Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/390/570
Timestamp: 2013-12-10 12:07:38
Document Index: 493260238

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1201', '§ 2312', '§ 1201', '§ 34', '§ 2113', '§ 1201']

UNITED STATES, Appellant, v. Charles JACKSON et al. | Supreme Court | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews UNITED STATES, Appellant, v. Charles JACKSON et al.
United States v. Jackson (No. 85)
Argued: December 7, 1967
Decided: April 8, 1968
The Federal Kidnaping Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a), provides: Whoever knowingly transports in interstate . . . commerce, any person who has been unlawfully . . . kidnaped . . . and held for ransom . . . or otherwise [p571]
The Government appealed [p572]
One fact at least is obvious from the face of the statute itself: in an interstate kidnaping case where the victim has not been liberated unharmed, the defendant's assertion of the right to jury trial may cost him his life, for the federal statute authorizes the jury -- and only the jury -- to return a verdict of death. The Government does not dispute this proposition. What it disputes is the conclusion that the statute thereby subjects the defendant who seeks a jury trial to an increased hazard of capital punishment. As the Government construes the statute, a defendant who elects to be tried by a jury cannot be put to death even if the jury so recommends -- unless the trial judge agrees that capital punishment should be imposed. Moreover, the argument goes, a defendant cannot avoid the risk of death by attempting to plead guilty or waive jury trial. For even if the trial judge accepts a guilty plea or approves a jury waiver, the judge remains free, in the Government's view of the statute, to convene a special jury for the limited purpose of deciding whether to recommend the death penalty. The Government thus contends that, whether or not the [p573]
for it is not, in fact, the scheme that Congress enacted.
The Government would [p574]
apparently have us assume either that trial judges have always agreed with jury recommendations of capital punishment under the statute -- an unrealistic assumption, at best,
-- or that they have abdicated their statutory duty to exercise independent judgment on the issue of penalty. In fact, the explanation is a far simpler one. The statute unequivocally states that, "if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend," the defendant "shall be punished . . . by death. . . ." The word is "shall," not "may."
In acceding without exception to jury recommendations [p575]
Congress rejected a version of the Kidnaping Act that would have [p576]
and, instead, chose an alternative that shifted from a single judge to a jury of 12 the onus of inflicting the penalty of death.
The fact that Congress chose the word "recommend" to describe what the jury would do in designating punishment cannot obscure the basic congressional objective of making the jury, rather than the judge the arbiter of the death sentence. The Government's contrary contention cannot stand.
Equally untenable is the Government's argument that the Kidnaping Act authorizes a procedure unique in the federal system -- that of convening a special jury, without the defendant's consent, for the sole purpose of deciding [p577]
whether he should be put to death. We are told initially that the Federal Kidnaping Act authorizes this procedure by implication. The Government's reasoning runs as follows: the Kidnaping Act permits the infliction of capital punishment whenever a jury so recommends. The Act does not state in so many words that the jury recommending capital punishment must be a jury impaneled to determine guilt as well. Therefore, the Act authorizes infliction of the death penalty on the recommendation of a jury specially convened to determine punishment. The Government finds support for this analysis in a Seventh Circuit decision construing the Federal Kidnaping Act to mean that the death penalty may be imposed whenever "an affirmative recommendation [is] made by a jury," including a jury convened solely for that purpose after the court has accepted a guilty plea. Seadlund v. United States, 97 F.2d 742, 748. Accord, Robinson v. United States, 264 F.Supp. 146, 153. But the statute does not say "a jury." It says "the jury." At least when the defendant demands trial by jury on the issue of guilt, the Government concedes that "the verdict of the jury" means what those words naturally suggest: the general verdict of conviction or acquittal returned by the jury that passes upon guilt or innocence. Thus, when such a jury has been convened, the statutory reference is to that jury alone, not to a jury impaneled after conviction for the limited purpose of determining punishment.
