United States v. Patrick Henry Earley

ON REHEARING EN BANC

LOGAN, Circuit Judge.

The only issue in this appeal is whether a federal district judge who failed to state whether sentences he imposed were consecutive to or concurrent with a preexisting federal sentence may order, five months later and after the defendant was imprisoned, that the sentences were to be consecutive. The district judge described his later order as a “clarification ... to eliminate any ambiguity as to the Court’s intention.” R. I, 41.

Defendant, Patrick Henry Earley, was indicted on five counts and pleaded guilty in November 1984 to two counts of distributing…