Court Opinion

ID: 9419637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:42.922105+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:19.680705
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rutledge,
concurring in the result.
For the compelling reason stated at the end of this opinion I concur in reversing the judgment and remanding the cause for further proceedings. But for that reason, my views would require that my vote be cast to affirm the judgment, for the reasons stated by Mr. Justice Murphy and others I feel forced, in the peculiar situation, to state.
The case comes here established in fact as a gross abuse of authority by state officers. Entrusted with the state’s power and using it, without a warrant or with one of only doubtful legality1 they invaded a citizen’s home, arrested him for alleged theft of a tire, forcibly took him in handcuffs to the courthouse yard, and there beat him to death. Previously they had threatened to kill him, fortified themselves at a near-by bar, and resisted the bartender’s impor-tunities not to carry out the arrest. Upon this and other evidence which overwhelmingly supports (140 F. 2d at 665) the verdict, together with instructions adequately *114covering an officer’s right to use force, the jury found the petitioners guilty.
I
The verdict has shaped their position here. Their contention hardly disputes the facts on which it rests.2 They do not come therefore as faithful state officers, innocent of crime. Justification has been foreclosed. Accordingly, their argument now admits the offense, but insists it was against the state alone, not the nation. So they have made their case in this Court.3
In effect, the position urges it is murder they have done,4 not deprivation of constitutional right. Strange as the argument is the reason. It comes to this, that abuse of state power creates immunity to federal power. Because what they did violated the state’s laws, the nation cannot reach their conduct.5 It may deprive the citizen of his liberty and his life. But whatever state officers may do in abuse of their official capacity can give this Government and its courts no concern. This, though the prime object of the Fourteenth Amendment and § 20 was to secure these fundamental rights against wrongful denial by exercise of the power of the states.
The defense is not pretty. Nor is it valid. By a long course of decision from Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, to United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, it has been re*115jected.6 The ground should not need ploughing again. It was cleared long ago and thoroughly. It has been kept clear, until the ancient doubt, laid in the beginning, was resurrected in the last stage of this case. The evidence has nullified any pretense that petitioners acted as individuals, about their personal though nefarious business. They used the power of official place in all that was done. The verdict has foreclosed semblance of any claim that only private matters, not touching official functions, were involved. Yet neither was the state’s power, they say.
There is no third category. The Amendment and the legislation were not aimed at rightful state action. Abuse of state power was the target. Limits were put to state authority, and states were forbidden to pass them, by whatever agency.7 It is too late now, if there were better reason than exists for doing so, to question that in these matters abuse binds the state and is its act, when done by *116one to whom it has given power to make the abuse effective to achieve the forbidden ends. Vague ideas of dual federalism,8 of ultra vires doctrine imported from private agency,9 and of want of finality in official action,10 do not nullify what four years of civil strife secured and eighty years have verified-.--* For it was. abuse of basic civil and political rights, by states and their officials, that the Amendment and the enforcing legislation were adopted to uproot.
The danger was not merely legislative or judicial. Nor was it threatened only from the state’s highest officials. It was abuse by whatever agency the state might invest with its power capable of inflicting the deprivation. In all its flux, time makes some things axiomatic. One has been that state officials who violate their oaths of office and flout *117the fundamental law are answerable to it when their •misconduct brings upon them the penalty it authorizes and Congress has provided.
There could be no clearer violation of the Amendment or the statute. No act could be more final or complete, to denude the victim of rights secured by the Amendment’s very terms. Those rights so destroyed cannot be restored. Nor could the part played by the state’s power in causing their destruction be lessened, though other organs were now to repudiate what was done. The state’s law might thus be vindicated. If so, the vindication could only sustain, it could not detract from the federal power. Nor could it restore what the federal power shielded. Neither acquittal nor conviction, though affirmed by the state’s highest court, could resurrect what the wrongful use of state power has annihilated. There was in this case abuse of state power, which for the Amendment’s great purposes was state action, final in the last degree, depriving the victim of his liberty and his life without due process of law.
If the issues made by the parties themselves were allowed to govern, there would be no need to say more. At various stages petitioners have sought to show that they used no more force than was necessary, that there was no state action, and that the evidence was not sufficient to sustain the verdict and the judgment. These issues, in various, formulations,11 have comprehended their case. All have been resolved against them without error. This should end the matter.
