Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/333/196
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 19:07:10+00:00

Document:
Argued: Feb. 4, 5, 1948.
Messrs. David Rein and Joseph Forer, both of Ws hington, D.C., for petitioner.
Messrs. Oscar E. Ellis, of Salem, Ark., and Shields M. Goodwin, of Little Rock, Ark., for respondent.
The petitioners were convicted of a felony in an Arkansas state court and sentenced to serve one year in the state penitentiary. The State Supreme Court affirmed, one judge dissenting on the ground that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the convictions. Ark., 202 S.W.2d 770, 771. A petition for certiorari here alleged deprivation of important rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. We granted certiorari because the record indicated that at least one of the questions presented was substantial, 332 U.S. 834, 68 S.Ct. 217. That question, in the present state of the record, is the only one we find it appropriate to consider. The question is: 'Were the petitioners denied due process of law * * * in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment by the circumstance that their convictions were affirmed under a criminal statute for violation of which they had not been charged'?
The present convictions are under an information. The petitioners urge that the information charged them with a violation of § 2 of Act 193 of the 1943 Arkansas Legislature and that they were tried and convicted of violating only § 2. The State Supreme Court affirmed their convictions on the ground that the information had charged and the evidence had shown that the petitioners had violated § 1 of the Arkansas Act which describes an offense separate and distinct from the offense described in § 2.
We therefore have this situation. The petitioners read the information as charging them with an offense under § 2 of the Act, the language of which the information had used. The trial judge construed the information as charging an offense under § 2. He instructed the jury to that effect. He charged the jury that petitioners were on trial for the offense of promoting an unlawful assemblage, not for the offense 'of using force and violence.' Without completely ignoring the judge's charge, the jury could not have convicted petitioners for having committed the separate, distinct, and substantially different offense defined in § 1. 4 Yet the State Supreme Court refused to consider the validity of the conviction under s 2, for violation of which petitioners were tried and convicted. It affirmed their convictions as though they had been tried for violating § 1, an offense for which they were neither tried nor convicted.
No principle of procedural due process is more clearly established than that notice of the specific charge, and a chance to be heard in a trial of the issues raised by that charge, if desired, are among the constitutional rights of every accused in a criminal proceeding in all courts, state or federal. In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 68 S.Ct. 499, and cases there cited. If, as the State Supreme Court held, petitioners were charged with a violation of § 1, it is doubtful both that the information fairly informed them of that charge and that they sought to defend themselves against such a charge; it is certain that they were not tried for or found guilty of it. It is as much a violation of due process to send an accused to prison following conviction of a charge on which he was never trid as it would be to convict him upon a charge that was never made. De Jonge v. State of Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 362, 57 S.Ct. 255, 259, 81 L.Ed. 278.
Furthermore, since Arkansas provides for an appeal to the State Supreme Court and on that appeal considers questions raised under the Federal Constitution, the proceedings in that court are a part of the process of law under which the petitioners' convictions must stand or fall. Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 327, 35 S.Ct. 582, 587, 59 L.Ed. 969. Cf. Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U.S. 103, 113, 55 S.Ct. 340, 342, 79 L.Ed. 791, 98 A.L.R. 406. That court has not affirmed these convictions on the basis of the trial petitioners were afforded. The convictions were for a violation of § 2. Petitioners urged in the State Supreme Court that the evidence was insufficient to support their conviction of a violation of § 2. They also raised serious objections to the validity of that section under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. 5 None of their contentions were passed upon by the State Supreme Court. It affirmed their conviction as though they had been tried and convicted of a violation of § 1 when in truth they had been tried and convicted only of a violation of a single offense charged in § 2, an offense which is distinctly and substantially different from the offense charged in § 1. To conform to due process of law, petitioners were entitled to have the validity of their convictions appraised on consideration of the case as it was tried and as the issues were determined in the trial court.
We are constrained to hold that the petitioners have been denied safeguards guaranteed by due process of lawsafeguards essential to liberty in a government dedicated to justice under law.
In the present state of the record we cannot pass upon those contentions which challenge the validity of § 2 of the Arkansas Act. The judgment is reversed and remanded to the State Supreme Court for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
'Section 1. It shall be unlawful for any person by the use of force or violence, or threat of the use of force or violence, to prevent or attempt to prevent any person from engaging in any lawful vocation within this State. Any person guilty of violating this section shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by confinement in the State Penitentiary for not less than one (1) year, nor more than two (2) years.' Act 193, Arkansas Acts of 1943.
'Under any reasonable construction Section 1 creates separate offenses, as does Section 2, and an indictment that alleges crimes covered by a part of Section 1 does not impose upon the defendant a duty to defend under Section 2 or against 'threat' provisions of Section 1.' Cole et al. v. State, 210 Ark. 433, 196 S.W.2d 582, 586.
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