.

July 22, 1949.

Robert T. Bushnell, of Boston, Mass., and Stanley Suydam, of Washington, D. C., for the motion.

George Morris Fay, United States Attorney, and Ross O'Donoghue, Assistant United States Attorney, both of Washington, D. C., opposed.

HOLTZOFF, District Judge.

This is a motion by the defendant under Section 2255 of Title 28 of the United States Code Annotated to set aside and vacate a judgment of conviction.

The defendant was indicted and tried on a charge of subornation of perjury before a Committee of the United States Senate. He was convicted by a jury. The judgment of conviction was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and a petition for a writ of certiorari was denied by the Supreme Court.

At the conclusion of the taking of testimony at the trial, the defendant requested the Court to charge the jury that a meeting of the committee means a meeting of at least a majority of the members and that, since in this case the subcommittee was composed of five members, before there could be a meeting of the subcommittee there must have been present at least three members of that subcommittee physically in the committee room. The Court declined so to charge the jury. The Court of Appeals held that there was no error in that refusal, and the Supreme Court later denied a petition for certiorari.

Recently, however, in the case of Christoffel v. United States, 69 S.Ct. 1447, a case involving a charge of perjury committed before a Congressional Committee, the Supreme Court held, by a vote of five to four, that it is necessary that a majority of the Committee be present in the committee room at the time the perjury is committed in order to sustain a conviction.

On the basis of that decision the present petition is presented. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 33, 18 U.S.C.A., provide for motions for a new trial, but limit the time for making such motions to five days after the verdict, except when the motion is based on the ground of newly discovered evidence. It was held by the Supreme Court in United States v. Smith, 331 U.S. 469, 67 S.Ct. 1330, 91 L.Ed. 1610, that, except within the limitations of Rule 33, the Court may not grant a new trial in a criminal case. Subsequently to the decision of that case, however, new Title 28 of the Code, containing section 2255, became law. The last mentioned section reads as follows:

"A prisoner in custody under sentence of a court of the United States claiming the right to be released upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States, or that the court was without jurisdiction to impose such sentence, or that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law, or is otherwise subject to collateral attack, may move the court which imposed the sentence to vacate, set aside, or correct the sentence."

The legislative history of this section clearly indicates that its purpose was to correct some of the abuses that had arisen as a result of the filing of numerous petitions for writs of habeas corpus by inmates of Federal penal and correctional institutions. The purpose of this legislation was to require that applications of this kind, instead of being petitions for writs of habeas corpus in the district where the defendant was confined, should be made as motions to vacate the sentence before the Court which had originally imposed the sentence.

It is the Court's view, therefore, that the extent of the Court's jurisdiction and authority under Section 2255 is coextensive with the jurisdiction of the Court passing upon an application for a writ of habeas corpus. That this construction of this statute is correct is shown by the decisions of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Chief Judge Parker of that Court, in Howell v. United States, 4 Cir., 172 F.2d 213, 215, last January held that:

"It is only when there has been a denial of the substance of a fair trial that the validity of the proceedings may be thus collaterally attacked or questioned by motion in the nature of petition for writ of error coram nobis or under 28 U.S.C.A. § 2255." Judge Parker's statement has a peculiar importance because section 2255 was drafted by a committee appointed by the Judicial Conference of the United States, and Judge Parker was chairman of that committee.

This...