Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/91208/hyde-vs-united-states
Timestamp: 2017-04-29 23:54:14
Document Index: 448311555

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 5440', '§ 5440', '§ 5440', '§ 5440', '§ 5440', '§ 5440', '§ 731', '§ 5440', '§ 731', '§ 111']

Hyde Vs United States - Citation 91208 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
Save as PDF Add a Tag Add a Note Semantics Visualize Hyde Vs. United States - Court Judgment	LegalCrystal Citationlegalcrystal.com/91208CourtUS Supreme CourtDecided OnJun-10-1912Case Number225 U.S. 347AppellantHydeRespondentUnited StatesExcerpt:
while, under the ancient rule of conspiracy, the gist was the conspiracy..... Judgment:
as to the extent of agency between persons conspiring in violation of § 5440, Rev.Stat.
Where a continuing offense is committed in more than one district, the Sixth Amendment does not preclude a trial in any of those districts.
Overt acts performed in one district by one of the parties who had conspired in another district in violation of § 5440, Rev.Stat., give jurisdiction to the court in the district where the overt acts are performed as to all the conspirators.
United States v. Kissel,
, followed to the effect that a conspiracy under § 5440, Rev.Stat., may be a continuing one, and that the offense is not barred on the expiration of the period from the date of the conspiracy itself.
Pleas in abatement on account of irregularities in selecting and impaneling the grand jury which do not relate to the competency of individual jurors must be pleaded with strict exactness and at the first opportunity.
claim or by a patent is included within the limits of a public forest reservation, the settler or owner thereof may, if he desires to do so, relinquish the tract to the government, and may select in lieu thereof a tract of vacant land open to settlement, not exceeding in area the tract covered by his claim or patent."
Shortly after the indictment was found, removal proceedings were instituted against Hyde and Dimond before a United States commissioner in California, who, after taking testimony, ordered their removal. The United States circuit court denied writs of habeas corpus and certiorari, and its action was affirmed by this Court.
It is contended by the defendants that the conspiracy -- the union in an unlawful purpose -- constitutes the crime, and that the requirement of an overt act does not give the offense criminal quality or intent, but that the provision of the statute in regard to such act merely affords an opportunity to withdraw from the design without incurring its criminality (called in the cases a
). The following, among other cases, are cited in support of this view:
148 U. S. 202
152 U. S. 546
-469, and the opinion of this Court when this case was here before,
U.S. 62-76.
It must be conceded at the outset that there is language in those cases that, considered by itself, justifies the contention based upon them. In
for instance -- and the language of the case is resorted to for the genesis of the doctrine and makes strongest for the contention -- Mr. Justice Woods, speaking for the Court said:
"The offense charged in the counts of this indictment is a conspiracy. This offense does not consist of both the conspiracy and the acts done to effect the object of the conspiracy, but of the conspiracy alone. The provision of the statute, that there must be an act done to effect the object of the conspiracy, merely affords a
so that, before the act [is] done, either one or all of the parties may abandon their design, and thus avoid the penalty prescribed by the statute. It follows, as a rule of criminal pleading, that in an indictment for conspiracy under § 5440, the conspiracy must be sufficiently charged, and that it cannot be aided by the averments of acts done by one or more of the conspirators in furtherance of the object of the conspiracy.
Reg. v. King,
7 Q.B. 782;
Commonwealth v. Shedd,
7 Cush. 514."
Indeed, it must be said that the cases abound with statements that the conspiracy is the "gist" of the offense or the "gravamen" of it, and we realize the strength of the argument based upon them. But we think the argument insists too exactly on the ancient law of conspiracy, and does not give effect to the change made in it by § 5440,
It is true that the conspiracy -- the unlawful combination -- has been said to be the crime, and that at common law it was not necessary to aver or prove an overt act; but § 5440 has gone beyond such rigid abstraction and prescribes, as necessary to the offense, not only the unlawful conspiracy, but that one or more of the parties must do an "act to effect" its object, and provides that, when such act is done "all the parties to such conspiracy" become liable. Interpreting the provision, it was decided in
, that an overt act is necessary to complete the offense. And so it was said in
, recognizing that, while the combination of minds in an unlawful purpose was the foundation of the offense, an overt act was necessary to complete it. It seems like a contradiction to say that a thing is necessary to complete another thing, and yet that other thing is complete without it. It seems like a paradox to say that anything, to quote the Solicitor General, "can be a crime of which no court can take cognizance." The conspiracy therefore cannot alone constitute the offense. It needs the addition of the overt act. Such act is something more, therefore, than evidence of a conspiracy. It constitutes the execution or part execution of the conspiracy, and all incur guilt by it, or rather complete their guilt by it, consummating a crime by it cognizable then by the judicial tribunals, such tribunals only then acquiring jurisdiction.
