Source: http://openjurist.org/print/320
Timestamp: 2015-11-27 03:26:27
Document Index: 231949013

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 20', '§ 52', '§ 52', '§ 20', '§ 37', '§ 88', '§ 88', '§ 20', '§ 20', '§ 20', '§ 2', '§ 17', '§ 52', '§ 5510', '§ 52', '§ 1', '§ 20', '§ 20', '§ 2', '§ 4', '§ 20', '§ 20', '§ 20', '§ 20', '§ 2', '§ 33', '§ 76', '§ 76', '§ 20']

Home > 325 US 91 Screws v. United States
325 US 91 Screws v. United States 325 U.S. 91
65 S.Ct. 1031
89 L.Ed. 1495
SCREWS et al.v.UNITED STATES.
An indictment was returned against petitioners—one count charging a violation of § 20 of the Criminal Code, 18 U.S.C. § 52, 18 U.S.C.A. § 52, and another charging a conspiracy to violate § 20 contrary to § 37 of the Criminal Code, 18 U.S.C. § 88, 18 U.S.C.A. § 88. Sec. 20 provides:
The indictment charged that petitioners, acting under color of the laws of Georgia, 'willfully' caused Hall to be deprived of 'rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected' to him by the Fourteenth Amendment—the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law; the right to be tried, upon the charge on which he was arrested, by due process of law and if found guilty to be punished in accordance with the laws of Georgia; that is to say that petitioners 'unlawfully and wrong-fully did assault, strike and beat the said Robert Hall about the head with human fists and a blackjack causing injuries' to Hall 'which were the proximate and immediate cause of his death.' A like charge was made in the conspiracy count.
The case was tried to a jury.1 The court charged the jury that due process of law gave one charged with a crime the right to be tried by a jury and sentenced by a court. On the question of intent it charged that '* * * if these defendants, without its being necessary to make the arrest effectual or necessary to their own personal protection, beat this man, assaulted him or killed him while he was under arrest, then they would be acting illegally under color of law, as stated by this statute, and would be depriving the prisoner of certain constitutional rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States and consented to by the State of Georgia.'
The serious character of that challenge to the constitutionality of the Act is emphasized if the customary standard of guilt for statutory crimes is taken. As we shall see specific intent is at times required. Holmes, The Common Law, p. 66 et seq. But the general rule was stated in Ellis v. United States, 206 U.S. 246, 257, 27 S.Ct. 600, 602, 51 L.Ed. 1047, 11 Ann.Cas. 589, as follows: 'If a man intentionally adopts certain conduct in certain circumstances known to him, and that conduct is forbidden by the law under those circumstances, he intentionally breaks the law in the only sense in which the law ever considers intent.' And see Horning v. District of Columbia, 254 U.S. 135, 137, 41 S.Ct. 53, 54, 65 L.Ed. 185; Nash v. United States, 229 U.S. 373, 377, 33 S.Ct. 780, 781, 57 L.Ed. 1232. Under that test a local law enforcement officer violates § 20 and commits a federal offense for which he can be sent to the penitentiary if he does an act which some court later holds deprives a person of due process of law. And he is a criminal though his motive was pure and though his purpose was unrelated to the disregard of any constitutional guarantee. The treacherous ground on which state officials—police, prosecutors, legislators, and judges—would walk is indicated by the character and closeness of decisions of this Court interpreting the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A confession obtained by too long questioning (Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 64 S.Ct. 921, 88 L.Ed. 1192); the enforcement of an ordinance requiring a license for the distribution of religious literature (Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 63 S.Ct. 870, 87 L.Ed. 1292, 146 A.L.R. 81); the denial of the assistance of counsel in certain types of cases (Cf. Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158, 84 A.L.R. 527, with Betts v. Brady, supra); the enforcement of certain types of anti-picketing statutes (Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 60 S.Ct. 736, 84 L.Ed. 1093); the enforcement of state price control laws (Olsen v. Nebraska, 313 U.S. 236, 61 S.Ct. 862, 85 L.Ed. 1305, 133 A.L.R. 1500); the requirement that public school children salute the flag (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 87 L.Ed. 1628, 147 A.L.R. 674)—these are illustrative of the kind of state action2 which might or might not be caught in the broad reaches of § 20 dependent on the prevailing view of the Court as constituted when the case arose. Those who enforced local law today might not know for many months (and meanwhile could not find out) whether what they did deprived some one of due process of law. The enforcement of a criminal statute so construed would indeed cast law enforcement agencies loose at their own risk on a vast uncharted sea.