*118II
But other and most important issues have been injected and made decisive to reverse the judgment. Petitioners have not denied that they acted “willfully” within the meaning of § 20 or that they intended to do the acts which took their victim’s liberty and life. In the trial court they claimed justification. But they were unable to prove it. The verdict, on overwhelming evidence, has concluded against them their denial of bad purpose and reckless disregard of rights. This is necessarily implied in the finding that excessive force was used. No complaint was made of the charge in any of these respects and no request for additional charges concerning them was offered. Nor, in the application for certiorari or the briefs, have they raised questions of the requisite criminal intent or of unconstitutional vagueness in the statute’s definition of the crime. However, these issues have been brought forward, so far as the record discloses, first by the dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals, then by inquiry at the argument and in the disposition here.
The story would be too long, to trace in more than outline the history of § 20 and companion provisions, in particular § 19,12 with which it must be considered on any suggestion of fatal ambiguity. But this history cannot be ignored, unless we would risk throwing overboard what the nation’s greatest internal conflict created and eight *119decades have confirmed, in protection of individual rights against impairment by the states.
Sections 19 and 20 are twin sections in all respects that concern any question of vagueness in defining the crimes. There are important differences. Section 19 strikes at conspiracies, § 20 at substantive offenses. The former protects “citizens,” the latter “inhabitants.” There are, however, no differences in the basic rights guarded. Each protects in a different way the rights and privileges secured to individuals by the Constitution. If one falls for vagueness in pointing to these, the other also must fall for the same reason. If one stands, so must both. It is not one statute therefore which we sustain or nullify. It is two.
The sections have stood for nearly eighty years. Nor has this been without attack for ambiguity. Together the two sections have repelled it. In 1915, one of this Court’s greatest judges, speaking for it, summarily disposed of the suggestion that § 19 is invalid: “It is not open to question that this statute is constitutional... [It] dealt with Federal rights and with all Federal rights, and protected them in the lump . . .” United States v. Mosley, 238 U. S. 383, 386, 387. And in United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, the Court with equal vigor reaffirmed the validity of both sections, against dissenting assault for fatal *120ambiguity in relation to the constitutional rights then in question. These more recent pronouncements but reaffirmed earlier and repeated ones. The history should not require retelling. But old and established freedoms vanish when history is forgotten.
Section 20 originated in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (14 Stat. 27), § 19 in the Enforcement Act of 1870 (16 Stat. 141,- § 6). Their great original purpose was to strike at discrimination, particularly against Negroes, the one securing civil, the other political rights. But they were not drawn so narrowly. From the beginning § 19 protected all “citizens,” § 20 “inhabitants.”
At .first § 20 secured only rights enumerated in the Civil Rights Act. The first ten years brought it, through broadening changes, to substantially its present form. Only the word “willfully” has been added since then, a change of no materiality, for the statute implied it beforehand.13 35 Stat. 1092. The most important change of the first decade replaced the specific enumeration of the Civil Rights Act with the present broad language covering “the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities, secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” R. S. § 5510. This inclusive designation brought § 20 into conformity with § 19’s original coverage of “any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Since then, under these generic designations, the two have been literally identical in the scope of the rights they secure. The slight difference in wording cannot be one of substance.14
*121Throughout a long and varied course of application the sections have remained unimpaired on the score of vagueness in the crimes they denounce. From 1874 to today they have repelled all attacks proposed to invalidate them. None has succeeded. If time and uniform decision can give stability to statutes, these have acquired it.
Section 20 has not been much used, in direct application, until recently. There were however a number of early decisions.15 Of late the section has been applied more frequently, in considerable variety of situation, against varied and vigorous attack.16 In United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. at 321, as has been stated, this Court gave it clear-cut sanction. The opinion expressly repudiated any idea that the section, or § 19, is vitiated by ambiguity. Moreover, this was done in terms which leave no room to say that the decision was not focused upon that question.17 True, application to Fourteenth Amendment *122rights was reserved because the question was raised for the first time in the Government’s brief filed here. 313 U. S. at 329. But the statute was sustained in application to a vast range of rights secured by the Constitution, apart from the reserved segment, as the opinion’s language and the single reservation itself attest. The ruling, thus broad, could not have been inadvertent. For it was repeated concerning both sections, broadly, forcefully, and upon citation of long-established authority. And this was done in response to a vigorous dissent which made the most of the point of vagueness.18 The point was flatly, and deliberately, rejected. The Court could not have been blinded by other issues to the import of this one.
The Classic decision thus cannot be put aside in this case. Nor can it be demonstrated that the rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment are more numerous or more dubious than the aggregate encompassed by other *123constitutional provisions. Certainly “the equal protection of the laws,” guaranteed by the Amendment, is not more vague and indefinite than many rights protected by other commands.19 The same thing is true of “the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” The Fifth Amendment contains a due process clause as broad in its terms restricting national power as the Fourteenth is of state power.20 If § 20 (with § 19) is valid in general coverage of other constitutional rights, it cannot be void in the less sweeping application to Fourteenth Amendment rights. If it is valid to assure the rights “plainly and directly” secured by other provisions, it is equally valid to protect those “plainly and directly” secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, including the expressly guaranteed rights not to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. If in fact there could be any difference among the various rights protected, in view of the history it would be that the section applies more clearly to Fourteenth Amendment rights than to others. Its phrases “are all phrases of large generalities. But they are not generalities of unillumined vagueness; they are generalities circumscribed by history and appropriate to the largeness of the problems of government with which they were concerned.” Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401, concurring opinion, p. 413.
Historically, the section’s function and purpose have been to secure rights given by the Amendment. From the Amendment’s adoption until 1874, it was Fourteenth Amendment legislation. Surely when in. that year the section was expanded to include other rights these were *124not dropped out. By giving the citizen additional security in the exercise of his voting and other political rights, which was the section’s effect, unless the Classic case falls, Congress did not take from him the protection it previously afforded (wholly apart from the prohibition of different penalties)21 against deprivation of such rights on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude, or repeal the prior safeguard of civil rights.
To strike from the statute the rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, but at the same time to leave within its coverage the vast area bounded by other constitutional provisions,-would contradict both reason and history. No logic but one which nullifies the historic foundations of the Amendment and the section could support such an emasculation. There should be no judicial hack work cutting out some of the great rights the Amendment secures but leaving in others. There can be none excising all protected by the Amendment, but leaving *125every other given by the Constitution intact under the statute's aegis.
All that has been said of § 20 applies with equal force to § 19. It had an earlier more litigious history, firmly establishing its validity.22 It also has received recent ap*126plication,23 without question for ambiguity except in the Classic case, which nevertheless gave it equal sanction with its substantive counterpart.
Separately, and often together in application, §§19 and 20 have been woven into our fundamental and statutory law. They have place among our more permanent legal achievements. They have safeguarded many rights and privileges apart from political ones. Among those buttressed, either by direct application or through the general conspiracy statute, § 37 (18 TJ. S. C. § 88),24 are the rights to a fair trial, including freedom from sham trials; to be free from arrest and detention by methods constitutionally forbidden and from extortion of property by such methods; from extortion of confessions; from mob action incited or shared by state officers; from failure to furnish police protection on proper occasion and demand; from interference with the free exercise of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and assembly;25 and *127the necessary import of the decisions is that the right to" be free from deprivation of life itself, without due process of law, that is, through abuse of state power by state officials, is as fully protected as other rights so secured.
So much experience cannot be swept aside, or its teaching annulled, without overthrowing a great, and a firmly established, constitutional tradition. Nor has the feared welter of uncertainty arisen. Defendants have attacked the sections, or their application, often and strenuously. Seldom has complaint been made that they are too vague and uncertain. Objections have centered principally about “state action,” including “color of law” and failure by inaction to discharge official duty, cf. Catlette v. United States, 132 F. 2d 902, and about the strength of federal power to reach particular abuses.26 More rarely they have touched other matters, such as the limiting effect of official privilege27 and, in occasional instances, mens rea.28 *128In all this wealth of attack accused officials have little used the shield of ambiguity. The omission, like the Court’s rejection in the Classic case, cannot have been inadvertent. There are valid reasons for it, apart from the old teaching that the matter has been foreclosed.
One is that the generality of the section’s terms simply has not worked out to be a hazard of unconstitutional, or even serious, proportions. It has not proved a source of practical difficulty. In no other way can be explained the paucity of the objection’s appearance in the wealth of others made. If experience is the life of the law, as has been said, this has been true preeminently in the application of §§ 19 and 20.