If the unlawful combination and the overt act constitute the offense, as stated in
marking its beginning and its execution or a step to its execution, § 731 of the Revised Statutes must be applied. That section provides that
Section 731 was applied in
, to the offense of unlawfully using the mails. It was decided that an offense committed by mailing a letter was continued in the place where the letter was received, and triable in the district court of the United States having jurisdiction in such place. The case was cited in
198 U. S. 15
, which was concerned with extradition proceedings against one charged with the crime of bribery, alleged to have been committed by mailing a letter in the State of California, directed to certain officers of the General Land Office in the District of Columbia. It was objected to the removal of the defendant to the District of Columbia for trial that the crime was committed, if at all, in California. The contention was held untenable under the ruling in
In re Palliser.
The strong expression of counsel for the defendants may therefore be turned from derision of to the support of the view that crime, even conspiracy, may be carried from one place to another in the "mail pouches." And we may ask, in passing, may not a conspiracy be formed through the mails, constituted by letters sent by persons living in different states? And, if so formed, we may further ask, to which state would the conspiracy be assigned? In such cases, must the law come forward with some presumption or fiction, if you
was also applied in
, in which it was held that there was jurisdiction in Missouri of a criminal charge against Burton for agreeing in that state to receive prohibited compensation for certain services to be rendered by him while he was a United States Senator, the offer being carried to Missouri by an agent and accepted there, Burton not being personally present in the state. The Court said, through Mr. Justice Harlan (page
"The constitutional requirement is that the crime shall be tried in the state and district where committed, not necessarily in the state or district where the party committing it happened to be at the time. This distinction was brought out and recognized in
We realize the strength of the apprehension that to extend the jurisdiction of conspiracy by overt acts may give to the government a power which may be abused, and we do not wish to put out of view such possibility. But there are counter-considerations. It is not an oppression in the law to accept the place where an unlawful purpose is attempted to be executed as the place of its punishment, and rather conspirators be taken from their homes than the victims and witnesses of the conspiracy be taken from theirs. We must not, in too great a solicitude for the criminal, give him a kind of immunity from punishment because of the difficulty in convicting him -- indeed, of even detecting him. And this may result if the rule contended for be adopted. Let him meet with his fellows in secret, and he will try to do so; let the place be concealed, as it can be, and he and they may execute their crime in every state in the Union and defeat punishment in all. And the suppositions are not fanciful, as illustrated by a case submitted coincidentally with this.
Brown v. Elliott, post,
. The possibility of such a result repels the contention and demonstrates that to yield to it would carry technical rules and rigidity of reasoning too far for the practical administration of criminal justice. We see no reason why a constructive presence should not be assigned
to conspirators as well as to other criminals, and we certainly cannot assent to the proposition that it is not competent for Congress to define what shall constitute the offense of conspiracy or when it shall be considered complete, and do with it as with other crimes which are commenced in one place and continued in another. Nor do we think that the size of our country has become too great for the effective administration of criminal justice. We held in
, that the transportation of merchandise for less than the published rate is, under the Elkins Act, a continuing offense, and that the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, providing that an accused shall be tried in the state and district where the crime is committed, did not preclude a trial of the offense in any of the districts through which the transportation was conducted.
See also Haas v. Henkel,
Cases are cited which oppose the views we have expressed, and others to support them. In
in the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Eighth Circuit, the question was directly presented. 172 F. 105. The conspiracy passed on was alleged in the indictment to have been entered into in Cincinnati and Chicago, the overt acts set out were proved to have been committed in Minneapolis, and the evidence showed that it was the intention of the conspirators to carry out their conspiracy at Minneapolis. The trial court was moved to direct a verdict for the defendants if the jury found that the agreement was entered into in Cincinnati and Chicago, and was complete when the parties went into the District of Minnesota. The instruction was refused, and, the defendants having been convicted, the refusal was assigned as error in the circuit court of appeals based on the provisions of the Constitution of the United States giving those accused of crime the right to trial by jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.