Yet the Government argues that, when the issue of guilt has been tried to a judge or has been eliminated altogether by a plea of guilty, "the verdict of the jury" at once assumes a completely new meaning. In such a case, it is said, "the verdict of the jury" means the recommendation [p578]
but even on the assumption [p579]
It is one thing to fill a minor gap in a statute to extrapolate from its general design details that were inadvertently omitted. It is quite another thing to create from whole cloth a complex and completely novel procedure and to thrust it upon unwilling defendants for the sole purpose of rescuing a statute from a charge of unconstitutionality. We recognize that trial judges sitting in federal kidnaping cases have on occasion chosen the latter course, attempting to fashion on an ad hoc basis the ground rules for penalty proceedings before a jury.
The Government notes with approval [p581]
and to deter exercise of the Sixth Amendment right to demand a jury trial. If the provision had no other purpose or effect than to chill the assertion of constitutional rights by penalizing those who choose to exercise them, then it would be patently unconstitutional. But, as the Government notes, limiting the death penalty to cases where the jury recommends its imposition does have another objective: it avoids the more drastic alternative of mandatory [p582]
We cannot agree. Whatever might be said of Congress' objectives, they cannot be pursued by means that needlessly chill the exercise of basic constitutional rights. Cf. United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258; Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 488-489. The question is not whether the chilling effect is "incidental", rather than intentional; the question is whether that effect is unnecessary, and therefore excessive. In this case, the answer to that question is clear. The Congress can, of course, mitigate the severity of capital punishment. The goal of limiting the death penalty to cases in which a jury recommends it is an entirely legitimate one. But that goal can be achieved without penalizing those defendants who plead not guilty and demand jury trial. In some States, for example, the choice between life imprisonment and capital punishment is left to a jury in every case -- regardless of how the defendant's guilt has been determined.
Given the availability of this and other alternatives, it is clear that the selective death penalty provision of the Federal Kidnaping Act cannot be justified [p583]
by its ostensible purpose. Whatever the power of Congress to impose a death penalty for violation of the Federal Kidnaping Act, Congress cannot impose such a penalty in a manner that needlessly penalizes the assertion of a constitutional right. See Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609. [n24]
It is no answer to urge, as does the Government, that federal trial judges may be relied upon to reject coerced pleas of guilty and involuntary waivers of jury trial. For the evil in the federal statute is not that it necessarily coerces guilty pleas and jury waivers, but simply that it needlessly encourages them. A procedure need not be inherently coercive in order that it be held to impose an impermissible burden upon the assertion of a constitutional right. Thus, the fact that the Federal Kidnaping Act tends to discourage defendants from insisting upon their innocence and demanding trial by jury hardly implies that every defendant who enters a guilty plea to a charge under the Act does so involuntarily.
The power to reject coerced guilty pleas and involuntary jury waivers might alleviate, but it cannot totally eliminate, the constitutional infirmity in the capital punishment provision of the Federal Kidnaping Act. [p584]
The Government alternatively proposes that this Court, in the exercise of its supervisory powers, should simply instruct federal judges sitting in kidnaping cases to reject all attempts to waive jury trial and all efforts to plead guilty, however voluntary and well informed such attempted waivers and pleas might be. In that way, we could assure that every defendant charged in a federal court with aggravated kidnaping would face a possible death penalty, and that no defendant tried under the federal statute would be induced to forgo a constitutional right. But, of course, the inevitable consequence of this "solution" would be to force all defendants to submit to trial, however clear their guilt and however strong their desire to acknowledge it in order to spare themselves and their families the spectacle and expense of protracted courtroom proceedings. It is true that a defendant has no constitutional right to insist that he be tried by a judge, rather than a jury, Singer v. United States, 380 U.S. 24, and it is also true "that a criminal defendant has [no] absolute right to have his guilty plea accepted by the court." Lynch v. Overholser, 369 U.S. 705, 719. But the fact that jury waivers and guilty pleas may occasionally be rejected hardly implies that all defendants may be required to submit to a full-dress jury trial as a matter of course. Quite apart from the cruel impact of such a requirement upon those defendants who would greatly prefer not to contest their guilt, it is clear -- as even the Government recognizes -- that the automatic rejection of all guilty pleas "would rob the criminal process of much of its flexibility." As one federal court has observed:
The power of a court to accept a plea of guilty is traditional and fundamental. Its existence is necessary for the . . . practical . . . administration [p585]
of the criminal law. Consequently, it should require an unambiguous expression on the part of the Congress to withhold this authority in specified cases.
