UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE,
v.
JAMES GILBERT HAYS, APPELLANT

9th Cir. | 1972-01-07
No. 25949
454 F.2d 274 United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1972) Positive Treatment
Cited by 18 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.


Holding

The district court has jurisdiction to deny a motion for new trial during the pendency of an appeal, and Rule 33 only requires remand to grant such a motion.


Facts & Procedural History

Defendant was convicted and appealed. He later filed a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence from a codefendant's letter suggestin…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
PER CURIAM:

PER CURIAM:

The opinion in this ease, United States v. Hays, reported at 438 F. 2d 538, is withdrawn. The mandate is recalled and the following is substituted therefor as the court’s opinion:
The court adheres to the view that on the merits the case should be affirmed.

As to the motion for new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence, the order denying the motion for new trial is affirmed.

We hold that the district court does have jurisdiction to deny a motion for new trial without leave of this court during the pendency of an appeal, and that Rule 33, F.R.Cr.P., only requires a remand to grant a motion for new trial. Thus, if the trial court says “no” it has jurisdiction; if it wants to say “yes,” it does not have automatic jurisdiction. However curious a concept of jurisdiction this may be, that is the plain intendment of the rule.

We point out that where there is an appeal from a judgment of conviction and a later appeal from the denial of a motion for new trial on the groiihd of newly discovered evidence, there should be a second appeal, which usually can be consolidated with the original appeal. But this is a fiscal rule and does not go to basic jurisdiction of this court.

Here on the motion for new trial, after the convictions, a codefendant who did not testify at trial wrote a letter saying that Hays was a dupe who carried the LSD tablets (concerning which he was convicted) by chance.

We think the showing did not make the prima facie case required by Gallegos v. United States, 9 Cir., 295 F. 2d 879. There appears to have been no abuse of discretion. One might well doubt strongly, even if the codefendant were now willing to testify in accordance with his letter (in view of other testimony in the record), that there would be an acquittal on a new trial.

Inasmuch as in the briefs appellant fully set forth his point on the merits of the motion for new trial, we have concluded further briefs are not necessary.

So we arrive at the same point as before, but not on jurisdictional grounds.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

Previewing 3 of 9 citing cases — full citator treatment, depth of discussion, and citing context are member features.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw