Court Opinion

ID: 9442314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:43:45.958903+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:03.643881
License: Public Domain

WALLER, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring) .
In Screws v. U. S., 325 U.S. 91, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 1035, 89 L.Ed. 1495, 162 A.L.R. 1330, the Court, on the subject of the lack of specificity in Section 52 of Title 18, said: “ * * * The constitutional vice in such a statute is the essential injustice to the accused of placing him -on trial for an offense, the nature of which the statute does not define and hence of which it gives no warning.”
In the present case, as in Spurr v. U. S., 174 U.S. 728, 19 S.Ct. 812, 815, 43 L.Ed. 1150, “The wrongful intent is the essence of the crime.”
If I understand the teaching of the Screws case, it is that the word “willful” in the statute requires the showing of “an evil motive” in the deprivation of a federal right and that such’ is a constituent element of the crime, and that although one would be a criminal under the state law, he would not be such under Section 52 if his intent and purpose was unrelated to a deprivation of constitutional guaranties. - It is made quite clear that the word “willful” in Section 52 persuaded the Court to say, in the Screws case, that: * * We repeat that the presence of a bad purpose or evil intent alone may not be sufficient. We do say that a requirement of a specific intent to deprive a person of a federal right *651made definite by decision or other rule of law saves the Act from any charge of unconstitutionality on the grounds of vagueness.”
In the Screws case, as here, the disregarded federal rights were under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Section 51, Title 18, with no mention of the word “willful” or of acts “under color of law of the state” or of discrimination because of “color, or race,” or alienage, or of any “inhabitant”, merely says that if two or more persons conspire to injure any citizen in the free exercise of any right secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States they shall be fined not more than $5,000.00, imprisoned not more than ten years, and thereafter be ineligible to any office or place of honor, profit, or trust created by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
The right not to be beaten by two or more persons can hardly be said to be a right or privilege that is “secured” to “the free exercise or enjoyment” of any citizen of the United States. The terms “free exercise” and “enjoyment”, connote active use or positive utilization of privileges rather than a mere passive possession thereof. It seems grossly inapt to speak of a person as “having free exercise” of the privilege of being immune from assault and battery or as having the “free exercise or enjoyment” of the right to be tried and punished under the laws of Florida; or in freely exercising the right to be secure in his person while in the custody of the State of Florida. In short, one does not freely exercise or enjoy being in the custody of the State of Florida nor being tried and punished by due process of law. The citizen does, however, freely exercise or enjoy the privilege to vote, to assemble, to worship, to speak, or, that is, such privileges as are exercised or enjoyed by him out of his own activities.
Moreover, the right of a citizen not to be beaten is a right or privilege secured to him by the State law and not by federal law. Beating, standing alone, is insufficient to call the federal Constitution, statutes, or courts into operation.1 It is only when someone willfully or intentionally acts under color or pretense of law of the State, in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment, that the right not to be beaten becomes a federal right. In short, neither the beating of the victims by the four defendants in this case nor a conspiracy to beat them would have been a federal offense since the right or privilege of the victims was secured merely by state law, and it would become a federal offense only if and when the draftsman of the indictment could invoke a violated federal statute or provision of the Constitution. Furthermore, the only way a federal indictment under Section 51 can be predicated upon the violation of rights under the Fourteenth Amendment is by alleging that the defendants were acting under authority of the state, since the Fourteenth Amendment can have no application to individual action. Section 51 makes no reference to state law or authority.
These and other aspects of the case strongly suggest that Section 51, which deals only with rights or privileges of a citizen—as distinguished from an inhabitant—had reference only to interference with the free exercise by the citizen of exercisable rights pertaining to citizenship as distinguished from. federal rights of persons or inhabitants, and that Section 51 was intended to make illegal concerted action designed to prevent citizens from participating in politics or from exercising rights that are expressly secured by federal law to citizens.
Section 51 is far more vague and indefinite than Section 52, and under the Screws case all that saved Section 52 from the abyss of invalidity was the word “willful”. It is clear that Section 52 had reference to deprivation of rights of inhabitants-—even though aliens—under the Fourteenth Amendment by its use of the *652phrase “under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom”. Moreover, Section 52 prevents the deprivation not only of rights “secured” hut “protected” by the Constitution and laws of the United States, while Section 51 does not embrace rights protected by the Constitution and laws. The rights or privileges embraced in Section 51 are only those which are secured to the citizen by the Constitution and laws of the United States. The wording of Section 51 is not in harr mony with the purposes which the United States seeks in this case to have the statute accomplish.
In considering the question of necessity for the statute to prescribe that the act must be done willfully in order to avoid the charge of lack of specificity, it should be noted that the word “conspire” does not always carry the connotation of willfulness. Conspiracy is a combination of two or more persons by some concerted action to accomplish some criminal or unlawful purpose or to accomplish some purpose, not in itself criminal or unlawful, by criminal or unlawful means. Pettibone v. U. S., 148 U.S. 197, 13 S.Ct. 542, 37 L.Ed. 419. The conspiracy here can only be of the latter type or, that is, a conspiracy having a lawful purpose to be accomplished by unlawful or criminal means. Certainly, it was not unlawful for the defendants to agree, to investigate the thieveries, but it was unlawful, under the laws of the state, to assault, beat, and kick those held in custody for investigation. The thing that was unlawful, or that was willful, was not the agreement to investigate stealing but the method utilized in making the investigation and in seeking to extort confessions. The defect in Section 51, as same must be applied to these defendants, is that it makes criminal any agreement, lawful or otherwise, which results, by design or otherwise, in injuring, oppressing, etc., a citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of a right or. privilege secured by federal law. As in the Screws case' a conscious purpose to do wrong was insufficient. Since the agreement to investigate was lawful, there must have been an intention, a willful purpose, to injure or oppress, which the word “conspire” would neither connote nor distinguish.
Suppose that A, in good faith, enters into an agreement with B and C for the doing of a lawful thing, but that B and C, without the knowledge or intention of A, do the lawful thing in an 'unlawful manner with resultant injury to D and E. Not only should A not be convicted of a felony, but such a conspiracy could not impute willfulness. to A.
In defining the crime of conspiracy to do an act which had been made criminal by federal statute the use of the word “willfully” or “unlawfully” would not be required because the required specificity would be found in the statute defining the crime. For instance, in defining a conspiracy to rob a Post Office, it would not be necessary to state “if two or more persons willfully conspire to rob the Post Office,” for robbery of a Post Office is a federal offense already defined by statute. But should a statute provide that if two or more persons conspire to sing the Doxology during church services without providing that the singing must be done willfully or with the intent to disturb public worship, such a statute, no doubt, would be invalid. If two or more policemen, in investigating a crime, should mistakenly arrest a citizen and hold him in jail for a reasonable time pending investigation, they would be liable, under Section 51, as written, to indictment, imprisonment for ten years, a fine of $10,-000, and disbarment from holding any office or position of trust unless the statute required it to be alleged and proven that their acts were willful or in violation of a definite statute.
It will be noted that the first part of Section 51 providing against injuring, oppressing, threatening, or intimidating a citizen in the exercise of a federal right requires no overt act on the part of any conspirator. This is the phase of the statute involved here, and under it could not the Chief of Police of Miami, who merely aided the investigation by detailing Ford, a policeman, to assist, be also found guilty? He did nothing illegal. He merely attempted to aid in apprehending criminals, as was his duty. If conspiring without willfulness *653and without the commission of an overt act is an offense under Section 51, that officer, who had no part in the beatings and no knowledge whatsoever of the occurrence of anything wrong, would also be guilty of a felony under the statute.
At the present time, according to the newspapers, a drive is being made by law enforcement officers of Florida, in cooperation, to prevent the dissemination to bookies of daily racing data in violation of a state statute and in detriment to the collection of the state revenue. If those who disseminate such information were to be arrested and placed in jail, and later held to have been in the exercise of their right of the freedom of the press, would not these officers attempting to enforce the law in a lawful manner be within the condemnation of Section 51?
Nothing need be added to what was said in the majority opinion about the necessity of defining a crime in order that one may know if and when he is violating the law. The purpose of this opinion is chiefly to present the view that the word “conspire” does not—as applied to the facts in the present case, at least—connote willfulness and that the rule of strict construction of criminal statutes applies to supplying connotations not justified by the language or the sense of the Act.
Our Court, speaking through this writer, has in Crews v. U. S., 5 Cir., 160 F.2d 746, Pullen v. U. S., 5 Cir., 164 F.2d 756, and Williams v. U. S., 5 Cir., 179 F.2d 656, which were all cases under Section 52, followed the teaching of the Supreme Court in the Screws case that in the absence of the element of willfulness in the deprivation of a right under the Fourteenth Amendment there can be no ascertainable standard of guilt, and I can perceive no reason why that doctrine should not be applied with equal force to conspiracies under Section 51 based upon deprivation of the free exercise by a citizen of rights arising out of the Fourteenth Amendment, which are often vague and obscure to laymen and difficult of discernment by judges.
I do not think that Section 51 is unconstitutional in situations where the conspiracy is one having the purpose to violate a federal statute containing a definition of the elements of the offense to be accomplished. I do not think that part of the Act relative to two or mote persons going in disguise on the highway with intent to prevent the citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of his rights would be violative of the Constitution for in such instances the statute makes intent an element of the crime, but I am unable to escape the conclusion that to make Section 51 apply, regardless of intent, to an interference with rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, that sometimes cannot be determined until the end of the trial, would be as great a deprivation of the constitutional rights as that sought to be punished in the present case.

. “* * * The fact that a prisoner is assaulted, injured, or even murdered by state officials does not necessarily mean that' he' is deprived of any right protected or secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Screws v. U. S. supra, 325 U. S. at page 108, 65 S.Ct. at page 1039.