The remaining question is whether the statute as a whole must fall simply because its death penalty clause is constitutionally deficient. The District Court evidently assumed that it must, for that court dismissed the kidnaping indictment. We disagree. As we said in Champlin Rfg. Co. v. Commission, 286 U.S. 210, 234: The unconstitutionality of a part of an Act does not necessarily defeat . . . the validity of its remaining provisions. Unless it is evident that the legislature would not have enacted those provisions which are within its power independently of that which is not, the invalid part may be dropped if what is left is fully operative as a law.
The clause in question is a functionally independent part of the Federal Kidnaping Act. Its elimination in no way alters the substantive reach of the statute, and leaves completely unchanged its basic operation. Under such circumstances, it is quite inconceivable that the Congress which decided to authorize capital punishment in aggravated kidnaping cases would have chosen to discard the entire statute if informed that it could not include the death penalty clause now before us.
In this case, it happens that history confirms what common sense alone would suggest: the law, as originally enacted in 1932, contained no capital punishment provision.
A majority of the House had favored the [p587]
death penalty, but had yielded to opposition in the Senate as a matter of expediency.
When the death penalty was added in 1934, the statute was left substantially unchanged [p588]
The basic problem that had prompted enactment of the law in 1932 -- the difficulty of relying upon state and local authorities to [p589]
-- had not vanished during the intervening two years. It is therefore clear that Congress would have made interstate kidnaping a federal crime even if the death penalty provision had been ruled out from the beginning. It would be difficult to imagine a more compelling case for severability.
In an effort to suggest the contrary, the appellees insist that the 1934 amendment "did not merely increase the penalties for kidnaping; it changed the whole thrust of the Act." They note that Congress deliberately limited [p590]
It is [p591]
Count one: On or about September 2, 1966, CHARLES JACKSON, also known as "Batman," also known as "Butch," and GLENN WALTER ALEXANDER DE LA MOTTE, and JOHN ALBERT WALSH, JR., the defendants herein, did knowingly transport in interstate commerce from Milford in the District of Connecticut to Alpine, New Jersey, one John Joseph Grant, III, a person who had theretofore been unlawfully seized, kidnapped, carried away and held by the defendants herein, for ransom and reward and for the purpose of aiding the said defendants to escape arrest, and the said John Joseph Grant, III, was harmed when liberated, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1201(a).
Count two, charging transportation of a stolen motor vehicle from Connecticut to New York in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2312 has not been challenged, and is not now before us.
The Government notes that the word "shall" precedes both alternative punishments: the offender "shall be punished (1) by death if the kidnaped person has not been liberated unharmed, and if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend, or (2) by imprisonment. . . ." But the notion that judicial discretion is thereby authorized is dispelled by the qualification attached to the second alternative: "by imprisonment . . . if the death penalty is not imposed." Although it is true that the judge, rather than the jury, is formally responsible for imposing sentence in a federal criminal case, those qualifying words would state a pointless truism unless they were meant to refer to the jury's recommendation: the offender "shall be punished (1) by death . . . if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend, or (2) by imprisonment" if the jury's verdict does not so recommend. To accept the Government's reading of the statute would make its final phrase a complete redundancy, anomalous indeed in a statute that Congress has twice pruned of excess verbiage. See Reviser's Note following 18 U.S.C. § 1201.
shall, upon conviction, be punished (1) by death if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend, provided that the sentence of death shall not be imposed by the court if, prior to its imposition, the kidnaped person has been liberated unharmed, or (2) if the death penalty shall not apply nor be imposed the convicted person shall be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for such term of years as the court in its discretion shall determine. . . .
[w]hoever is convicted of any such crime, which has resulted in the death of any person, shall be subject . . . to the death penalty . . . if the jury shall in its discretion so direct, or, in the case of a plea of guilty, if the court in its discretion shall so order.
shall be subject . . . to the death penalty . . . if the jury shall in its discretion so direct, or, in the case of a plea of guilty, or a plea of not guilty where the defendant has waived a trial by jury, if the court in its discretion shall so order.
