Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/99980/united-states-vs-dege
Timestamp: 2017-02-19 13:18:11
Document Index: 531730268

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 371', '§ 371', '§ 545', '§ 371', '§ 3731', '§ 371', '§ 27', '§ 37']

United States Vs Dege - Citation 99980 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
Save as PDF Add a Tag Add a Note Semantics Visualize United States Vs. Dege - Court Judgment	LegalCrystal Citationlegalcrystal.com/99980CourtUS Supreme CourtDecided On1960Case Number364 U.S. 51AppellantUnited StatesRespondentDegeExcerpt:.....so many years for the federal judiciary to loose itself from the medieval chains of the husband-wife conspiracy doctrine. the problem, as the court sees it, is almost absurdly uncomplicated: the basis for the notion that husband and wife are not subject to a conspiracy charge is that man and wife are one; but we know that man and wife are two, not one; therefore, there is no basis for the notion that husband and wife and not subject to a conspiracy charge. i submit that this simplistic an approach will not do.
the court apparently does not assert that if the husband-wife conspiracy doctrine was widely accepted when the conspiracy statute was passed in 1867, 14 stat. 484, and therefore was presumably within congress' understanding of the reach of that statute, nonetheless this..... Judgment:
United States v. Dege - 364 U.S. 51 (1960)
A husband and wife are not legally incapable of violating 18 U.S.C. § 371 by conspiring with each other to commit an offense against the United States. Pp.
364 U. S. 51
This is an indictment charging husband and wife with conspiring to commit an offense against the United States in violation of § 371 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which was enacted by Congress on June 25, 1948, 62 Stat. 683, 701, in connection with § 545 of that Code,
716, in that they sought illicitly to bring goods into the United States with intent to defraud it. On authority of controlling decisions of its Circuit,
Dawson v. United States,
10 F.2d 106, and
Gros v. United States,
138 F.2d 261, the District Court dismissed the indictment on the ground that it did not state an offense, to-wit, a husband and wife are legally incapable of conspiring within the condemnation of § 371. The case came here on direct review of the order dismissing the indictment, 358 U.S. 944, under the Criminal Appeals Act of March 2, 1907, now 18 U.S.C.
§ 3731. The construction of § 371 by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has been explicitly rejected by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,
81 U.S.App.D.C. 254, 157 F.2d 209, and by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit,
227 F.2d 671, and
243 F.2d 569.
The question raised by these conflicting views is clear-cut and uncomplicated. The claim that husband and wife are outside the scope of an enactment of Congress in 1948, making it an offense for two persons to conspire, must be given short shrift once we heed the admonition of this Court that "we free our minds from the notion that criminal statutes must be construed by some artificial and conventional rule,"
, and therefore do not allow ourselves to be obfuscated by medieval views regarding the legal status of woman and the common law's reflection of them. Considering that legitimate business enterprises between husband and wife have long been commonplaces in our time, it would enthrone an unreality into a rule of law to suggest that man and wife are legally incapable of engaging in illicit enterprises, and therefore, forsooth, do not engage in them.
None of the considerations of policy touching the law's encouragement or discouragement of domestic felicities on the basis of which this Court determined appropriate rules for testimonial compulsion as between spouses,
Wyatt v. United States,
362 U. S. 525
, are relevant to yielding to the claim that an unqualified interdiction by Congress against a conspiracy between two persons precludes a husband and wife from being two persons. Such an immunity to husband and wife as a pair of conspirators would have to attribute to Congress one of two assumptions: either that responsibility
(Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown, 4th ed. 1762, Bk. I, chap. lxxii, Sect. 8, p. 192.) The pronouncement of Hawkins apparently rests on a case in a Year Book of 38 Edward III, decided in 1365. The learning invoked for this ancient doctrine has been questioned by modern scholarship.
Williams, The Legal Unity of Husband and Wife, 10 Mod.L.Rev., 16 (1947);
Winfield, The History of Conspiracy (1921), § 27, p. 64, and § 37, p. 88. But, in any event, the answer to Hawkins with his Year Book authority, as a basis for a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1960 construing a statute enacted in 1948, was definitively made long ago by Mr. Justice Holmes:
of conspiracy changed apace. In fact, the earliest case repudiating the husband-wife doctrine which the Government has been able to cite is
Dalton v. People,
68 Colo. 44, 189 P. 37, which was decided, as the Government puts it, "[a]s early as 1920." And if the doctrine is an anachronism today, as the Court says, its unusual hardiness is demonstrated by the fact that the decision of the Court represents a departure from the general rule which prevails today in the English-speaking world. As recently as 1957, the Privy Council approved the husband-wife doctrine, [
] and other Commonwealth courts are in accord. [
] For American decisions,
Annot., 4 A.L.R. 266; 71 A.L.R. 1116; 46 A.L.R.2d 1275.
Thus, it seems clear that, if the 1867 statute is to be construed to reflect Congress' intent as it was in 1867, the Court's decision is erroneous. And I believe that we must focus upon that intent, inasmuch as there is no indication that Congress meant to change the law by the 1948 legislation which reenacted without material variation the old conspiracy statute. [
] Surely when a rule of law is well established in the common law and is part of the legislative purpose when a relevant statute is passed, that rule should not be rejected by this Court in the absence of an explicit subsequent repudiation of it by Congress. [
But more, I cannot agree that the rule is without justification. Inasmuch as Mr. Justice Holmes' observation that it is "revolting" to follow a doctrine only "from blind imitation of the past" is hardly novel, the tenacious adherence of the judiciary to the husband-wife conspiracy doctrine indicates to me that the rule may be predicated upon underlying policies unconnected with problems of women's suffrage or capacity to sue. The "definitive answer" to the question posed by this case is not to be found in a breezy aphorism from the collected papers of Mr. Justice Holmes, for "[g]eneral propositions do not decide concrete cases." [
length agreement typical of that crime. It is not a medieval mental quirk or an attitude "unnourished by sense" to believe that husbands and wives should not be subjected to such a risk, or that such a possibility should not be permitted to endanger the confidentiality of the marriage relationship. While it is easy enough to ridicule Hawkins' pronouncement in Pleas of the Crown [
] from a metaphysical point of view, the concept of the "oneness" of a married couple may reflect an abiding belief that the communion between husband and wife is such that their actions are not always to be regarded by the criminal law as if there were no marriage.
By making inroads in the name of law enforcement into the protection which Congress has afforded to the marriage relationship, the Court today continues in the path charted by the recent decision in
, where the Court held that, under the circumstances of that case, a wife could be compelled to testify against her husband over her objection. One need not waiver in his belief in virile law enforcement to insist that there are other things in American life which are also of great importance, and to which even law enforcement must accommodate itself. One of these is the solidarity and the confidential relationship of marriage. The Court's opinion dogmatically asserts that the husband-wife conspiracy doctrine does not in fact protect this relationship, and that hence the doctrine "enthrone[s] an unreality into a rule of law." I am not easily persuaded that a rule accepted by so many people for so many centuries can be so lightly dismissed. But, in any event, I submit that the power to depose belongs to Congress, not to this Court. I dissent.
Mawji v. Reginam,
41 Crim.App.R. 69, 1 All Eng.Rep. [1957] 385.
See Kowbel v. The Queen,
110 Can.Crim.Cas. 47 (1954);
The King v. McKechie
[1926] N.Z.L.R. 1.
Kowbel v. The Queen,
110 Can.Crim.Cas. 47, 52 (1954). (Taschereau, J.)
at 54-55. (Cartwright, J.)