"At common law, the venue in conspiracy could be laid in any county in which it could be proven that an overt act was done by any one of the conspirators in furtherance of their common design. 1 Archbold's Criminal Practice and Pleading (8th ed.), p. 226. Where a conspiracy was formed at sea, and an overt act done in Middlesex County, it was held that the venue was properly laid in that county.
The King v. Bresac and Scott,
4 East 164. In the case of
King v. Bowes and Others,
referred to in the above case, the conspirators were tried in Middlesex, though there was no proof of an actual conspiracy in that county, and the acts and doings of some of them were wholly in other counties. In
4 Wend. 261, Marcy, J., in delivering the opinion of the court, said:"
"To the same effect are
7 Serg. & R. 469, 10 Am.Dec. 475;
3 Brewst. 575."
To the cases cited by the learned court these may be added:
State v. Nugent,
77 N.J.L. 84, 86;
Bloomer v. State,
48 Md. 521;
46 Mich. 275;
Fire Ins. Cos. v. State,
75 Miss. 24;
13 Nev. 386;
International Harvester Co. v. Commonwealth,
137 Ky. 668, 674;
Pearce v. Territory,
11 Okl. 438;
10 Tex.App. 655, and
Raleigh v. Cook,
60 Tex. 438.
The contention is answered by the views which we have already expressed. As the overt acts give jurisdiction for trial, it is not essential where the conspiracy is formed, so far as the jurisdiction of the court in which the indictment is found and tried is concerned. This is established by the cases which have been cited, and the question will be considered further in
Moore v. Elliott
cases submitted coincidentally with this,
The plea of the statute as affected by overt acts was considered in
, where it was declared that a conspiracy may be a continuing one, and the doctrine is applicable to the case at bar unless there is something special in the facts regarding Hyde and Schneider which constitutes a defense as to them. This is asserted. It is contended that the relation of Schneider to the conspiracy was only that of one rendering service as a servant of his master (Hyde), in consideration of the salary paid to him by his master, and that he had not, within three years before the finding of the indictment, participated in any way in the carrying out of the master's scheme, the subject of the conspiracy. And from this it is contended the question arises whether Hyde is not also entitled to the protection of the statute of limitation
The contention of the defendants is that the statute begins to run from the last overt act within three years from the formation of the conspiracy within which there was
(Italics ours.) The government
makes the counter-contention that, however true this may be as to accomplished conspiracies, it is not true of one having continuity of purpose and which contemplated the performance of acts through a series of years. And that such a distinction can exist, we have seen, is decided and illustrated in
United States v. Kissel.
And necessarily so. Men may have lawful and unlawful purposes, temporary or enduring. The distinction is vital, and has different consequences and incidents. The conspiracy accomplished or having a distinct period of accomplishment is different from one that is to be continuous. If it may continue, it would seem necessarily to follow the relation of the conspirators to it must continue, being to it during its life as it was to it the moment it was brought into life. If each conspirator was the agent of the others at the latter time, he remains an agent during all of the former time. This view does not, as it is contended, take the defense of the statute of limitations from conspiracies. It allows it to all, but makes its application different. Nor does it take from a conspirator the power to withdraw from the execution of the offense or to avert a continuing criminality. It requires affirmative action, but certainly that is no hardship. Having joined in an unlawful scheme, having constituted agents for its performance, scheme and agency to be continuous until full fruition be secured, until he does some act to disavow or defeat the purpose, he is in no situation to claim the delay of the law. As the offense has not been terminated or accomplished, he is still offending. And we think, consciously offending -- offending as certainly, as we have said, as at the first moment of his confederation, and continuously through every moment of its existence. The successive overt acts are but steps toward its accomplishment, not necessarily its accomplishment. This is the reasoning of the
case, stated in another way. As he has started evil forces, he must withdraw his support
from them or incur the guilt of their continuance. Until he does withdraw, there is conscious offending, and the principle of the cases cited by defendants is satisfied.
Demurrers were filed and sustained to the pleas, and, to support the ruling of the court, the government cites
. The defendants contest the application of the case on two grounds: (1) that, under the District Code, a plea in abatement comes properly after a demurrer to the indictment and before pleas to the matter of the indictment, such as not guilty or special pleas, and (2) that whether a plea is seasonably filed cannot be resisted by demurrer, but only by a motion to strike out.
