Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ladner_v._United_States_(358_U.S._169)/Opinion_of_the_Court
Timestamp: 2019-06-16 11:24:43
Document Index: 588518708

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 254', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 254', '§ 254', '§ 254', '§ 254', '§ 254', '§ 111', '§ 111', '§ 254', '§ 342', '§ 10', '§ 99', '§ 753', '§ 753']

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Ladner v. United States (358 U.S. 169)/Opinion of the Court
915756Ladner v. United States (358 U.S. 169) — Opinion of the Court
The petitioner was convicted in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi of assaulting two federal officers with a deadly weapon in violation of former 18 U.S.C. § 254. [1] The court sentenced the petitioner to the maximum punishment of 10 years' imprisonment on each conviction of assault, the sentences to run consecutively. [2] Upon completion of the first 10-year sentence, the petitioner made a motion in the District Court, under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2255, to correct the second, and consecutive, sentence. He supported his motion by allegations that the evidence at his trial showed that he fired a single discharge from a shotgun into the front seat of an automobile and that the pellets wounded the two federal officers, who were transporting an arrested prisoner. He contended that in this circumstance he was guilty of but one 'assault' within the meaning of former § 254 and accordingly was subject to only one punishment. The District Court denied his motion and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. 230 F.2d 726. Both courts held that the wounding of two federal officers by the single discharge of a shotgun would constitute a separate offense against each officer under the statute. We granted certiorari, 352 U.S. 907, 77 S.Ct. 151, 1 L.Ed.2d 116, to consider the construction of § 254 in light of principles applied to construe the federal criminal statutes involved in Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 75 S.Ct. 620, 99 L.Ed. 905; United States v. Universal C.I.T. Credit Corp., 344 U.S. 218, 73 S.Ct. 227, 97 L.Ed. 260, and Prince v. United States, 352 U.S. 322, 77 S.Ct. 403, 1 L.Ed.2d 370. We affirmed the Court of Appeals by an equally divided Court, 355 U.S. 282, 78 S.Ct. 336, 2 L.Ed.2d 270, but vacated our judgment, and set the case for reargument, when a petition for rehearing was granted. 356 U.S. 969, 78 S.Ct. 1004, 2 L.Ed.2d 1075. Reargument was had this Term.
However, we are unable to read the legislative history as clearly illumining the statute with this meaning. The history is scant, consisting largely of an Attorney General's letter recommending the passage of the legislation, [3] and sheds no real light on what Congress intended to be the unit of prosecution. Although the letter mentions the need for legislation for the protection of federal officers, it also speaks of the need for legislation 'to further the legitimate purposes of the Federal government.' From what appears, an argument at least as plausible as the Government's may be made that the congressional aim was to prevent hindrance to the execution of official duty, and thus to assure the carrying out of federal purposes and interests, and was not to protect federal officers except as incident to that aim. Support for this meaning may be found in the fact that § 254 makes it unlawful not only to assault federal officers engaged on official duty but also forcibly to resist, oppose, impede, intimidate or interfere with such officers. Clearly one may resist, oppose, or impede the officers or interfere with the performance of their duties without placing them in personal danger. Such a congressional aim would, of course, be served by considering the act of hindrance as the unit of prosecution without regard to the number of federal officers affected by the act. For example, the locking of the door of a building to prevent the entry of officers intending to arrest a person within would be an act of hindrance denounced by the statute. We cannot find clearly from the statute, even when read in the light of its legislative history, that the Congress intended that the person locking the door might commit as many crimes as there are officers denied entry. And if we cannot find this meaning in the supposed case, we cannot find that Congress intended that a single act of assault affecting two officers constitutes two offenses under the statute. The Government frankly conceded on the oral argument that assault can be treated no differently from the other outlawed activities, [4] and that if a single act of hindrance which has an impact on two officers is only one offense when the act is not an assault, an act of assault can be only one offense even though it has an impact on two officers.
Moreover, an interpretation that there are as many assaults committed as there are officers affected would produce incongruous results. Punishments totally disproportionate to the act of assault could be imposed because it will often be the case that the number of officers affected will have little bearing upon the seriousness of the criminal act. For an assault is ordinarily held to be committed merely by putting another in apprehension of harm whether or not the actor actually intends to inflict or is capable of inflicting that harm. [5] Thus under the meaning for which the Government contends, one who shoots and seriously wounds an officer would commit one offense punishable by 10 years' imprisonment, but if he points a gun at five officers, putting all of them in apprehension of harm, he would commit five offenses punishable by 50 years' imprisonment, even though he does not fire the gun and no officer actually suffers injury. It is difficult, without a clear indication than the materials before us provide, to find that Congress intended this result.