If such a construction is not necessary, it should be avoided. This Court has consistently favored that interpretation of legislation which supports its constitutionality. Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 348, 56 S.Ct. 466, 483, 80 L.Ed. 688; National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 30, 57 S.Ct. 615, 621, 81 L.Ed. 893, 108 A.L.R. 1352; Anniston Mfg. Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 337, 351, 352, 57 S.Ct. 816, 822, 823, 81 L.Ed. 1143. That reason is impelling here so that if at all possible § 20 may be allowed to serve its great purpose—the protection of the individual in his civil liberties.
Sec. 20 was enacted to enfor e the Fourteenth Amendment.3 It derives4 from § 2 of the Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866, 14 Stat. 27.5 Senator Trumbull, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee which reported the bill, stated that its purpose was 'to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and furnish the means of their vindication.' Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 211. In origin it was an antidiscrimination measure (as its language indicated), framed to protect negroes in their newly won rights. See Flack, The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment (1908), p. 21. It was amended by § 17 of the Act of May 31, 1870, 16 Stat. 144, 18 U.S.C.A. § 52,6 and made applicable to 'any inhabitant of any State or Territory.'7 The prohibition against the 'deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities, secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States' was introduced by the revisers in 1874. R.S. § 5510, 18 U.S.C.A. § 52. Those words were taken over from § 1 of the Act of April 20, 1871, 17 Stat. 13 (the so-called Ku-Klux Act) which provided civil suits for redress of such wrongs.8 See Cong. Rec., 43d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 828. The 1874 revision was applicable to any person who under color of law, etc., 'subjects, or causes to be subjected' any inhabitant to the deprivation of any rights, etc. The requirement for a 'willful' violation was introduced by the draftsmen of the Criminal Code of 1909. Act of March 4, 1909, 35 Stat. 1092. And we are told 'willfully' was added to § 20 in order to make the section 'less severe'. 43 Cong. Rec., 60th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 3599.
We hesitate to say that when Congress sought to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment9 in this fashion it did a vain thing. We hesitate to conclude that for 80 years this effort of Congress, renewed several times, to protect the important rights of the individual guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment has been an idle gesture. Yet if the Act falls by reason of vagueness so far as due process of law is concerned, there would seem to be a similar lack of specificity when the privileges and immunities clause (Madden v. Kentucky, 309 U.S. 83, 60 S.Ct. 406, 84 L.Ed. 590, 125 A.L.R. 1383) and the equal protection clause (Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84; Hill v. Texas, 316 U.S. 400, 62 S.Ct. 1159, 86 L.Ed. 1559) of the Fourteenth Amendment are involved. Only if no construction can save the Act from this claim of unconstitutionality are we willing to reach that result. We do not reach it, for we are of the view that if § 20 is confined more narrowly than the lower courts confined it, it can be preserved as one of the sanctions to the great rights which the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to secure.
