Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/173/381/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 10:42:24+00:00

Document:
The authority conferred upon the Attorney General by the Act of March 3, 1891, c. 542, 26 Stat. 985, to offer rewards for the detection and prosecution of crimes against the United States, preliminary to the indictment, empowered him to authorize the Marshal of the Northern District of Florida to offer a reward for the arrest and delivery of a person accused of the committal of a crime against the United States in that district, the reward to be paid upon conviction, and a deputy marshal who had complied with all the conditions of the offer and of the statute was entitled to receive the amount of the reward offered.
"making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the government for the fiscal year ending June the thirtieth, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, and for other purposes,"
"Prosecution of crimes; for the detection and prosecution of crimes against the United States, preliminary to indictment, . . . under the direction of the Attorney General, . . . thirty-five thousand dollars."
to be paid upon conviction of said McNeil."
A capias for the arrest of McNeil was executed by the deputies in question on the 11th day of July, 1892, the court below finding that the arrest was due to their exertions.
"that no civil officer of the government shall hereafter receive any compensation or perquisites, directly or indirectly, from the Treasury or property of the United States beyond his salary or compensation allowed by law."
in the Attorney General, and although that discretion was by him exercised without qualification or restriction, it becomes a matter of judicial duty in construing the statute and in interpreting the authority exercised under it, to disregard both the obvious meaning of the statute and the general language of the authority exercised under it by reading into the statute a qualification which it does not contain and by inserting in the offer of reward a restriction not mentioned in it, the argument being that this should be done under the assumption that it is within the province of a court to disregard a statute upon the theory that the power which it confers is contrary to public policy. It cannot be doubted that in exercising the powers conferred on him by the statute, the Attorney General could at his discretion have confined the reward offered by him to particular classes of persons. To invoke, however, judicial authority to insert such restriction in the offer of reward when it is not there found is to ask the judicial power to exert a discretion not vested in it, but which has been lodged by the lawmaking power in a different branch of the government. Aside from these considerations, the contention as to the existence of a supposed public policy, as applied to the question in hand, is without foundation in reason and wanting in support of authority.
Minn. 408, 414; Hayden v. Souger, 56 Ind. 42; Matter of Russell's Application, 51 Conn. 577; Ring v. Devlin, 68 Wis. 384; St. Louis &c. Railway v. Grafton, 51 Ark. 504. The broad difference between the right of an officer to take from a private individual a reward or compensation for the performance of his official duty and the capacity of such officer to receive a reward expressly authorized by competent legislative authority, and sanctioned by the executive officer to whom the legislative power has delegated ample discretion to offer the reward is too obvious to require anything but statement.
question had been offered within the limits of a discretion duly vested by the supreme legislative authority of the commonwealth, the court would have considered that it was its duty to deny the power of the commonwealth or, by indirection, to frustrate the calling of such power into play by reading into the legislative authority by construction a limitation which it did not contain.
"The offer of a portion of such penalties to the collectors is to stimulate and reward their zeal and industry in detecting fraudulent attempts to evade the payment of duties and taxes."
the offered reward, renders it unnecessary to determine whether a deputy marshal is an officer of the United States within the meaning of section 1765 of the Revised Statutes and section 3 of the Act of June 20, 1874, to which reference has already been made. As the reward was sanctioned by the statute making the appropriation, and was embraced within the offer of the Attorney General, it clearly, under any view of the case, was removed from the provisions of the statutes in question. The appropriation act, being a special and later enactment, operated necessarily to engraft upon the prior and general statute an exception to the extent of the power conferred on the Attorney General, and necessary for the exercise of the discretion lodged in him for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of the later and special act.
MR. JUSTICE BROWN, concurring in the result only.
to one who, although holding a permanent appointment as an officer, receives no pay directly from the government, but only such compensation as his superior may choose to allow him. Douglas v. Wallace, 161 U. S. 346.
But I cannot concur in so much of the opinion as intimates that under an act of Congress making an appropriation for the prosecution of crime under the direction of the Attorney General, the Attorney General has a discretion to direct any portion of it to be paid to one of an class of persons who are forbidden by a previous act from receiving any additional pay or compensation beyond such as is allowed to them by law. This could only be done upon the theory stated in the opinion that the appropriation act, being a special and later enactment, operated necessarily to engraft upon the prior and general statute an exception to the extent of the power conferred upon the Attorney General. I do not think the two acts stand in the relation of a prior general statute and a subsequent special one, but rather the converse. The prior acts are general acts, applicable to all officer of government whose salaries or compensations are fixed by law; the latter act makes a particular appropriation for the detection of crime, and vests the Attorney General with power to direct to whom it shall be paid. But there can be no inference from it that he has a discretion to pay it to anyone who is forbidden by law to receive it. I had assumed it to be the law that a later act would not be held to qualify or repeal a prior one unless there were a positive repugnancy between the provisions of the new law and the old, and even then the prior law is only repealed to the extent of such repugnancy. This was the declared doctrine of this Court in Wood v. United States, 16 Pet. 342; in McCool v. Smith, 1 Black 459; in Daviess v. Fairbairn, 3 How. 636; in Cope v. Cope, 137 U. S. 682; in Furman v. Nichol, 8 Wall. 44; in Ex Parte Yerger,, 8 Wall. 85; in United States v. Sixty-Seven Packages, 17 How. 85, and in Red Rock v. Henry, 106 U. S. 596.
In this case, I see no intent whatever on the part of Congress to vary or qualify the prior law. Both enactments may properly stand together, and the prior ones be simply regarded as limiting the application of the later.
In justice to the Attorney General, it ought to be said that his offer of five hundred dollars for the arrest and delivery of McNeil was a general one, and that he did not assume to say that any officer of the government who was forbidden by law from receiving extra compensation should receive any portion of the reward. There was no attempt on his part to disregard the previous limitation, or to offer it to anyone who was forbidden by law from receiving it. The subsequent action of the Acting Attorney General in refusing to pay Matthews the reward upon the ground that the arrest of McNeil was performed in the line of his duty, is a still clearer intimation that no such construction as is put by the Court upon the offer of reward was intended by the Attorney General.
For these reasons, I cannot concur in the opinion, though I do not dissent from the result.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN and MR. JUSTICE PECKHAM dissented upon the ground that the offering or payment of a reward to a public officer for the performance of what was, at all events, nothing more than his official duty was against public policy, and the act of Congress authorizing the Attorney General to offer and pay rewards did not include or authorize the offer of payment of any reward to a public officer under such circumstances.

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