Moreover, statutory specificity has two purposes, to give due notice that an act has been made criminal before it is done and to inform one accused of the nature of the offense charged, so that he may adequately prepare and make his defense. More than this certainly the Constitution does not require. Cf. Amend. VI. All difficulty on the latter score vanishes, under § 20, with the indictment’s particularization of the rights infringed and the acts infringing them. If it is not sufficient in either respect, in these as in other cases the motion to quash or one for a bill of particulars is at the defendant’s disposal. The decided cases demonstrate that accused persons have had little or no difficulty to ascertain the rights they have been charged with transgressing or the acts of transgression.29 So it was with the defendants in this case. They were not puzzled to know for what they were indicted, as their proof and their defense upon the law conclusively show. They simply misconceived that the victim had no federal rights and that what they had done was not a crime within the federal power to penalize.30 That kind of error relieves no one from penalty.
*129In the other aspect of specificity, two answers, apart from experience, suffice. One is that § 20, and § 19, are no more general and vague, Fourteenth Amendment rights included, than other criminal statutes commonly enforced against this objection. The Sherman Act is the most obvious illustration.31
Furthermore, the argument of vagueness, to warn men of their conduct, ignores the nature of the criminal act itself and the notice necessarily given from this. Section 20 strikes only at abuse of official functions by state officers. It does not reach out for crimes done by men in general. Not murder per se, but murder by state officers in the course of official conduct and done with the aid of state power, is outlawed. These facts, inherent in the crime, give all the warning constitutionally required. For one, so situated, who goes so far in misconduct can have no excuse of innocence or ignorance.
Generally state officials know something of the individual’s basic legal rights. If they do not, they should, for they assume that duty when they assume their office. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for men in general. It is less an excuse for men whose special duty is to apply it, and therefore to know and observe it. If their knowledge is not comprehensive, state officials know or should know when they pass the limits of their authority, so far at any rate that their action exceeds honest error of judgment and amounts to abuse of their office and its function. When they enter such a domain in dealing with the citizen’s rights, they should do so at their peril, whether that *130be created by state or federal law. For their sworn oath and their first duty are to uphold the Constitution, then only the law of the state which too is bound by the charter. Since the statute, as I think, condemns only something more than error of judgment, made in honest effort at once to apply and to follow the law, cf. United States v. Murdock, 290 U. S. 389, officials who violate it must act in intentional or reckless disregard of individual rights and cannot be ignorant that they do great wrong.32 This being true, they must be taken to act at peril of incurring the penalty placed upon such conduct by the federal law, as they do of that the state imposes.
What has been said supplies all the case requires to be decided on the question of criminal intent. If the criminal act is limited, as I think it must be and the statute intends, to infraction of constitutional rights, including rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, by conduct which amounts to abuse of one's official place or reckless disregard of duty, no undue hazard or burden can be placed on state officials honestly seeking to perform the rightful functions of their office. Others are not entitled to greater protection.
But, it is said, a penumbra of rights may be involved, which none can know until decision has been made and infraction may occur before it is had. It seems doubtful this could be true in any case involving the abuse of official function which the statute requires and, if it could, that one guilty of such an abuse should have immunity for that reason. Furthermore, the doubtful character of the *131right infringed could give reason at the most to invalidate the particular charge, not for outlawing the statute or narrowly restricting its application in advance of compelling occasion.
For there is a body of well-established, clear-cut fundamental rights, including many secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, to all of which the sections may and do apply, without specific enumeration and without creating hazards of uncertainty for conduct or defense. Others will enter that category. So far, at the least when they have done so, the sections should stand without question of their validity. Beyond this, the character of the act proscribed and the intent it necessarily implies would seem to afford would-be violators all of notice the law requires, that they act at peril of the penalty it places on their misconduct.
We have in this case no instance of mere error in judgment, made in good faith. It would be time enough to reverse and remand a conviction, obtained without instructions along these lines, if such a case should arise. Actually the substance of such instruction was given in the wholly adequate charge concerning the officer’s right to use force, though not to excess. When, as here, a state official abuses his place consciously or grossly in abnegation of its rightful obligation, and thereby tramples underfoot the established constitutional rights of men or citizens, his conviction should stand when he has had the fair trial and full defense the petitioners have been given in this case.
