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2d 617
Appellant was charged and pleaded guilty to offenses in the United States
District Court as well as the Superior Court of Robeson County, North
Carolina. The latter proceeding was filed on October 19, 1970, and charged
Singletary with forging and uttering United States Treasury check No.
92,501,699 in violation of North Carolina General Statutes Sections 14-119 and
14-120. He waived his right to assigned counsel and entered a plea of guilty.
Thereafter he was sentenced to imprisonment for a period of eighteen months,
suspended, and he was placed on probation for three years. Subsequently,
however, he violated his probation, served a prison term, and was paroled on
August 21, 1971.
One week later, on August 30, 1971, a federal grand jury indicted Singletary,
charging him with (1) possession of United States Treasury check No.
92,501,699 in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1708; (2) forging the endorsement of the
payee on the same check in violation of 18 U.S.C. 495; (3) uttering and
publishing as true and genuine the same check with a falsely made and forged
endorsement on the back, knowing the same to be forged in violation of 18
U.S.C. 495; and three additional counts numbered (4), (5) and (6), covering
the same sections of the United States Code but on an entirely different and
separate Treasury check, No. 7,035,233. Singletary pleaded guilty to each of
the six counts and was given a general sentence of five years pursuant to 18
U.S.C. 3651. He was committed to jail for six months, and the remainder of
his sentence was suspended. On December 5, 1972, his probation was revoked;
he was returned to prison, but was released on parole on July 15, 1974.
3
Singletary first challenges us to affirm the District Court's dismissal of the two
counts on which the State had already convicted him and, thereby, overrule the
dual sovereignty doctrine of Lanza, Abbate, and Bartkus.1 We must decline this
invitation, since the Government filed no cross-appeal from the District Court's
adverse ruling. The double jeopardy issue is therefore not before us.
Appellant next argues that his pleas of guilty to Counts 1, 4, 5, and 6 were not
voluntary and therefore should be set aside. Singletary points out that he had no
counsel and was not versed in the legal intricacies of double jeopardy law. We
do not doubt that an uncounseled defendant may have felt pressured into
pleading guilty to all six counts, since he knew that, if he went to trial, he was
sure to be convicted on Counts 2 and 3 anyway.
the sentence should nevertheless be reconsidered in light of the fact that only
four of the original counts remain. If the trial court concludes that the length of
the general sentence was influenced by Counts 2 and 3, appellant should be
resentenced. We do not believe that this resolution does violence to the usual
rule of judicial convenience that, when a general sentence does not exceed the
maximum which could be imposed on any count, a reviewing court will not
consider its duration. See United States v. Mims, 340 F.2d 851 (7th Cir. 1965).
7
Sitting by Designation
Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 79 S.Ct. 666, 3 L.Ed.2d 729 (1959);
Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U.S. 121, 79 S.Ct. 676, 3 L.Ed.2d 684 (1959); United
States v. Lanza, 260 U.S. 377, 43 S.Ct. 141, 67 L.Ed. 314 (1922)