Source: http://www.ecases.us/case/c2365602/united-states-v-saylor/
Timestamp: 2020-02-17 13:19:24
Document Index: 156557379

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 19', '§ 19', '§ 19', '§ 19', '§ 19', '§ 19', '§ 6', '§ 19', '§ 4', '§ 6', '§ 19', '§ 6', '§ 19', '§ 124', '§ 124', '§ 124', '§ 19', '§ 19', '§ 51']

United States v. Saylor, United States Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Federal Courts, COURT CASE
United States v. Saylor , 322 U.S. 385 ( 1944 )
Argued April 28, 1944. Decided May 22, 1944. APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY.[*]
These cases come here under the Criminal Appeals Act. The District Court sustained demurrers to indictments *386 for conspiracies forbidden by § 19 of the Criminal Code.[1] The section provides: "If two or more persons conspireto injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, . . ." they shall be punished.
*387 The appellees demurred to the indictment, as failing to state facts sufficient to constitute a crime against the United States. The demurrer attacked the indictment on other grounds raising questions which, if decided, would not be reviewable here under the Criminal Appeals Act. The District Court decided only that the indictment charged no offense against the laws of the United States. This ruling presents the question for decision.
The appellees do not deny the power of Congress to punish the conspiracy described in the indictment. In the light of our decisions, they could not well advance such a contention.[2] The inquiry is whether the provision of § 19 embraces a conspiracy by election officers to stuff a ballot box in an election at which a member of the Congress of the United States is to be elected.
In United States v. Mosley, 238 U.S. 383, this court reversed a judgment sustaining a demurrer to an indictment which charged a conspiracy of election officers to render false returns by disregarding certain precinct returns and thus falsifying the count of the vote cast. After stating that § 19 is constitutional and validly extends "some protection at least to the right to vote for Members of Congress," the court added: "We regard it as equally unquestionable that the right to have one's vote counted is as open to protection by Congress as the right to put a ballot in a box." The court then traced the history of § 19 from its origin as one section of the Enforcement Act of May 31, 1870,[3] which contained other sections more specifically aimed at election frauds, and the survival of § 19 as a statute of the United States notwithstanding the repeal of those other sections. The conclusion was that § 19 protected personal rights of a citizen including the right to cast his ballot, and held that to refuse *388 to count and return the vote as cast was as much an infringement of that personal right as to exclude the voter from the polling place. The case affirms that the elector's right intended to be protected is not only that to cast his ballot but that to have it honestly counted.
The decision was not reached without a strong dissent, which emphasized the probability that Congress did not intend to cover by § 6 of the Act (now § 19) the right to cast a ballot and to have it counted, but to deal with those rights in other sections of the act. And it was thought this view was strengthened by the repeal, February 8, 1894,[4] of the sections which dealt with bribery and other election frauds, including § 4, which, to some extent, over-lapped § 6, if the latter were construed to comprehend the right to cast a ballot and to have it counted. Notwithstanding that dissent, the Mosley case has stood as authority to the present time.[5]
The court below thought the present cases controlled by United States v. Bathgate, 246 U.S. 220. That case involved an indictment charging persons with conspiring to deprive a candidate for office of rights secured to him by the Constitution and laws of the United States, in violation of § 19, and to deprive other voters of their rights, by the bribery of voters who participated in an election at which members of Congress were candidates. This court affirmed a decision of the district court sustaining a demurrer to the indictment, and distinguished the Mosley case on several grounds: first, that, in the Enforcement Act, bribery of voters had been specifically made a criminal offense but the section so providing had been repealed; secondly, that the ground on which the Mosley case went *389 was that the conspiracy there was directed at the personal right of the elector to cast his own vote and to have it honestly counted, a right not involved in the Bathgate case.
It is urged that any attempted distinction between the conduct described in the Bathgate case and that referred to in the Mosley case is illogical and insubstantial; that bribery of voters as badly distorts the result of an election and as effectively denies a free and fair choice by the voters as does ballot box stuffing or refusal to return or count the ballots. Much is to be said for this view. The legislative history does not clearly disclose the Congressional purpose in the repeal of the other sections of the Enforcement Act, while leaving § 6 (now § 19) in force. Section 19 can hardly have been inadvertently left on the statute books. Perhaps Congress thought it had an application other than that given it by this court in the Mosley case. On the other hand, Congress may have intended the result this court reached in the Mosley decision. We think it unprofitable to speculate upon the matter for Congress has not spoken since the decisions in question were announced, *390 and the distinction taken by those decisions has stood for over a quarter of a century. Observance of that distinction places the instant case within the ruling in the Mosley case and outside that in the Bathgate case.
The question is not whether stuffing of the ballot box should be punished. Kentucky has made that reprehensible practice a crime. See Ky. Rev. Stat. 1942, § 124.220; Commonwealth v. Anderson, 151 Ky. 537, 152 S.W. 552; Tackett v. Commonwealth, 285 Ky. 83, 146 S.W.2d 937. Cf. Ky. Rev. Stat. 1942, § 124.180 (8). And it is a crime under Kentucky law whether it occurs in an election for state officials or for United States Senator. Id., § 124.280 (2). The question here is whether the general language of § 19 of the Criminal Code should be construed to super-impose a federal crime on this state crime.
Under § 19 of the Enforcement Act of May 31, 1870 (16 Stat. 144) the stuffing of this ballot box would have been a federal offense.[1] That provision was a part of the comprehensive *391 "reconstruction" legislation passed after the Civil War. It was repealed by the Act of February 8, 1894, 28 Stat. 36  an Act which was designed to restore control of election frauds to the States. The Committee Report (H. Rep. No. 18, 53d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 7) which sponsored the repeal stated:
"Let every trace of the reconstruction measures be wiped from the statute books; let the States of this great Union understand that the elections are in their own hands, and if there be fraud, coercion, or force used they will be the first to feel it. Responding to a universal sentiment throughout the country for greater purity in elections many of our States have enacted laws to protect the voter and to purify the ballot. These, under the guidance of State officers, have worked efficiently, satisfactorily, and beneficently; and if these Federal statutes are repealed that sentiment will receive an impetus which, if the cause *392 still exists, will carry such enactments in every State in the Union."
*393 That view is supported by another consideration. The double jeopardy provision of the Fifth Amendment does not bar a federal prosecution even though a conviction based on the same acts has been obtained under state law. Jerome v. United States, 318 U.S. 101, 105, and cases cited. Therefore when it is urged that Congress has created offenses which traditionally have been left for state action and which duplicate state crimes, we should be reluctant to expand the defined federal offenses "beyond the clear requirements of the terms of the statute." Id. I know of no situation where that principle could be more appropriately recognized than in the field of the elections where there is comprehensive state regulation.
[*] Together with No. 717, United States v. Poer et al., also on appeal from the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
[1] 18 U.S.C. § 51.
[2] Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651, 657, 658, 661, 663; United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 314, 315.
[3] c. 114, 16 Stat. 140, as amended by c. 99, 16 Stat. 433.
[4] c. 25, 28 Stat. 36.
[5] United States v. Gradwell, 243 U.S. 476; In re Roberts, 244 U.S. 650; Hague v. C.I.O., 307 U.S. 496, 527; United States v. Classic, supra, 321.
[1] That section provided:
DocketNumber： 716
Citation Numbers： 322 U.S. 385, 64 S. Ct. 1101, 88 L. Ed. 1341, 1944 U.S. LEXIS 686
Filed Date： 5/22/1944
United States v. Bathgate , 246 U.S. 220 ( 1918 )
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