Miss Irene Wright, whose services were invaluable in assembling and preparing the reports. The editors are greatly indebted to Messrs. William Berg, Bates Booth, Harry Cooper, Chisman Hanes, and Robert Marks for their able assistance in preparing the various State digests of release procedure laws. Also a special word of appreciation is extended to Mr. Ronald Beattie of the Bureau of the Census, and to Mr. Bennet Mead of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who gave unsparingly of their time in serving as editorial advisers. Acknowledgement is made of the fact that the completion of this survey would have been impossible had it not been for the splendid cooperation extended to the Department of Justice by the officials of the Works Progress Administration. A special word of thanks and appreciation is extended to Dr. Milton C. Forster, coordinator, Statistical Survey and Research Projects, Works Progress Administration, for his counsel and assistance. Acknowledgements are also extended to those many State and Federal officials whose cooperation made possible this survey. Space does not permit the listing of all the persons in all parts of the country who did their part in carrying forward this survey to completion. However a special word of thanks is expressed to those many loyal and conscientious Works Progress Administration workers, supervisors and regional directors who gathered the factual data, upon the basis of which these reports have been written. At the beginning of this study the Attorney General made this prediction: "It is not unlikely that the survey will reveal the desirability of establishing a permanent research program, perhaps in the Department of Justice, for the purpose of carrying on such studies in order to make available, both to the Federal Government and to the States, valuable information as to procedures now in operation, new experiments undertaken from time to time, and suggestions for continued development and improvement." The need for the type of service which the Attorney General was describing still exists. One thing which the findings of the survey have revealed most clearly is the desirability of establishing such a permanent research program for continuous fact finding. The Attorney General did not enter into this survey with any thought that it would produce definitive results. He made this point clear in a statement before the American Bar Association when he said: "I do not for a moment expect that the results of our examination of release procedures will divulge or suggest some pat formula, some neat, precise method, of administering parole and the other techniques related to this problem. The studies now being made are in the nature of an experiment-an experiment, first, to discover whether it is possible to ascertain the facts from the maze of complicated regulations existing in multifarious governmental jurisdictions in this field; and second, to determine, once the facts are made available, whether public opinion will encourage and support those procedures that have proved successful, and enforce drastic reforms in those jurisdictions where parole and other forms of release are shown to have become notorious failures." The experiment is completed. It is hoped that from a careful reading of these volumes practical administrators of probation, pardon, parole, and prison programs can gain a clear picture of what other jurisdictions are doing and how they are succeeding with the various techniques of crime control now in practice. It is hoped that the publication of these reports will encourage public opinion to insist on necessary reforms in the administration of criminal justice and to support those procedures which experience has proved successful, and it is with these purposes in view that these volumes are submitted. WAYNE L. MORSE, Editor in Chief. PURPOSE AND PLAN OF THE DIGEST It is the purpose of this volume to present a digest of the statutes, court decisions, and administrative rules governing suspension of sentence, probation, parole, executive clemency, good time deductions and release at expiration of sentence in the several States, the District of Columbia, and the Federal system. Although the information contained in this volume is already available in published form it has heretofore remained largely inaccessible due to the labor involved in searching, collating, and analyzing the numerous statutory provisions, cases, and administrative rules. Moreover, although in the past digests have been prepared dealing with one or more of the various release procedures in a particular State or with one type of release for the country as a whole, the present volume represents a first effort to assemble in one place the applicable legal and administrative material on release procedures for the 50 independent jurisdictions in the United States. The arrangement of the volume proceeds according to States, in alphabetical order. The digests for each jurisdiction are in turn arranged in a chronological order so that, roughly, each release procedure represents a device available at successive stages in the treatment of the offender, from the time of conviction to release after sentence has been served. Thus the digests on suspension of sentence and probation precede those on parole and pardon and release through operation of good time deductions, since the former occur before imprisonment whereas the latter, except in some few instances of pardon granted before incarceration, are operative after a portion or all of the sentence imposed has been served. The arrangement, it is believed, will facilitate the review and evaluation of the release procedures of each State since each device is, to a large extent, related to the others. Insofar as possible, uniform headings or subdivisions have been employed in treating each release procedure throughout the volume. Hence comparisons between States in regard to any one phase of probation, parole, pardon, or good time deductions can readily be made. The effort has been made to give some account of the history of each device in each jurisdiction and to include all the operative statutes and decisions through 1937. It must be recognized, however, that the law in this field is constantly growing through legislative action, judicial decision and administrative interpretation. The digest does, however, depict the present state of the law relating to release procedures. It is hoped that as a ready reference and source book it will find a useful place in the field which it covers. DIGEST OF FEDERAL AND STATE LAWS ON RELEASE PROCEDURES UNITED STATES SUSPENSION OF SENTENCE Suspension of sentence at common law.—In 1916, in the famous Killits case, the Supreme Court held that the Federal courts had no inherent power to suspend indefinitely the imposition or execution of a sentence.1 Prior to this holding both devices had been used for many years in some districts, but the Supreme Court ruled that the practice was inconsistent with the constitution, "since its exercise in the very nature of things amounts to a refusal by the judicial power to perform a duty resting on it and, as a consequence thereof, to an interference with both the legislative and executive authority as fixed by the Constitution." The Court indicated, however, that Congress had adequate power to authorize the practice by statute. Although an indefinite suspension of either imposition or execution of sentence is void, the lower courts were at variance upon the question whether power existed to impose sentence or order execution thereafter. In 1933 the Supreme Court expressly disapproved cases holding that jurisdiction to impose sentence is lost with the passing of the term following a void suspension of sentence, and held that "where verdict has been duly returned, the jurisdiction of 1 Ex parte United States, 242 U. S. 27 (1916). 2 Id. at 51. In the following cases it was held that after imposition of sentence had been indefinitely suspended the court had no jurisdiction to impose sentence at a subsequent term: United States v. Wilson, 46 Fed. 748 (C. C. Idaho, 1891); Ex parte Singer, 284 Fed. 60 (C. C. A. 3d, 1922); Mintie v. Biddle, 15 F. (2d) 931 (C. C. A. 8th, 1926). A contrary result was reached in Hodges v. United States, 35 F. (2d) 594 (C. C. A. 10th, 1929) and Ex parte De Angelo, 50 F. (2d) 847 (C. C. A. 6th, 1931). Where execution of sentence has been suspended, the judgment may be enforced at a subsequent term. Morgan v. Adams, 226 Fed. 719 (C. C. A. 8th, 1915); United States v. Hill, 4 F. Supp. 748 (D. C. Pa. 1933). |