tained and that the order to place him in a center comprised an official order to detain him according the dictates of the federal magistrate and not as his own lawyer or himself would have preferred.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") viewpoint, as argued by the Government's attorneys, was incorrect. The Appellate Court justices reasoned that the time that Zoray spent "under highly restrictive conditions" while being temporarily released from prison on a conditional bail order is tantamount to serving time in prison and that Zoray should be afforded credit for his time in the center primarily because the time he spent there was under conditions which the Court of Appeals found were akin to "jail" and thus, could be considered as time spent in "jail-type confinement". The primary issue which the Supreme Court had to consider was whether or not the Court of Appeals' alternative construction, which found that official detention "includes time spent under conditions of jail-type confinement" should be affirmed. The final question to be resolved was whether Zoray's time in the center should count as time served, or whether as the Bureau of Prisons contended, it should not.
Justice Rehnquist delivered the majority opinion. He began with a review of the facts, which included a mention of how the federal magistrate order required that Zoray be "confined to the premises of a Volunteers of America" center "without authorization to leave for any reason unless accompanied." The first weakness in the respondent's case which Justice Rehnquist pointed out was that most Circuit
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