Court Opinion

ID: 9640716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:13:14.784996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:31.781450
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). In Judge Morton’s opinion in this ease (Ex parte Edmead (D. C.) 27 F.(2d) 439) he says:
“The only ground of deportation now relied on is that Edmead has been convicted of a ‘crime involving moral turpitude.’ That the expression connotes something more than ‘illegal’ or ‘criminal’ is clear — law and morality are by no means identical. The best definition which I have found is Judge Walker’s in Coykendall v. Skrmetta [C. C. A.] 22 F.(2d) 120. ‘The words “involving moral turpitude,” as long used in the law with reference to crimes, refer to conduct which is inherently base, vile, or depraved, contrary to accepted rules of morality, whether it is or is not punishable as a crime. They do not refer to conduct which, before it was made punishable as a crime, was not generally regarded as morally wrong or corrupt, as offensive to the moral sense as ordinarily developed.’ 22 F.(2d) 120-121.
“Whether any particular conviction involves moral turpitude under this test may be a question of fact. Some crimes are of such character as necessarily to involve this element; others of which .the punishment is quite as severe do not (see Ex Parte Saraceno [C. C.] 182 F. 955); and still others might involve it or might not. As to this last class, the circumstances must be regarded to determine whether moral turpitude was shown. While there is authority that all larceny involves [moral] turpitude (see Re A. M. Henry, 15 Idaho, 755, 99 P. 1054, 21 L. R. A. [N. S.] 207), I am not prepared to agree that a boy who steals an apple from an orchard is guilty of ‘inherently base, vile, or depraved conduct.’ Where the larceny is petty, I think the circumstances must be inquired into.
“The evidence as it stands about the crimes for which Edmead was convicted does not seem to me to prove moral turpitude. While she does not appear to be a very desirable citizen, she is not on that account to be denied her legal rights.”
I agree with those views. It seems to me monstrous to hold that a mother stealing a bottle of milk for her hungry child, or a foolish college student stealing a sign or a turkey, should be tainted as guilty of a crime of moral turpitude. But such is the logical result of the majority opinion.
When Blaekstone wrote his treatise lauding the justice and reason of the English law, there were, as I recall it, something like 120 capital offenses in England, including larceny of property worth 5 shillings. It was one of the most brutal systems of law ever in force in any land at any time. Blackstone’s assumption of personal knowledge from “the Great Lawgiver” as to what offenses are mala in se and can “contract no additional turpitude from being declared unlawful by the inferior Legislature,” I think absurd. Nothing could be more chaotic, illogical and unethical than our prevailing views and practices as to property rights. Essentially, our legal and economic structure is predatory. We do not attempt to co-ordinate acquisition with useful productivity. Our common methods of “big money making” always involve getting the results of other people’s productive labor. On any sound and ethical theoiy of property rights, winnings at gambling — even stock-gambling — • are as unjustifiable as many kinds of takings condemned by statute as larceneies.
Until our code of' property, rights and wrongs bears more relation to anti-social methods of acquisition, I think the moral turpitude taboo should not be extended to *85cover such trifling offenses as this -ignorant colored girl testifies (there is no other evidence) she committed.
This ease is of little importance, probably not even to the appellee; but the doctrine now enunciated may do much harm.