Leo F. Kreiling v. H. v. Field

Petitioner was convicted in a Superior Court of California by a jury verdict of maliciously obstructing a telephone apparatus, in violation of Cal. Penal Code § 591 . The judgment was affirmed on appeal. Post-conviction relief was sought in the state court and denied. A petition for a writ of habeas corpus was denied by order of the United States District Court. This appeal is from that order.

Three grounds for relief are asserted.

Petitioner claims that his five year sentence (to be served concurrently with other sentences) for tampering with a public telephone and making it inoperative is cruel and unusual punishment. The claim of cruel and unusual punishment is supported by an argument that all that petitioner did was to move two levers inside a telephone a fraction of an inch without permanently damag ing the instrument. The argument ignores the fact that the public has a vital interest in the maintenance of quick communicative facilities and that the impairment of those facilities might have most serious results. It is the legislature’s function to fix the punishment for crimes (Bailey v. United States, 74 F.2d 451 (10 Cir. 1934) and courts will not interfere under the…