United States v. Classic, supra, met the test we suggest. In that case we were dealing merely with the validity of an indictment, not with instructions to the jury. The indictment was sufficient since it charged a willful failure and refusal of the defendant-election officials to count the votes cast, by their alteration of the ballots and by their false certification of the number of votes cast for the respective candidates. 313 U.S. at pages 308, 309, 61 S.Ct. at pages 1034, 1035, 85 L.Ed. 1368. The right so to vote is guaranteed by Art. I, § 2 and § 4 of the Constitution. Such a charge is adequate since he who alters ballots or without legal justification destroys them would be acting willfully in the sense in which § 20 uses the term. The fact that the defendants may not have been thinking in constitutional terms is not material where their aim was not to enforce local law but to deprive a citizen of a right and that right was protected by the Constitution. When they so act they at least act in reckless disregard of constitutional prohibitions or guarantees. Likewise, it is plain that basic to the concept of due process of law in a criminal case is a trial—a trial in a court of law, not a 'trial by ordeal.' Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 285, 56 S.Ct. 461, 465, 80 L.Ed. 682. It could hardly be doubted that they who 'under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom' act with that evil motive violate § 20. Those who decide to take the law into their own hands and act as prosecutor, jury, judge, and executioner plainly act to deprive a prisoner of the trial which due process of law guarantees him. And such a purpose need not be expressed; it may at times be reasonably inferred from all the circumstances attendant on the act. See Tot v. United States, 319 U.S. 463, 63 S.Ct. 1241, 87 L.Ed. 1519.
Some of the arguments which have been advanced in support of the contrary conclusion suggest that the question under § 20 is whether Congress has made it a federal offense for a state officer to violate the law of his State. But there is no warrant for treating the question in state law terms. The problem is not whether state law has been violated but whether an inhabitant of a State has been deprived of a federal right by one who acts under 'color of any law.' He who acts under 'color' of law may be a federal officer or a state officer. He may act under 'color' of federal law or of state law. The statute does not come into play merely because the federal law or the state law under which the officer purports to act is violated. It is applicable when and only when some one is deprived of a federal right by that action. The fact that it is also a violation of state law does not make it any the less a federal offense punishable as such. Nor does its punishment by federal authority encroach on state authority or relieve the state from its responsibility for punishing state offenses.10
It is said that we should abandon the holding of the Classic case. It is suggested that the present problem was not clearly in focus in that case and that its holding was ill-advised. A reading of the opinion makes plain that the question was squarely involved and squarely met. It followed the rule announced in Ex parte Commonwealth of Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 346, 25 L.Ed. 676, that a state judge who in violation of state law discriminated against negroes in the selection of juries violated the Act of March 1, 1875, 18 Stat. 336. It is true that that statute did not contain the words under 'color' of law. But the Court in deciding what was state action within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment held that it was immaterial that the state officer exceeded the limits of his authority. '* * * as he acts in the name and for the State, and is clothed with the State's power, his act is that of the State. This must be so, or the constitutional prohibition has no meaning. Then the State has clothed one of its agents with power to annul or to evade it.' 100 U.S. at page 347, 25 L.Ed. 676. And see Commonwealth of Virginia v. Rives, 100 U.S. 313, 321, 25 L.Ed. 667. The Classic case recognized, without dissent, that the cont ary view would defeat the great purpose which § 20 was designed to serve. Reference is made to statements11 of Senator Trumbull in his discussion of § 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27, and to statements of Senator Sherman concerning the 1870 Act12 as supporting the conclusion that 'under color of any law' was designed to include only action taken by officials pursuant to state law. But those statements in their context are inconclusive on the precise problem involved in the Classic case and in the present case. We are not dealing here with a case where an officer not authorized to act nevertheless takes action. Here the state officers were authorized to make an arrest and to take such steps as were necessary to make the arrest effective. They acted without authority only in the sense that they used excessive force in making the arrest effective. It is clear that under 'color' of law means under 'pretense' of law. Thus acts of officers in the ambit of their personal pursuits are plainly excluded. Acts of officers who undertake to perform their official duties are included whether they hew to the line of their authority or overstep it. If, as suggested, the statute was designed to embrace only action which the State in fact authorized, the words 'under color of any law' were hardly apt words to express the idea.