The language of the aircraft-wrecking statute, 18 U.S.C. § 34 is of particular interest here, because it reflects a congressional awareness of the precise problem the Government suggests Congress overlooked in the kidnaping area: in a letter addressed to the Chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, William P. Rogers, then Deputy Attorney General, suggested on behalf of the Justice Department that the bill then under consideration should be amended by the addition of the phrase "or in the case of a plea of not guilty where the defendant has waived trial by jury." The letter stated: Under the present phraseology, it is doubtful whether the court could invoke the death penalty in a situation where the defendant has entered a plea of not guilty, waived his right to a trial by jury, and asked to be tried by the court.
It is established that due process forbids convicting a defendant on the basis of a coerced guilty plea. See, e.g., Herman. v. Claudy, 350 U.S. 116.
See Laboy v. New Jersey, 266 F.Supp. 581, 584. So, too, in Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, the Court held that comment on a defendant's failure to testify imposes an impermissible penalty on the exercise of the right to remain silent at trial. Yet it obviously does not follow that every defendant who ever testified at a pre-Griffin trial in a State where the prosecution could have commented upon his failure to do so is entitled to automatic release upon the theory that his testimony must be regarded as compelled.
The appellees correctly note that Champlin was a case where Congress had included a clause expressly authorizing the severance of any invalid provision, a fact upon which this Court relied in recognizing "a presumption that, eliminating invalid parts, the legislature would have been satisfied with what remained. . . ." 286 U.S. 210, 235. But whatever relevance such an explicit clause might have in creating a presumption of severability, see Electric Bond Co. v. Comm'n, 303 U.S. 419, 434, the ultimate determination of severability will rarely turn on the presence or absence of such a clause. Thus, for example, the Court in Champlin, after stating the basic test quoted above, cited cases in which invalid statutory provisions had been severed despite the absence of any provision for severability. Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 158 U.S. 601, 635; Reagan v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 154 U.S. 362, 395-396; Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 695-696.
As this Court observed in Reagan v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 154 U.S. 362, 396,
it is not to be presumed that the legislature was legislating for the mere sake of imposing penalties, but the penalties . . . were simply in aid of the main purpose of the statute. They may fail, and still the great body of the statute have operative force, and the force contemplated by the legislature in its enactment.
The original Federal Kidnaping Act, 47 Stat. 326, provided: That whoever shall knowingly transport or cause to be transported, or aid or abet in transporting, in interstate or foreign commerce, any person who shall have been unlawfully seized, confined, inveigled, decoyed, kidnaped, abducted, or carried away by any means whatsoever and held for ransom or reward shall, upon conviction, be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for such term of years as the court, in its discretion, shall determine. . . .
[I]f what Congress is looking for is a headline, leave the death penalty in; but if we are looking for a real bill that will be a deterrent to kidnaping, take the Senate bill. [Applause.]
By 1934, the Senate's attitude toward capital punishment had changed markedly. In that year, the Senate passed a bill (S. 2841) authorizing punishment "by imprisonment for not less than 10 years, or by death" for killing or kidnaping in connection with a bank robbery. 78 Cong.Rec. 5738 (1934). The House Judiciary Committee amended the Senate provision to its present form, see
18 U.S.C. § 2113(e), limiting the death penalty to those cases where "the verdict of the jury shall so direct." H.R.Rep. No. 1461, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 1 (1934).
The House Judiciary Committee had not forgotten that its attempt to include similar language in the Kidnaping Act of 1932, see H.R.Rep. No. 1493, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1932), had been defeated "in the rush to draft and enact a [kidnaping] bill suitable to both houses before adjournment." Finley, The Lindbergh Law, 28 Geo.L.J. 908, 914, n. 24 (1940). Taking its cue from the bank robbery legislation, the House Committee found an ideal opportunity to reassert its 1932 position in a Senate bill (S. 2252) that had begun as a technical amendment to the 1932 Kidnaping Act. See 78 Cong.Rec. 5737 (1934). In S. 2252, the Senate retained the basic punishment of "imprisonment in the penitentiary for such term of years as the court, in its discretion, shall determine," see n. 29, supra, but the House Judiciary Committee added the alternative penalty of
death if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend, provided that the sentence of death shall not be imposed by the court if, prior to its imposition, the kidnaped person has been liberated unharmed. . . .
