Mariscal v. United States

449 U.S. 405, 101 S. Ct. 909, 66 L. Ed. 2d 616, 1981 U.S. LEXIS 57, 49 U.S.L.W. 3513

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: January 19, 1981
• Docket: 80-5618
• Status: Published

Opinions

Per Curiam.

This case arises on a petition for certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed petitioner’s conviction on 10 counts of interstate transportation of property obtained by fraud, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 2314, and on 12 counts of mail fraud, in violation of 18 U. S. C. 1 1341. 626 F. 2d 868. The court affirmed the interstate transportation convictions on the merits, and declined to address the “rather complex issues” presented by the mail fraud convictions, invoking the discretionary “concurrent sentence” doctrine. App. to Pet. for Cert. 6-7; see Barnes v. United States, 412 U. S. 837, 848, n. 16 (1973); Benton v. Maryland, 395 U. S. 784, 787-793 (1969). In light of the Solicitor General’s concession in this Court that the mail fraud convictions were invalid, Memorandum in Opposition 4-5, we grant the motion of petitioner for leave to proceed in forma pauperis, grant certiorari, vacate the judgment of the Ninth Circuit affirming the mail fraud convictions, and remand for reconsideration of the applicability of the “concurrent sentence” doctrine to a conviction conceded by the United States to be erroneous.

It is so ordered.

Justice White dissents, essentially for the reasons stated by Justice Rehnquist in his dissenting, opinion.