Both propositions may be formally correct, but do not preclude the court from itself noticing an unreasonable delay or treating the demurrer as raising that objection. And, by concession of counsel, that is what the court, in effect, did. Indeed, in the "points and authorities" filed with the demurrer, it is urged that "the said pleas are not filed within a reasonable time." There was certainly unreasonable delay. It is said in the
case that pleas in abatement on account of irregularities in selecting and impaneling a grand jury, which did not relate to the competency of individual jurors, must be pleaded with strict exactness, and that a defendant must take the first opportunity in his power to make the objection. The indictment in that case was returned December 12, 1895; the plea in abatement was filed on the 17th of that month. It was held to have been filed too late.
It is extremely doubtful whether the pleas were not defective under the
case. In that case, it was alleged that the irregularities complained of tended to the injury and prejudice of the defendant, no grounds, however, being assigned for the conclusion, and the record did not exhibit any. In the case at bar, the plea is not even that specific. It is not shown that any juror was disqualified, nor is it shown that the grand jury was composed of jurors not selected by the commission. It is alleged, it is true, the names which had been put in the box by the commissioners had been taken out by Harstock, and that he put back those only that he deemed fit and proper. It follows, of course, from this that, had all of the original names been in the box, the grand jury might have been differently composed; but from this it cannot be inferred that injury or prejudice resulted to the defendants.
The question involved in the contention is settled by the decision of the case when it was here on the proceedings in habeas corpus, 199 U.S.
199 U. S. 82
But, even conceiving such possibility, we think the court rightly ruled. It was within the issues of the case to convict some of the defendants and acquit others, and we think the rule expressed in
Wright v. Illinois & Miss.
Tel. Co.,
20 Ia. 195, and
Gottleib Bros. v. Jasper & Co.,
27 Kan. 770, should apply, that the testimony of jurors should not be received to show matters which essentially inhere in the verdict itself and necessarily depend upon the testimony of the jurors, and can receive no corroboration.
Ex Parte Black,
147 F. 832, 840, and same case in 160 F. 431;
154 F. 577;
United States v. Eccles,
181 F. 906;
115 F. 343, 350;
Ochs v. People,
25 Ill.App. 379,
124 Ill. 399.
The conspiracy was continuous in its nature, and is averred to have been so.
. Therefore, wherever it was formed, it might have been continued in the District of Columbia, as, for instance, if the conspirators had met there for the purposes of their scheme. Moreover, in order to narrow the question, I will assume that, so far as the statute of limitations is concerned, an overt act done anywhere with the express or implied consent of conspirators would show the conspiracy to be continuing between the parties so consenting, and leave them open to prosecution for three years from that date. But it does not follow that an overt act draws the conspiracy to wherever such overt act may be done, and whether it does so or not is the question before us now.
In order to answer this question, it is not enough to say that, as the overt act was one that was contemplated by the conspirators, it is treated as the Act of them all, and that this is equivalent to saying that they were constructively present. That would be passing
a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter.
They are chargeable there for the act, but it does not follow that they were there to other intents. They are shown not to have been by the fact that they could not be treated as fugitives from justice even in respect of that very act, when and although that act was itself a crime.
188 U. S. 712
To speak of constructive presence is to use the language of fiction, and so to hinder precise analysis. When a man is said to be constructively present where the consequences of an act done elsewhere are felt, it is meant that, for some special purpose, he will be treated as he would have been treated if he had been present, although he was not. For instance, if a man, acting in one state, sets forces in motion that kill a man in another, or produces or induces some consequence in that other that it regards as very hurtful and wishes to prevent, the latter state is very likely to say that, if it can catch him, it will punish him, although he was not subject to its laws when he did the act.
. But, as states usually confine their threats to those within the jurisdiction at the time of the act,
, the symmetry of general theory is preserved by saying that the offender was constructively present in the case supposed.
202 U. S. 389
. We must not forget facts, however. He was not present in fact, and in theory of law, he was present only so far as to be charged with the act.
No distinction can be taken based on the gravity of the overt act, or the fact that it was contemplated, or that it is important for the accomplishment of the substantive evil that the conspiracy aims to bring about and the law seeks to prevent. That would be carrying over the law of attempts to where it does not belong. Although both are adjective crimes, a conspiracy is not an attempt, even under Rev.Stat. § 5440, which requires an overt act. When I first read that section, I thought that it was an indefinite enlargement of the law of attempts. But reflection and the decisions both convinced me that I was wrong. The statute simply did away with a doubt as to the requirements of the common law.
