Opinion ID: 341470
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Screws v. United States

Text: 22 The substantive counterpart to section 241 is 18 U.S.C. § 242, which provides in pertinent part: 23 Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any inhabitant . . . to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, . . . shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if death results shall be subject to imprisonment for any term of years or for life. 24 The seminal case dealing with the element of mens rea under section 242 is Screws v. United States. 23 The defendants in Screws, law enforcement officials who had beaten a prisoner to death, were charged with denying that individual various of his due process rights under the Fourth Amendment. They countered with an attack on the constitutionality of section 242 arguing that if it incorporated such a large body of changing and uncertain law as surrounds the concept of due process, the statute lacked the basic specificity essential to criminal statutes under our legal system. 24 25 The Court acknowledged that this vagueness challenge would be serious if the customary standard of guilt for statutory crimes were applied under section 242. 25 The presence of the term willfully in the statute, however, afforded the Court, a convenient means for narrowing its potential reach not only to fulfill the constitutional requirement of specificity but also to prevent the federal statute from becoming a catchall which might interfere with the traditional law enforcement role of the states. 26 The Court noted, first, that precise construction of the word willful in a statute was dependent on its context. But 'when used in a criminal statute it generally means an act done with a bad purpose.'  27 It requires a particular intent in addition to the performance of the act required by the statute. 26 The Court determined that for the purposes of section 242 acting willfully meant acting with a purpose to deprive a person of a specific constitutional right, 28 made definite by decision or other rule of law. 29 Such a construction, in the Court's view, would cure the problem of vagueness presented by the statute: 27 One who does act with such specific intent is aware that what he does is precisely that which the statute forbids. He is under no necessity of guessing whether the statute applies to him . . . for he either knows or acts in reckless disregard of its prohibition of the deprivation of a defined constitutional or other federal right. . . . The Act would then not become a trap for law enforcement agencies acting in good faith. A mind intent upon willful evasion is inconsistent with surprised innocence. United States v. Ragen, (314 U.S. 513, 524, 62 S.Ct. 374, 378, 86 L.Ed. 383 (1942).) 30 28 The Court observed that the indictment in United States v. Classic, 31 an earlier case involving section 242, met the test of specific intent it had just laid down. That indictment charged the defendants with, inter alia, the willful alteration of ballots. Such alteration, the Court emphasized, clearly breached a right expressly guaranteed by the Constitution viz., the right to vote. The indictment did not charge that the defendants had acted with the specific intent to deprive voters of their constitutional prerogatives. Nevertheless, the Court concluded: 29 Such a charge is adequate since he who alters ballots or without legal justification destroys them would be acting willfully in the sense in which (§ 242) uses the term. The fact that the defendants may not have been thinking in constitutional terms is not material where their aim was not to enforce local law but to deprive a citizen of a right and that right was protected by the Constitution. When they so act they at least act in reckless disregard of constitutional prohibitions or guarantees. 32 30 Turning to the charge against the defendants in Screws itself, the Court observed, Likewise, it is plain that basic to the concept of due process of law in a criminal case is a trial a trial in a court of law, not a 'trial by ordeal.'  33 No allegation of intent to breach a constitutional right, therefore, was necessary. The Court held that the specific intent requirement of section 242 would be met if the jury were instructed simply that to convict they must find the defendants had beaten their prisoner to death with the particular purpose of subjecting him to a trial by ordeal. 34