Source: https://openjurist.org/319/us/583
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 00:47:08+00:00

Document:
STATE OF MISSISSIPPI. BENOIT v. SAME. CUMMINGS v. SAME.
Argued April 15, 16, 1943.
At the June 1942 term of the Madison County Circuit Court, Taylor, the appellant in No. 826, was indicted for orally disseminating teachings designed and calculated to encourage disloyalty to the government of the United States and that of the State of Mississippi; and for orally disseminating teachings and distributing literature and printed matter reasonably tending to create an attitude of stubborn refusal to salute, honor, and respect the flag and government of the United States and of the State of Mississippi, and designed and calculated to encourage disloyalty to the government of the United States.
The evidence was contradictory and conflicting but the juries resolved the conflicts against the appellants. We must, therefore, examine the questions presented on the basis of the proofs submitted by the State.
In No. 827 it was proved that the appellant Betty Benoit distributed Volume XXIII, No. 583, of a publication entitled 'Consolation', which contained a reprint of an editorial from a Lewiston, Maine, newspaper commenting adversely upon the decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 60 S.Ct. 1010, 84 L.Ed. 1375, 127 A.L.R. 1493, and vigorously asserting that the salute of the national flag amounted to a contemptible form of primitive idol worship. The publication also contained an alleged foreign dispatch which stated that the flag salute ceremony, a daily event in French schools, originated in the Catholic schools of France; commented that the type of mind which finds satisfaction in worshiping images would also be most inclined towards various kinds of emblem worship, and added that the dispatch confirms the claim that the flag salute in the United States has been covertly pushed by the Catholic hierarchy here.
The appellants are all members of Jehovah's Witnesses. There is nothing in the records to indicate that, in making the statements and distributing the printed matter in question, they were communicating and teaching any doctrine in which they did not sincerely believe.
Section 1 of the Act defines six offenses. The indictments in Nos. 826 and 828 charge the commission of two of them5 in a single count,—(1) teaching and dissemination of printed matter designed and calculated to encourage disloyalty to the national and state governments, and (2) distribution of printed matter reasonably tending to create an attitude of stubborn refusal to honor or respect the flag or government of the United States or of the State of Mississippi. In No. 827 the single offense charged is the dissemination of literature reasonably tending to create the denounced attitude towards the flag and Government.
In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 87 L.Ed. —-, the court has decided that a state may not enforce a regulation requiring children in the public schools to salute the national emblem. The statute here in question seeks to punish as a criminal one who teaches resistance to governmental compulsion to salute. If the Fourteenth Amendment bans enforcement of the school regulation, a fortiori it prohibits the imposition of punishment for urging and advising that, on religious grounds, citizens refrain from saluting the flag. If the state cannot constrain one to violate his conscientious religious conviction by saluting the national emblem, then certainly it cannot punish him for imparting his views on the subject to his fellows and exhorting them to accept those views.
The statute as construed in these cases makes it a criminal offense to communicate to others views and opinions respecting governmental policies, and prophesies concerning the future of our own and other nations. As applied to the appellants it punishes them although what they communicated is not claimed or shown to have been done with an evil or sinister purpose, to have advocated or incited subversive action against the nation or state,6 or to have threatened any clear and present danger to our institutions or our government.7 What these appellants communicated were their beliefs and opinions8 concerning domestic measures and trends in national and world affairs.
Chap. 178, General Laws of Mississippi, 1942.
Taylor v. State, 194 Miss. —-, 11 So.2d 663; Cummings v. State, 194 Miss. —-, 11 So.2d 683; Benoit v. State, 194 Miss. —-, 11 So.2d 689.
There is no charge in any of the indictments of (1) preaching, teaching, dissemination of teachings, or distribution of written or printed matter designed or calculated to encourage violence or sabotage; (2) advocacy, by action or speech, of the cause of the enemies of the United States; (3) the giving of information as to military affairs; (4) incitement of racial disturbances, disorder, prejudice or hatred.
See Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 39 S.Ct. 247, 63 L.Ed. 470; Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 40 S.Ct. 17, 63 L.Ed. 1173; Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 47 S.Ct. 641, 71 L.Ed. 1095.
See De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 57 S.Ct. 255, 81 L.Ed. 278; Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242, 57 S.Ct. 732, 81 L.Ed. 1066.
See Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359, 51 S.Ct. 532, 75 L.Ed. 1117, 73 A.L.R. 1484; Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 60 S.Ct. 736, 84 L.Ed. 1093.

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