Rex v. Spragg,
2 Burr. 993, 999; Roscoe, Crim.Ev., 6th ed., 381, 382. An attempt, in the strictest sense, is an act expected to bring about a substantive wrong by the forces of nature. With it is classed the kindred offense where the act and the natural conditions present or supposed to be present are not enough to do the harm without a further act, but where it is so near to the result that, if coupled with an intent to produce that result, the danger is very great.
. But combination, intention, and overt act may all be present without amounting to a criminal attempt -- as if all that
The cases in this Court have agreed that the statute has not made the overt act a part of the crime, which still remains the conspiracy alone. By the same reasoning, the overt act gives no ground for the application of Rev.Stat. § 731, creating a double jurisdiction when an offense against the United States is begun in one district and completed in another. The act is no part of the conspiracy, even if it is an element in some other crime, as is stated in so many words in
, quoting the well known statement in
, that the statutory requirement merely affords a
locus penitentiae.
Delay v. United States,
See also United States v. Hirsch,
156 U. S. 469
. The overt act is simply evidence that the conspiracy has passed beyond words and is on foot when the act is done. As a test of actuality, it is made a condition to punishment, but it is no more a part of the crime than it was at common law, where it was customary to allege such an act, or than is the fact that the statute of limitations has not run.
law shows that the courts only slowly and with hesitation came to the admission that a man, although within the jurisdiction, could be a principal when he was not present at the accomplishment of the crime. Y.B. 7 Hen. VII., 18 pl. 10. The distinction between principal and accessory before the fact is a late surviving expression of the doubt. 4 Bl.Com. 36, 37. When the accessory is in a different jurisdiction, it has been held that he could not be convicted as such in the place of the crime, even in modern cases.
26 N.H. 448; Bishop, Crim.Law, 8th ed. § 111. It would be an amazing extension of even the broadest form of fiction if it should be held that an otherwise innocent overt act done in one state drew to itself a conspiracy in another state to defraud people in the latter, even though the first state would punish a conspiracy to commit a fraud beyond its own boundaries. Of course, in the present case, the conspiracy as well as the overt act was within the United States, but the case that I have supposed of different jurisdictions is a perfect test of where the crime was committed. If a conspiracy exists wherever an overt act is done in aid of it, the act ought to give jurisdiction over conspirators in a foreign state if later they should be caught in the place where the act was done.
in fact. Yet if a lawyer entered his appearance there in a case before the Land Department, and the defendants directed it and expected to profit by it in carrying out their plans, it is said that we should feign that they were here in order to warrant their being taken across the continent and tried in this place. The Constitution is not to be satisfied with a fiction. When a man causes an unlawful act, as in the case of a prohibited use of the mails, it needs no fiction to say that the crime is committed at the place of the act, wherever the man may be.
. But when the offense consists solely in a relation to other men with a certain intent, it is pure fiction to say that the relation is maintained and present in the case supposed. If the government, instead of prosecuting for the substantive offense, charges only conspiracy to commit it, trial ought to be where the conspiracy exists in fact.
The intimations that are to be found opposed to the view that I take appear to have been induced by the confusion that I have tried to dispel, and to assume that an overt act creates jurisdiction over a conspiracy on the same ground that causing a death may give jurisdiction in murder; or, perhaps, in
The King v. Brisac,
4 East, 164, 171, to proceed on the dangerous analogy of treasonable conspiracies to levy war or compass the death of the sovereign. The dictum in that case gains no new force from the repetition by text writers. It is one of the misfortunes of the law that ideas become encysted in phrases and thereafter for a long time cease to provoke further analysis. On the other hand, if overt acts had been regarded as founding jurisdiction, the petitioners could not have been discharged in
Tinsley v. Treat,
205 U. S. 20
, where overt acts of other conspirators within the jurisdiction were alleged and not denied. Although the point was not mentioned in the opinion, it was argued and was not overlooked. At least in the absence of clear statutory words, I am of opinion that logic and the policy and general intent of the Constitution agree in refusing to extend the fiction of constructive presence to a case like this. I think that the true view still is that of
Reg. v. Best,
1 Salk. 174: "The venue must be where the conspiracy was, not where the result of the conspiracy is put in execution," quoted as correct in principle in Markby's edition of Roscoe's Criminal Evidence, 6th ed., 391, and that to decide otherwise is to overrule not only the often-expressed and settled understanding, but the express decisions, of this Court.