Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/213/115/
Timestamp: 2017-07-22 16:45:14
Document Index: 439135586

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 5508', '§ 5509', '§ 5509', '§ 5509', '§ 5509', '§ 5508', '§ 5509', '§ 5508', '§ 5509', '§ 5509', '§ 5508']

UNITED STATES, Plff. in Err., v. WILLIAM R. MASON and Joseph Vanderweide. | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews UNITED STATES, Plff. in Err., v. WILLIAM R. MASON and Joseph Vanderweide.
213 U.S. 115 (29 S.Ct. 480, 53 L.Ed. 725)
UNITED STATES, Plff. in Err., v. WILLIAM R. MASON and Joseph Vanderweide.
Argued: March 5, 1909.
[HTML] Assistant Attorney General Fowler for plaintiff in error.
Argument of Counsel from page 116 intentionally omitted
Argument of Counsel from page 117 intentionally omitted
The first count of the indictmentstating it generally charged the defendants with an unlawful, malicious, and felonious conspiracy to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate certain named persons, citizens of the United States, in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them and to each of them by the Constitution and laws of the United States, in this,that the said conspirators injured, oppressed, threatened, and intimidated those citizens, in the free exercise and enjoyment of their right and privilege as special agents and employees of the Department of Justice, and as citizens and agents of the United States, to investigate, discover, inform of, and report to the proper officer all violations of the laws of the United States and the evidence relating thereto, in the matter of the fraudulent and unlawful entry of coal and other public lands of the United States in Colorado, theretofore subject to entry unler the laws of the United States. It was further charged in the same count that, in pursuance of such unlawful and felonious conspiracy, and to effect the object thereof, the defendants, within the district of Colorado, did kill and murder one Joseph A. Walker.
Only that part of the above act of March 2d, 1907, is applicable to the present case which authorizes a writ of error by the United States 'from the decision or judgment sustaining a special plea in bar, when the defendant has not been put in jeopardy.' In reviewing that decision, may we go beyond the ruling in the court below on the special pleas in bar, and consider the various grounds of demurrer to the indictment? That question is answered in the much-considered case of United States v. Keitel, decided at the present term, 211 U. S. 370, 398, 53 L. ed. , 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 123, 132. It was there said: 'That act, we think, plainly shows that, in giving to the United States the right to invoke the authority of this court by direct writ of error in the cases for which it provides, it contemplates vesting this court with jurisdiction only to review the particular question decided by the court below for which the statute provides. In other words, that the purpose of the statute was to give the United States the right to seek a review of decisions of the lower court concerning the subjects embraced within the clauses of the statute, and not to open here the whole case. We think this conclusion arises not only because the giving of the exceptional right to review in favor of the United States is limited, by the very terms of the statute, to authority to re-examine the particular decisions which the statute embraces, but also because of the whole context, which clearly indicates that the purpose was to confine the right given to a review of the decisions enumerated in the statute, leaving all other questions to be controlled by the general mode of procedure governing the same.'
We can, then, consider, on the present writ of error, only the specific question whether the special pleas in bar were sufficient to exclude inquiry in the Federal court into the facts of the alleged murder of Walker, for the purpose of ascertaining the punishment to be inflicted by that court upon the defendants if it should be found in that court that they had conspired to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate the persons named in the indictment in the free exercise and enjoyment of their constitutional rights, in violation of the laws of the United States. Previous to the filing of the special pleas, the defendants had been legally tried and acquitted in the state court of the charge of having violated the laws of the state in murdering Walker. When, therefore, this case was called for trial in the Federal court, and the government was about to inquire whether the defendant had, in the act of violating the provisions of § 5508, committed the crime of murdering Walker,an offense against the state,the district court of the United States was confronted with the fact that the defendants had been already acquitted of that charge after a regular trial in the state court.