It is therefore apparent that § 254 may as reasonably be read to mean that the single discharge of the shotgun would constitute an 'assault' without regard to the number of federal officers affected, as it may be read to mean that as many 'assaults' would be committed as there were officers affected. Neither the wording of the statute nor its legislative history points clearly to either meaning. In that circumstance the Court applies a policy of lenity and adopts the less harsh meaning. '(W)hen choice has to be made between two readings of what conduct Congress has made a crime, it is appropriate, before we choose the harsher alternative, to require that Congress should have spoken in language that is clear and definite. We should not derive criminal outlawry from some ambiguous implication.' United States v. Universal C.I.T. Credit Corp., 344 U.S. 218, 221-222, 73 S.Ct. 227, 229, 97 L.Ed. 260. And in Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 83, 75 S.Ct. 620, 622, 99 L.Ed. 905, the Court expressed this policy as follows: 'When Congress leaves to the Judiciary the task of imputing to Congress an undeclared will, the ambiguity should be resolved in favor of lenity.' See also Prince v. United States, supra; Gore v. United States, 357 U.S. 386, 391, 78 S.Ct. 1280, 1283, 2 L.Ed.2d 1405. This policy of lenity means that the Court will not interpret a federal criminal statute so as to increase the penalty that it places on an individual when such an interpretation can be based on no more than a guess as to what Congress intended. If Congress desires to create multiple offenses from a single act affecting more than one federal officer, Congress can make that meaning clear. We thus hold that the single discharge of a shotgun alleged by the petitioner in this case would constitute only a single violation of § 254.
It follows that the petitioner is entitled to an opportunity to sustain his allegation that his conviction of two assaults rested upon evidence that the wounding of the two officers resulted from a single discharge of the gun. [6] The District Court did not hold a hearing on his motion because of its view that the single discharge admitted by him resulted in two assaults. But the Court of Appeals, in affirming on the same ground, correctly acknowledged that if this were an erroneous view of the law, 'there is a necessity for the determination of such a factual question (and) there must be a hearing (at which) the (petitioner) is entitled to be present.' 230 F.2d at page 726, 728. See United States v. Hayman, 342 U.S. 205, 219-220, 72 S.Ct. 263, 272, 96 L.Ed. 232; Walker v. Johnston, 312 U.S. 275, 61 S.Ct. 574, 85 L.Ed. 830. Because the proceedings at the petitioner's trial were not transcribed [7] it will be necessary at the hearing on the motion to reconstruct the trial record. We decide only the issue tendered by the parties and intimate no view as to whether the petitioner may be entitled to correction of the consecutive sentence under any different fact situation which the reconstructed trial record may disclose.
^1 That statute provides:
^2 Ladner was convicted by a jury on three separate counts; one for conspiring to assault the officers, a second for assaulting one of the officers, and a third for assaulting the other officer. He was sentenced for two years on the conspiracy count, which sentence was to run concurrently with a 10-year sentence for assaulting one of the officers. A 10-year sentence imposed for the assault on the second officer was to run from and after the expiration of the first two sentences. Thus Ladner was sentenced to a total jail term of 20 years. The proceedings instituted by Ladner's co-conspirator, one Cameron, for post-conviction relief are reported in United States v. Cameron, D.C., 84 F.Supp. 289.
^3 The letter, of January 3, 1934, to Senator Ashurst, Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, is as follows:
^4 This concession by the Government seems necessary in view of the lack of any indication that assault was to be treated differently, and in light of 18 U.S.C. § 111, 18 U.S.C.A. § 111, the present recodification of § 254, which lumps assault in with the rest of the offensive actions. The statute now provides that 'Whoever forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with' any designated federal officer 'while engaged in or on account of the performance of his official duties' is committing a crime. The Reviser's Note indicates that this change in wording was not intended to be a substantive one.
^5 See Burdick, Law of Crime (1946), § 342; Clark and Marshall, Law of Crimes (1958), § 10.16; Miller on Criminal Law (1934) § 99.
^6 In view of the trial judge's recollection that 'more than one shot was fired into the car in which the officers were riding * * *' we cannot say that it is impossible that petitioner was properly convicted of more than one offense, even under the principles which govern here.
^7 Although 58 Stat. 5, now 28 U.S.C. § 753, 28 U.S.C.A. § 753, which provides for the recording of all proceedings in criminal cases, was enacted on January 20, 1944, Congress had not appropriated funds for the payment of court reporters at the time of the trial in June 1944. See Richard v. United States, 5 Cir., 148 F.2d 895; Vickers v. United States, 8 Cir., 157 F.2d 285.
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This page was last edited on 20 December 2017, at 02:30.