In Affronti v. United States, 350 U.S. 79 (1955), the Supreme Court confronted the question of whether a district court has authority to place a defendant on probation once he has begun to serve the first in a series of consecutive sentences. The Court cautioned that statutory authority to grant probation should not be "applied in such a way as to necessarily overlap the parole and executive clemency provisions of the law" and should be interpreted "to avoid interference with the parole and clemency powers of the Executive Board." Affronti, 350 U.S. at 83. The Court then concluded, utilizing broad language, that "the probationary power ceases with respect to all of the sentences composing a single cumulative sentence immediately upon imprisonment for any part of the cumulative sentence." Id.