UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, APPELLEE,
v.
JOHN STEVENS LAWTON, APPELLANT

9th Cir. | 1972-02-17
No. 71-2509
455 F.2d 328 United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1972) Caution
Cited by 4 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 court held that the defendant's letter to the Selective Service Board did not constitute a prima facie claim for conscientious objector status, and his subsequent actions waived any such claim.


Facts & Procedural History

The defendant was convicted for refusing induction into the military. He appealed, claiming he was denied adequate preparation time due to discovery d…

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:

Lawton, convicted for his refusal to submit to induction in violation of 50 U.S.C. App. § 462, appeals from the judgment of conviction. We affirm.

Lawton first contends that he was deprived of an opportunity adequately to prepare a defense based upon order of call due to the fact that the prosecutor did not, until six days before the date set for trial, comply with a discovery order to produce delivery lists. This argument is without merit. The delivery lists were not available from Lawton’s local Board because the Board’s procedure was to destroy them after the year of use. It therefore took a longer time to secure the lists from the State Director’s Office. As soon as the prosecutor obtained the lists, he furnished defense counsel with a copy. Moreover, the district judge granted a week’s continuance in order to afford defense counsel adequate additional time for preparation. Under these facts, Lawton has shown no prejudice.

Lawton’s second contention is that he was entitled to have his case reopened after he wrote his local Board, stating a desire to claim conscientious objector status and requesting the standard Form 150. The letter alone did not constitute such a prima facie claim as to require a reopening of his Selective Service file. Mulloy v. United States, 398 U.S. 410, 90 S.Ct. 1766, 26 L.Ed.2d 362 (1970); United States v. McKinley, 447 F. 2d 962 (9th Cir. 1971).

Lawton did not complete and return the Form 150. Nor did he refer to his conscientious objector claim when he subsequently filed a Current Information Questionnaire in response to inquiries from his local Board. He now contends that he was misled by the form’s repeated reference to religion such that he believed he did not qualify for conscientious objector status. In United States v. Yoha, 445 F. 2d 816 (9th Cir. 1971), our court held that questions about religion are relevant to a conscientious objector claim, even though the test for granting such status does not necessarily require the registrant’s entertainment of an orthodox religious belief. See United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163, 85 S.Ct. 850, 13 L.Ed.2d 733 (1965). See also Welsh v. United States, 398 U.S. 333, 90 S.Ct. 1792, 26 L.Ed.2d 308 (1970).

Affirmed.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw