Opinion ID: 765858
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Seditious Conspiracy Statute and the Treason Clause

Text: 101 Defendant Nosair (joined by other defendants) contends that his conviction for seditious conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2384, was illegal because it failed to satisfy the requirements of the Treason Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Art. III, § 3. 102 Article III, Section 3 provides, in relevant part: 103 Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The seditious conspiracy statute provides: 104 If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both. 105 18 U.S.C. § 2384. 106 Nosair contends that because the seditious conspiracy statute punishes conspiracy to levy war against the United States without a conforming two-witness requirement, the statute is unconstitutional. He further claims that because his conviction for conspiracy to levy war against the United States was not based on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, the conviction violates constitutional standards. 107 It is undisputed that Nosair's conviction was not supported by two witnesses to the same overt act. Accordingly the conviction must be overturned if the requirement of the Treason Clause applies to this prosecution for seditious conspiracy. 108 The plain answer is that the Treason Clause does not apply to the prosecution. The provisions of Article III, Section 3 apply to prosecutions for treason. Nosair and his co-appellants were not charged with treason. Their offense of conviction, seditious conspiracy under Section 2384, differs from treason not only in name and associated stigma, but also in its essential elements and punishment. 109 In the late colonial period, as today, the charge of treason carried a peculiar intimidation and stigma with considerable potentialities . . . as a political epithet. See William Hurst, Treason in the United States (Pt. II), 58 Harv. L. Rev. 395, 424-25 (1945). 110 At the time of the drafting of the Constitution, furthermore, treason was punishable not only by death, but by an exceptionally cruel method of execution designed to enhance the suffering of the traitor. 7 See 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries  (observing that the punishment for treason is terrible in that the traitor is hanged by the neck, then cut down alive, that his entrails [are then] taken out, and burned, while he is yet alive, that his head [is] cut off, and that his body [is then] divided into four parts). 8 In contrast, lesser subversive offenses were penalized by noncapital punishments or less brutal modes of execution. See id. at -. The Framers may have intended to limit the applicability of the most severe penalties--or simply the applicability of capital punishment for alleged subversion--to instances of levying war against, or adhering to enemies of, the United States. See Hurst, supra, at 425 n.141 (indicating that at least some delegates regarded the effort to limit the application of the death penalty for subversive crimes as the central motive of the restrictive definition of treason). Today treason continues to be punishable by death, while seditious conspiracy commands a maximum penalty of twenty years imprisonment. 111 In recognition of the potential for political manipulation of the treason charge, the Framers may have formulated the Treason Clause as a protection against promiscuous resort to this particularly stigmatizing label, which carries such harsh consequences. It is thus possible to interpret the Treason Clause as applying only to charges denominated as treason. 112 The Supreme Court has identified but not resolved the question whether the clause applies to offenses that include all the elements of treason but are not branded as such. Compare Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 38 (1942) (suggesting, in dictum, that citizens could be tried for an offense against the law of war that included all the elements of treason), with Cramer v. United States, 325 U.S. 1, 45 (1945) (noting in dictum that it did not intimate that Congress could dispense with [the] two-witness rule merely by giving the same offense [of treason] another name.) The question whether a defendant who engaged in subversive conduct might be tried for a crime involving all the elements of treason, but under a different name and without the constitutional protection of the Treason Clause, therefore remains open. And we need not decide it in this case, because the crime of which Nosair was convicted differs significantly from treason, not only in name and punishment, but also in definition. 113 Seditious conspiracy by levying war includes no requirement that the defendant owe allegiance to the United States, an element necessary to conviction of treason. 9 See 18 U.S.C. § 2381 (defining allegiance to United States as an element of treason). Nosair nevertheless maintains that [t]he only distinction between the elements of seditious conspiracy under the levy war prong and treason by levying war is that the former requires proof of a conspiracy while the latter requires proof of the substantive crime. Reply Brief for Nosair at 9. Noting that the requirement of allegiance appears explicitly in the treason statute, but not in the Treason Clause, Nosair suggests that allegiance to the United States is not an element of treason within the contemplation of the Constitution. He concludes that, for constitutional purposes, the elements constituting seditious conspiracy by levying war and treason by levying war are identical, and consequently that prosecutions for seditious conspiracy by levying war must conform to the requirements of the Treason Clause. 114 The argument rests on a false premise. The Treason Clause does not, as Nosair supposes, purport to specify the elements of the crime of treason. Instead, in addition to providing evidentiary safeguards, the Clause restricts the conduct that may be deemed treason to levying war against the United States and adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. It does not undertake to define the constituent elements of the substantive crime. 115 Moreover, any acceptable recitation of the elements of treason must include the breach of allegiance. The concept of allegiance betrayed is integral to the term treason, and has been since well before the drafting of the Constitution. See 3 Holdsworth, History of English Law 287 (noting that the idea of treachery has been part of the treason offense since the reign of Edward III). In both its common-law and constitutional definitions the term 'treason' imports a breach of allegiance. Green's Case, 8 Ct. Cl. 412 (1872). Treason imports a betraying. Id. (quoting 3 Tomlin's Law Dictionary 637). Blackstone, too, noted that treason, in it's [sic] very name . . . imports a betraying, treachery or breach of faith. 4 Blackstone, supra, at . Early on, our Supreme Court recognized that [t]reason is a breach of allegiance, and can be committed by him only who owes allegiance. United States v. Wiltberger, 18 U.S. 76, 97 (5 Wheat.) (1820) (Marshall, C.J.). Nor is there any doubt that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention used [the term 'treason'] to express the central concept of betrayal of allegiance. Hurst, supra, at 415. 116 Nosair's suggestion that the statutory definition of treason added the requirement of allegiance is mistaken. The reference to treason in the constitutional clause necessarily incorporates the elements of allegiance and betrayal that are essential to the concept of treason. Cf. Wiltberger, 18 U.S. at 97 (noting that the inclusion of the words owing allegiance in a statute punishing treason are surplusage because the concept is implicit in the term). The functions of the Clause are to limit the crime of treason to betrayals of allegiance that are substantial, amounting to levying war or giving comfort to enemies, and to require sufficiently reliable evidence. Treason, in other words, may not be found on the basis of mere mutterings of discontent, or relatively innocuous opposition. The fact that the Treason Clause imposes its requirements without mentioning the requirement of allegiance is not a basis for concluding that treason may be prosecuted without allegiance being proved. That any conviction for treason under the laws of the United States requires a betrayal of allegiance is simply implicit in the term treason. Nosair was thus tried for a different, and lesser, offense than treason. We therefore see no reasonable basis to maintain that the requirements of the Treason Clause should apply to Nosair's prosecution. Cf. United States v. Rodriguez, 803 F.2d 318, 320 (7th Cir. 1986) (rejecting argument that oppose by force prong of Section 2384 conflicts with Treason Clause). 117