The question thus presented is within a very narrow compass, and involves an inquiry as to the meaning and scope of § 5509. The conspiracy for which the defendants were indicted was an offense against the laws of the United States. It is none the less so, notwithstanding the requirement in that section as to the punishment to be inflicted upon its appearing that, in the act of committing the alleged Federal offense, the defendants committed some felony or misdemeanor against the laws of the state. The reference in that section to an offense committed against the state was not for the purpose of restricting or suspending the power of the state to determine whether its laws had been violated, and to punish the offender therefor. That reference was for the purpose only of measuring the punishment for the conspiracy charged by the United States, upon its being found, at the trial in the Federal court, that such conspiracy in violation of the Federal statute had been aggravated by the commission of an offense against the state; 'an aggravation merely of the substantive offense of conspiracy,' not a distinct, separate offense against the United States, to be punished by it without reference to the conspiracy charged in the indictment. Rakes v. United States, 212 U. S. 57, 53 L. ed. , 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 244; Davis v. United States, 46 C. C. A. 619, 107 Fed. 753. Where the commission of a Federal offense is accompanied by an offense committed against the laws of the state, it is no doubt competent to so measure the punishment for the Federal offense as to make it equal to the punishment prescribed by the state for the crime committed against the state in the act of violating the Federal law. But is § 5509 so worded as to require the Federal court, after the defendants have been lawfully tried and acquitted as to the identical crime of murder mentioned in the indictment in that court, to enter upon a judicial investigation to ascertain whether the defendants committed the alleged crime against the state of the murder mentioned in that indictment? We think not. The murder in question, if committed at all, was, as a distinct offense, a crime only against the state; and after the defendants were acquitted of that crime by the only tribunal that had jurisdiction of it as an offense against the state, it is to be taken that no such crime of murder as charged in the indictment was in fact committed by them. If this be not so, it follows that, notwithstanding the lawful acquittal of the defendants by the only tribunal that could lawfully try them for the alleged offense against the state, the United States may, in this case, in the district court of the United States, punish them for the conspiracy charged, precisely as the state court could have punished them for murder if the defendants had been previously found guilty of that crime in the state court. We do not think that § 5509 is necessarily to be so construed. Nor do we think that Congress intended any such result to occur. Such a result should be avoided if it be possible to do so. We hold that it can be avoided without doing violence to the words of the statute. The language of that section is entirely satisfied and the ends of justice met if the statute is construed as not embracing, nor intended to embrace, any felony or misdemeanor against the state of which, prior to the trial in the Federal court of the Federal offense charged, the defendants had been lawfully acquitted of the alleged state offense by a state court having full jurisdiction in the premises. This interpretation recognizes the power of the state, by its own tribunals, to try offenses against its laws, and to acquit or punish the alleged offender, as the facts may justify.
In this connection it has been suggested that the state might, under this interpretation, defeat the full operation of the act of Congress. Not at all. The interpretation we have given to § 5509 will not prevent the trial of the defendants upon the charge of conspiracy, and their punishment, if guilty, according to § 5508, namely, by a fine not exceeding $5,000 and imprisonment not more than ten years. The only result of the views we have expressed is that, in the trial of this case in the Federal court, § 5509 cannot be applied, because it has been judicially ascertained and determined by a tribunal of competent jurisdiction the only one that could finally determine the questionthat the defendants did not murder Walker. The Federal court may proceed as indicated in § 5508, without reference to § 5509. The lawful acquittal of the defendants of the charge of murder makes § 5509 inapplicable in the present trial for conspiracy in the Federal court. In other words, the Federal court may proceedthe defendants having been lawfully acquitted in the state court of the crime of murdering Walkerjust as if no such crime was committed or alleged to have been committed by them in the act of violating the provisions of § 5508. As a general rule, the Federal courts accept the judgment of the state court as to the meaning and scope of a state enactment, whether civil or criminal. Much more should the Federal court accept the judgment of a state court, based upon a verdict of acquittal of a crime against the state, whenever, in a case in the Federal court, it becomes material to inquire whether that particular crime against the state was committed by the defendants on trial in the Federal court for an offense against the United States.