Nor are the decisions under § 33 of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. § 76, 28 U.S.C.A. § 76, in point. That section gives the right of removal to a federal court of any criminal prosecution begun in a state court against a revenue officer of the United States 'on account of any act done under color of his office or of any such (revenue) law.' The cases under it recognize that it is an 'exceptional' procedure which wrests from state courts the power to try offenses against their own laws. State of Maryland v. Soper (No. 1), 270 U.S. 9, 29, 35, 46 S.Ct. 185, 189, 191, 70 L.Ed. 449; State of Colorado v. Symes, 286 U.S. 510, 518, 52 S.Ct. 635, 637, 76 L.Ed. 1253. Thus the requirements of the showing necessary for removal are strict. See State of Maryland v. Soper (No. 2), 270 U.S. 36, 42, 46 S.Ct. 192, 193, 70 L.Ed. 459, saying that acts 'necessary to make the enforcement effective' are done under 'color' of law. Hence those cases do not supply an authoritative guide to the problems under § 20 which seeks to afford protection against officers who possess authority to act and who exercise their powers in such a way as to deprive a person of rights secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States. It is one thing to deprive state courts of their authority to enforce their own laws. It is quite another to emasculate an Act of Congress designed to secure individuals their constitutional rights by finely spun distinctions concerning the precise scope of the authority of officers of the law. Cf. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220.
The case comes here established in fact as a gross abuse of authority by state officers. Entrusted with the state's power and using it, without a warrant or with one of only doubtful legality1 they invaded a citizen's home, arrested him for alleged theft of a tire, forcibly took him in handcuffs to the courthouse yard, and there beat him to death. Previously they had threatened to kill him, fortified themselves at a near-by bar, and resisted the bartender's importunities not to carry out the arrest. Upon this and other evidence which overwhelmingly supports (140 F.2d at page 665) the verdict, together with instructions adequately covering an officer's right to use force, the jury found the petitioners guilty.
I. The verdict has shaped their position here. Their contention hardly disputes the facts on which it rests.2 They do not come therefore as faithful state officers, innocent of crime. Justification has been foreclosed. Accordingly, their argument now admits the offense, but insists it was against the state alone, not the nation. So they have made their case in this Court.3
In effect, the position urges it is murder they have done,4 not deprivation of constitutional right. Strange as the argument is the reason. It comes to this, that abuse of state power creates immunity to federal power. Because what they did violated the state's laws, the nation cannot reach their conduct.5 It may deprive the citizen of his liberty and his life. But whatever state officers may do in abuse of their official capacity can give this Government and its courts no concern. This, though the prime object of the Fourteenth Amendment and Section 20 was to secure these fundamental rights against wrongful denial by exercise of the power of the states.
The defense is not pretty. Nor is it valid. By a long course of decision from Ex parte Commonwealth of Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 25 L.Ed. 676, to United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 61 S.Ct. 1031, 85 L.Ed. 1368 it has been rejected.6 The ground should not need ploughing again. It was cleared long ago and thoroughly. It has been kept clear, until the ancient doubt, laid in the beginning, was resurrected in the last stage of this case. The evidence has nullified any pretense that petitioners acted as individuals, about their personal though nefarious business. They used the power of official place in all that was done. The verdict has foreclosed semblance of any claim that only private matters, not touching official functions, were involved. Yet neither was the state's power, they say.
There is no third category. The Amendment and the legislation were not aimed at rightful state action. Abuse of state power was the target. Limits were put to state authority, and states were forbidden to pass them, by whatever agency.7 It is too late now, if there were better reason than exists for doing so, to question that in these matters abuse binds the state and is its act, when done by one to whom it has given power to make the abuse effective to achieve the forbidden ends. Vague ideas of dual federalism,8 of ultra vires doctrine imported from private agency,9 and of want of finality in official action,10 do not nullify what four years of civil strife secured and eighty years have verified. For it was abuse of basic civil and political rights, by states and their officials, that the Amendment and the enforcing legislation were ad