Source: https://openjurist.org/211/us/507
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 08:38:41+00:00

Document:
EDGAR M. BIGGS, Charles H. Freeman, Charles D. McPhee, and John J. McGinnity.
Argued December 16, 17, 1908.
Solicitor General Hoyt, Attorney General Bonaparte, and Mr. Edwin W. Lawrence for plaintiff in error.
Messrs. Clyde C. Dawson and Charles J. Hughes, Jr., for defendants in error.
The indictment contained one count, supported by averments of fourteen overt acts.
The accused after moving to quash on the ground of the illegality of the organization of the grand jury, demurred to the indictment on a number of technical grounds, and upon the contentions that the facts stated in the indictment were insufficient to charge an offense within any statute of the United States, and that, as the indictment had not been found within three years of the commission of the acts therein alleged, the right to prosecute for the same was barred by the statute of limitations. The court held the indictment stated no offense against the United States, and, sustaining the demurrer upon that ground, discharged the accused without day. It was also held that, if the indictment was construed as embracing but one offense, the three years' bar of the statute of limitations was controlling; but that, if it were held that the indictment stated more than one offense, thus saving one of the offenses from the operation of the statute of limitations, the indictment would be void for duplicity.
Having thus construed the indictment, it was then considered whether any offense was therein stated against the United States. In deciding that no offense was stated, it was held that, although it were conceded that the timber and stone act prohibited an entryman or applicant from making an application ostensibly in his own name, but in reality for and on behalf of another, that, if an applicant or entryman made an application in good faith, for his own exclusive use and benefit, the statute contained no prohibition, express or implied, against the right of the entryman, after his application, and before the final action thereon, to sell to another the claim to the land which had arisen from his application. It was therefore decided that such applicant was at liberty to contract with another to convey the land covered by the application and to perfect his entry for the purpose of fulfilling his contract to convey the land after patent. In reaching this conclusion the court was controlled by the decision in Adams v. Church, 193 U. S. 510, 48 L. ed. 769, 24 Sup. Ct. Rep. 512, giving a like construction to the timber culture act of June 14, 1878 (chap. 190, 20 Stat. at L. 113). Having thus decided that the indictment as construed charged the doing of no unlawful act, but simply the exercise of a lawful act, not in any way prohibited, but, on the contrary, impliedly sanctioned, by the statute, it was decided that, under no possible construction, could the acts charged constitute an unlawful conspiracy within the 2d clause of § 5440, Rev. Stat. And for additional reasons expressed in the opinion the conclusions of the court concerning the bar of the statute of limitations and the duplicity of the indictment, if it were so construed as to save it from the statute, were fully expressed.
This writ of error, direct from this court, is prosecuted by the United States under the authority of the act of March 2, 1907 (34 Stat. at L. 1246, chap. 2564, U. S. Comp. Stat. Supp. 1907, p. 209).
Our right to review the decision below is questioned by the defendants in error on the ground, first, that the court below did not construe, but simply interpreted, § 5440, Rev. Stat., and the provisions of the timber and stone act; and, second, because, although it applied the bar of the statute of limitations, the court did not do so by way of sustaining a plea in bar, but simply incidentally passed upon that question in deciding the demurrer.
The want of merit in the first contention is established by United States v. Keitel, No. 286 of this term, 211 U. S. 370, 53 L. ed. ——, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 123.
As therefore we have, in any event, jurisdiction to review the action of the trial court in construing the timber and stone act and in fixing the meaning of § 5440, Rev. Stat., in the light of that construction, we presently pass the consideration of the ruling made by the court in respect to the statute of limitations. We do this because, if it be found that the court below was right in its conclusions as to the construction of the timber and stone act and of § 5440, Rev. Stat., its judgment quashing the indictment will be sustained, and its action concerning the statute of limitations will become irrelevant, and will not require examination, unless it be our duty under the act of 1907, which we shall also hereafter consider, to pass upon that question, although its decision will have become wholly unnecessary.
It is also settled by United States v. Keitel, supra, that the right given to the United States to obtain a direct review from this court of the rulings of the lower court on the oubjects embraced within the statute of 1907 does not give authority to revise the action of the court below as to the mere construction of an indictment, and therefore, in the exercise of our power to review on this record, we must accept the construction of the indictment made by the lower court, and test its construction of the statute in that aspect.
While not questioning this general rule, the United States insists that the case here presented is an exception to that rule, because of the contention that the construction given by the court below to the indictment was but the necessary result of the misconstruction which the court applied to the timber and stone act, and hence that a review of the construction given to the indictment is necessarily involved in the determination of the correctness of the construction given by the court to the statute. Conceding the premise, for the sake of argument, the deduction by which it is sought to apply it to the case in hand is, we think, without foundation. It proceeds upon a subtle separation of particular words or phrases in the indictment from the context of that pleading, and the affixing to the words thus separated a penetrating, but, nevertheless, too narrow, significance for the purpose of establishing the proposition relied upon. On the contrary, we think the conclusion cannot be escaped that the construction given by the court below to the indictment was the result merely of the analysis which the court made of the indictment as an entirety, of its appreciation of the nature and character of the acts therein referred to, and of the overt acts alleged, the whole read in the light of the elementary canons of construction applicable to criminal pleadings, and elucidated, as the court expressly stated, by the entire absence of anything in the indictment tending to show that the pleader contemplated alleging the existence of any conspiracy to induce the making of applications to purchase.
Coming to consider the construction given by the court to the timber and stone act as applied to the allegations of the indictment, as interpreted by the court, the correctness of the construction given by the court below to the statute is established beyond controversy by the decision in Williamson v. United States, 207 U. S. 425, 52 L. ed. 278, 28 Sup. Ct. Rep. 163, announced since the decision below was rendered.
It is insisted by the government that, however conclusive may be this ruling as to the power of the applicant to sell after application and to perfect his entry for the purpose of enabling him to perform such contract, that such ruling does not conclude the contention that a conspiracy formed to induce an entryman who has made his application to purchase subsequently to agree to convey his interest in the land would be a violation of the statute. But we are constrained to say that this is a mere distinction without a difference. The effect of the ruling in the Williamson Case was to hold that the prohibition of the statute only applied to the period of original application, and ceased to restrain the power of the entryman to sell to another and perfect his entry for the purpose of transferring the title after patent. This being concluded by the decision in the Williamson Case, the distinction now sought to be made comes to this,—that it is unlawful under the statute to conspire to have that done which the statute did not prohibit, and, on the contrary, by implication recognized could be lawfully done without prejudice or injury to the United States in any manner whatever. This also serves to demonstrate that no error was committed by the court below in holding that, under § 5440, Rev. Stat., the acts charged in the indictment could not possibly have constituted a defrauding of the United States in any manner or for any purpose within the intendment of that section.
It remains only to notice the ruling of the court below as to the bar of the statute of limitations. While the act of 1907 gives authority to come directly here to obtain a review of the construction of a statute under the circumstances which the act enumerates, and also authorizes us to review a 'decision or judgment sustaining a special plea in bar, when the defendant has not been put in jeopardy,' we consider that the power given is coincident with the purpose for which it was conferred; that is, to have determined, in a case within the statute, the question whether or not the government is entitled to further prosecute the case, and therefore does not, of course, call upon us to decide every question of the character referred to in the statute, when, by the decision of one of such questions, the case is completely disposed of and the other questions have become so irrelevant as to cause it to be, in our opinion, unnecessary to consider and determine them. Of course, under these circumstances, we intimate no opinion whatever concerning the correctness of the construction adopted by the court below in respect to the statute of limitations.

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