Richard Allen Black v. United States

This is an appeal brought after an adverse ruling by a district court against the prisoner Black, confined in a federal penitentiary in the State of Washington. The prisoner filed a motion under 28 U. S.C.A. § 2255 “to correct illegal sentence.”

A four count indictment concerning narcotics was returned in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California on May 2, 1956. Black was charged with no offense in counts one and two. In count three, he was charged with defendants Reeves and Harris with the substantive offense of the sale of more than an ounce of heroin, a narcotic drug. See Sec. 21 U.S.C.A. § 174 . In count four he was charged with the same three other defendants with a conspiracy to “knowingly and unlawfully receive, conceal, sell, and transport and facilitate the concealment, sale and transportation” of the identical heroin. 18 U.S.C.A. § 371 .

After a jury trial which found the defendant Black guilty of the offenses as charged, he was sentenced to two years imprisonment on the substantive count and four years on the conspiracy count, the sentences to run consecutively for a total of six years. (Parenthetically, we can say that Black was…