United States v. Morgan

Status

90 later cases cite United States v. Morgan; 90 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Treatments

Limited

• The court confined Morgan's description of coram nobis as a step in a criminal case to its Rule 60(b) context and applied the civil appeal deadline.

  United States v. Keogh · Second Circuit · filed February 2, 1968

  The Government suggests the Criminal Rule is applicable in light of a footnote to the opinion in United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502, 505, 506 n. 4, 74 S.Ct. 247, 98 L.Ed. 248 (1954), sustaining the continued vitality of the writ of error coram nobis, where Mr. Justice Reed said that a petition for such a writ “is a step in the criminal case and not, like habeas corpus where relief is sought in a separate case and record, the beginning of a separate civil proceeding.” We disagree. The problem to which the footnote was addressed was that F.R.Civ.P. 60(b) had abolished writs of error coram nobis in favor of the motion procedure there provided. The answer was that the abolition effected by Rule 60 (b) cannot fairly be extended beyond the “suits of a civil nature” to which alone, under the general provision of Rule 1, the Rules of Civil Procedure apply. We do not read the quoted statement as intending more than that.

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• The court declined to carry Morgan's criminal-case description into the appeal deadline and applied the civil deadline for coram nobis appeals.

  United States v. Cooper · Fifth Circuit · filed July 7, 1989

  United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502, 505-06 n. 4, 74 S.Ct. 247, 249 n. 4, 98 L.Ed. 248 (1954) (citations omitted). Judge Friendly argued that the Supreme Court’s characterization of the writ as a step in the criminal case related only to the discussion of Rule 60(b), and that since the motion has “the same general character” as a § 2255 motion, it should be subject to the same civil rule for appeals. United States v. Keogh, 391 F.2d 138, 140 (2d Cir.1968). He noted that “[t]he policy considerations supporting prescription of a very short time for appeal in a criminal case are notably absent in coram nobis.” Id. Judge Bright took the Eighth Circuit in the opposite direction, applying the criminal appeal rules. United States v. Mills, 430 F.2d 526, 528 (8th Cir.1970), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 1023, 91 S.Ct. 589, 27 L.Ed.2d 636 (1971). The Ninth Circuit sided with the Eighth Circuit in a divided decision. Yasui v. United States, 772 F.2d 1496, 1499 (9th Cir.1985). Judge Sneed wrote for the majority, applying the 10-day criminal rule, while Judge Wallace dissented. We conclude, with Judges Friendly and Wallace, that the 60-day period provided by Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(1) should govern appeals in coram nobis cases. When the Supreme Court described coram nobis as “a step in the criminal case,” it only sought to distinguish coram nobis from habeas corpus.

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Questioned

• The court questioned whether federal coram nobis remained available, although Morgan had rejected the argument that section 2255 displaced it.

  United States v. Dos Santos · E.D.N.Y. · filed October 31, 1997

  The continued viability of the Writ of Error Coram Nobis in federal courts may be open to question. In Morgan, swpra, the argument was advanced that the enactment of 28 U.S.C. § 2255 covered all the remedies available under Coram Nobis, which was therefore superfluous in federal courts. That argument was rejected by the Court which saw “no compelling reason to reach that conclusion____ ‘Nowhere in the history of Section 2255 do we find any purpose to impinge upon prisoners’ rights of collateral attack upon their convictions.’ ” 346 U.S. at 510-11, 74 S.Ct. at 251-52.

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