After initial disagreement in the Senate, id. at 8263-8264, and a conference, id. at 8322; H.R.Rep. No. 1595, 73d Cong., 2d Sess. (1934), the Senate accepted the House addition to S. 2252 without debate, 78 Cong.Rec. 8767, 8775, 8778, 8855-8857 (1934), and the resulting statute, 48 Stat. 781 (1934), employed substantially the same language as that now appearing in 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a). As amended in 1934, the Federal Kidnaping Act, 48 Stat. 781, thus provided: Whoever shall knowingly transport or cause to be transported, or aid or abet in transporting, in interstate or foreign commerce, any person who shall have been unlawfully seized, confined, inveigled, decoyed, kidnaped, abducted, or carried away by any means whatsoever and held for ransom or reward or otherwise, except, in the case of a minor, by a parent thereof, shall, upon conviction, be punished (1) by death if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend, provided that the sentence of death shall not be imposed by the court if, prior to its imposition, the kidnaped person has been liberated unharmed, or (2) if the death penalty shall not apply nor be imposed the convicted person shall be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for such term of years as the court in its discretion shall determine. . . .
In late 1931, the American public became seriously concerned about the mounting incidence of professional kidnaping and the apparent inability of state and local authorities to cope with the interstate aspects of the problem. See Fisher & McGuire, Kidnapping and the So-Called Lindbergh Law, 12 N.Y.U.L.Q.Rev. 646, 652-653 (1935). Because of its geographical position, the city of St. Louis "had experienced numerous kidnapings in which the handicap of state lines had hindered or defeated her police officers." Bomar, The Lindbergh Law, 1 Law & Contemp.Prob. 435 (1934). Largely in response to this experience, Senator Patterson and Congressman Cochran, both of Missouri, introduced identical bills (S. 1525, H.R. 5657) in the House and Senate, 75 Cong.Rec. 275, 491 (1931), forbidding the transportation in interstate or foreign commerce of any person "kidnaped . . . and held for ransom or reward, or . . . for any other unlawful purpose." Several months after the kidnaping of the Lindbergh baby in March, 1932, Congress enacted the first Federal Kidnaping Act, see n. 29, supra, a slightly modified version of the bills introduced by Patterson and Cochran.
[t]he advantage to the kidnapper in killing his victim is obvious and immediate, for the [Government's] best witness, perhaps its whole case, will be put out of the way. Thus, a sentence of life imprisonment instead of death may not suffice to induce a kidnapper to refrain from killing his victim, even if the kidnapper is aware of the mitigation provision -- itself a supposition not always true.
Moreover, as this Court has interpreted the statute, the death penalty may be imposed so long as "the kidnapped person . . . was still suffering from . . . injuries when liberated." Robinson v. United States, 324 U.S. 282, 285. As a result,
[o]nce [an] injury has taken place, the inducement held out by the statute necessarily is either to hold the victim until cure is effected or to do away with him so that evidence, both of the injury and of the kidnapping, is destroyed.
Id. at 289 (Rutledge, J., dissenting).
Congress was certainly aware when it passed the original Kidnaping Act of 1932 that "[t]he victim may be murdered or slain" if the kidnaper "has nothing to gain by [keeping] the victim . . . alive." 75 Cong.Rec. 13285 (1932). Such considerations might have been influential in the omission of any death penalty provision in 1932, see Robinson v. United States, 324 U.S. 282, 289, n. 4 (Rutledge, J., dissenting), but not a single member of Congress even hinted that the anti-kidnaping law should be defeated altogether in the interest of the victim's safety. Given the law's fundamental objective of preventing interstate kidnaping in the first instance, any such suggestion would have been unthinkable.
The Court strikes down a provision of the Federal Kidnaping Act which authorizes only the jury to impose the death penalty. No question is raised about the death penalty itself, or about the propriety of jury participation in its imposition, but confining the power to impose the death penalty to the jury alone is held to [p592]