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513 F.2d 1309

Docket No. 74-2019.

Williamson v. Saxbe

Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals

Decided April 4, 1975.

Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 1975-04-04

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“The sentence of imprisonment of any person convicted of an offense shall commence to run from the date on which such person is received at the penitentiary, reformatory or jail for service of such sentence. The Attorney General shall give any such person credit toward service of his sentence for any days spent in custody in connection with the offense or acts for which the sentence was imposed.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including In re Grand Jury Proceedings of Garmon

Relies on Anglin v. Johnston

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Opinion by (per_curiam) · Decided 1975-04-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 29 later decisions — most recently March 2011 · most notably United States v. Mitchell (1977), In re Liberatore (1978)

24 federal appellate · 1 state decisions

18019751980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1*1310Nolan Ray Williamson, Jef Feibelman, Memphis, Tenn., for plaintiff-appellant.

¶2Thomas F. Turley, U. S. Atty., Memphis, Tenn., Larry E. Parrish, Robert M. Williams, Jr., Asst. U. S. Attys., for defendants-appellees.

¶3Before PHILLIPS, Chief Judge, and WEICK and MILLER, Circuit Judges.

¶4PER CURIAM.

¶5At the time when he was awaiting trial under an indictment in the Western District of Tenness.ee, Nolan Ray Williamson refused to obey an order of the District Court requiring him to give voice exemplars. When he persisted in his refusal, the District Court on December 27, 1972, adjudged him to be in contempt of court and ordered him incarcerated until he gave voice exemplars as ordered. This court granted a motion to dismiss the appeal from that decision in an unpublished order, No. 73-1495, dated November 13, 1973.

¶6Prior to his incarceration for contempt of court, Williamson had been convicted and sentenced for a separate offense in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. He filed a complaint for declaratory relief, praying for a declaration that he is entitled to jail-time credit on his Georgia sentence for the time he has served in prison for contempt of court.

¶7The District Court held he is not entitled to jail-time credit and dismissed the complaint. The present appeal is from that decision. Counsel was appointed to represent Williamson both in the District Court and in this court in this declaratory judgment proceeding. Counsel has filed an excellent brief in this court in support of Williamson’s contentions.

¶8The record shows that at the time Williamson was adjudged to be in contempt of court, he was afforded every reasonable opportunity to change his mind and to give the voice exemplars as ordered. The District Judge stated in open court in the presence of Williamson that, in order that there would be no misunderstanding, he was making it plain that Williamson would receive no credit against federal criminal sentences for the jail time accruing while he was incarcerated for contempt of court.

¶9We follow Anglin v. Johnston, 504 F.2d 1165 (7th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 95 S.Ct. 1353, 43 L.Ed.2d 440 (1975), in affirming the decision of the District Court. The facts in Anglin are squarely on point except the reason for which the civil contempt penalty was imposed.

¶10Williamson contends that he is entitled to jail-time credit under 18 U.S.C. § 3568, which provides:

¶11§ 3568. Effective date of sentence; credit for time in custody prior to the imposition of sentence

The sentence of imprisonment of any person convicted of an offense shall commence to run from the date on which such person is received at the penitentiary, reformatory, or jail for service of such sentence. The Attorney General shall give any such person credit toward service of his sentence for any days spent in custody in connection with the offense or acts for which sentence was imposed.

¶12The fallacy in this argument is that Williamson’s civil contempt incarceration was not “in connection with the offense or acts for which sentence was imposed.”

¶13To hold that Williamson has a right to jail-time credit under the facts of this case would interfere seriously with the power of District Courts to punish civil *1311contempt by incarceration when the person who is guilty of contempt is under sentence for some other offense.

¶14Affirmed.

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