Source: https://m.openjurist.org/343/us/148
Timestamp: 2020-08-10 18:02:18
Document Index: 151658867

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 215', '§ 215', '§ 3731', '§ 3731', '§ 215', '§ 215']

343 US 148 United States v. Hood | OpenJurist
343 U.S. 148 - United States v. Hood
343 US 148 United States v. Hood
72 S.Ct. 568
96 L.Ed. 846
Decided March 31, 1952.
The defendants were charged in the District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi with a conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. § 215, 18 U.S.C.A. § 215, and numerous substantive violations of the same section. The law provides: 'Whoever solicits or receives, either as a political contribution, or for personal emolument, any money or thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.1'
Defendants successfully moved to dismiss these portions of the indictment on the ground that the statute did not make criminal the sale of non-existent offices or of influence in connection with appointments to them. The District Court also ordered stricken the references in the conspiracy count to the offices of Chairmen of County Ration Boards. The order of dismissal was appealed by the Government under the Criminal Appeals Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3731, 18 U.S.C.A. § 3731. Our jurisdiction in such cases is limited to the construction of the statute involved.
The evil at which the statute is directed is the operation of purchased, and thus improper, influence in determining the occupants of federal office. But in attacking that evil, Congress outlawed not the use of such influence, but the solicitation of its purchase, the peddling of the forbidden wares. As is not uncommon in criminal legislation, Congress, in order to strike at the root, made the scope of the statute wider than the immediate evil. Even judges need not be blind to the fact of political life the it helps in influencing political appointments to be forehanded with a recommendation before an office is formally created. Certainly it was not unreal for Congress to believe that the sale of influence in anticipation of jobs was equally damaging to the proper operation of the federal service and to take steps to prevent it. It did so in this Act. Nothing has been suggested, either by the sparse legislative history or by prior judicial construction,2 to restrain us from giving effect to the obvious, ordinary reading of the statute. It is pressed upon us that criminal statutes are to be strictly construed. But this does not mean that such legislation 'must be construed by some artificial and conventional rule'. United States v. Union Supply Co., 215 U.S. 50, 55, 30 S.Ct. 15, 16, 54 L.Ed. 87. We should not read such laws so as to put in what is not readily found there. But equally we should not read out what as a matter of ordinary English speech is in.
This Act penalized corruption. It is no less corrupt to sell an office one may never be able to deliver than to sell one he can. Dealing in futures also discredits the processes of government. There is no indication that this statute punishes delivery of the fruit of the forbidden transaction—it forbids the sale. The sale is what is here alleged. Whether the corrupt transaction would or could ever be performed is immaterial. We find no basis for allowing a breach of warranty to be a defense to corruption.
18 U.S.C. § 215, 18 U.S.C.A. § 215, makes it a crime to solicit or receive political contributions on the basis of a promise to help 'any person' obtain 'any appointive office or place under the United States * * *.' The Government argues that this statute makes it criminal to promise to help someone get an 'office or place' even though there is no such office or place in existence. Apparently sensing that such an extraordinary expansion of this criminal statute might not be accepted, the Government argues for a lesser expansion sufficient to include an 'office or place' if there is a 'substantial possibility' that it may be 'set up in the near future.' The Court's construction is apparently the same although there are slight verbal variations. It reads the statute as punishing promises made to use 'influence in connection with an office which had been authorized by law and which, at the time of the sale, might reasonably be expected to be established.' The words used in this statute convey no such meaning to me. I think that any person reading the words 'office or place' would immediately think of them as applying to an actual, existing 'office or place'. This surely would be a fair construction of the language used, and I think it is the construction that should be compelled in connection with this criminal statute. It requires considerable straining to say that Congress 'plainly and unmistakably', United States v. Gradwell, 243 U.S. 476, 485, 37 S.Ct. 407, 411, 61 L.Ed. 857, made it a crime to use influence in connection with an 'office or place' that did not exist. See United States v. Halseth, 342 U.S. 277, 72 S.Ct. 275. As a matter of fact, the 'reasonably to be expected' office or place here talked about was not only nonexistent at the time the alleged promise was made—it has not been 'set up' yet. We should not stretch this statute to cover conduct which is not prohibited on the theory that Congress would have done so had it thought about it. United States v. Weitzel, 246 U.S. 533, 543, 38 S.Ct. 381, 382, 62 L.Ed. 872; McBoyle v. United States, 283 U.S. 25, 27, 51 S.Ct. 340, 341, 75 L.Ed. 816; Pierce v. United States, 314 U.S. 306, 62 S.Ct. 237, 86 L.Ed. 226.