Ill
Two implicit but highly important considerations must be noticed more definitely. One is the fear grounded in concern for possible maladjustment of federal-state relations if this and like convictions are sustained. Enough has been said to show that the fear is not well grounded. The same fear was expressed, by some in exaggerated and *132highly emotional terms, when § 2 of the Civil Rights Act, the antecedent of § 20, was under debate in Congress.33 The history of the legislation’s enforcement gives it no support. The fear was not realized in later experience. Eighty years should be enough to remove any remaining vestige. The volume of prosecutions and convictions has been small, in view of the importance of the subject matter and the length of time the statutes have been in force. There are reasons for this, apart from self-restraint of federal prosecuting officials.
One lies in the character of the criminal act and the intent which must be proved. A strong case must be made to show abuse of official function, and therefore to secure indictment or conviction. Trial must be “by an impartial jury of the State and the district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” Const., Amend. VI; cf. Art. Ill, § 2. For all practical purposes this means within the state of which the accused is an officer. Citizens of the state have not been, and will not be, ready to indict or convict their local officers on groundless charges or in doubtful cases. The sections can be applied effectively only when twelve of them concur in a verdict which accords with the prosecuting official’s belief that the accused has violated another’s fundamental rights. A federal official therefore faces both a delicate and a difficult task when he undertakes to charge and try a state officer under the terms of §§ 19 and 20: The restraint which has been shown is as much enforced by these limitations as it has been voluntary.
*133These are the reasons why prosecution has not been frequent, has been brought only in cases of gross abuse, and therefore has produced no grave or substantial problem of interference by federal authority in state affairs. But if the problem in this phase of the case were more serious than it has been or is likely to be, the result legally could not be to give state officials immunity from the obligations and liabilities the Amendment and its supporting legislation have imposed. For the verdict of the struggle which brought about adoption of the Amendment was to the contrary.
Lying beneath all the surface arguments is a deeper implication, which comprehends them. It goes to federal power. It is that Congress could not in so many words denounce as a federal crime the intentional and wrongful taking of an individual’s life or liberty by a state official acting in abuse of his official function and applying to the deed all the power of his office. This is the ultimate purport of the notions that state action is not involved and that the crime is against the state alone, not the nation. It is reflected also in the idea that the statute can protect the victim in his many procedural rights encompassed in the right to a fair trial before condemnation, but cannot protect him in the right which comprehends all others, the right to life itself.
Suffice it to say that if these ideas did not pass from the American scene once and for all, as I think they did, upon adoption of the Amendment without more, they have long since done so. Violation of state law there may be. But from this no immunity to federal authority can arise where any part of the Constitution has made it supreme. To the Constitution state officials and the states themselves owe first obligation. The federal power lacks no strength to reach their malfeasance in office when it infringes constitutional rights. If that is a great power, it is one generated by the Constitution and the Amend*134ments, to which the states have assented and their officials owe prime allegiance.34
The right not to be deprived of life or liberty by a state officer who takes it by abuse of his office and its power is such a right. To secure these rights is not beyond federal power. This §§19 and 20 have done, in a manner history long since has validated.
Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment.
My convictions are as I have stated them. Were it possible for me to adhere to them in my vote, and for the Court at the same time to dispose of the cause, I would act accordingly. The Court, however, is divided in opinion. If each member accords his vote to his belief, the case cannot have disposition. Stalemate should not prevail for any reason, however compelling, in a criminal cause or, if avoidable, in any other. My views concerning appropriate disposition are more nearly in accord with those stated by MR. Justice Douglas, in which three other members of the Court concur, than they are with the views of my dissenting brethren who favor outright reversal. Accordingly, in order that disposition may be made of this case, my vote has been cast to reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and remand the cause to the District Court for further proceedings in accordance with the disposition required by the opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas.

 The evidence was conflicting whether the warrant was made out and issued before, or after, the arrest and killing, and if issued beforehand, whether it was valid. The Court of Appeals noted there was evidence “that the alleged warrant of arrest was prepared by the sheriff and was a spurious afterthought” (140 F. 2d at 665), but assumed in the petitioner’s favor that a valid warrant had been issued. The dissenting opinion said the victim’s shotgun was taken from his home “not in a search of his person but apparently without lawful warrant.” 140 F. 2d at 667.

 The crucial dispute of fact was over whether the defendants had used more force than was necessary to restrain the prisoner. The “overwhelming weight of the testimony” (140 F. 2d at 665) was that they used not only all force required to subdue him (if it is assumed he resisted), but continued to beat him for fifteen to thirty minutes after he was knocked to the ground.

 Cf. Part II infra.

 The dissenting judge in the Court of Appeals thought the local offense was not “wilful murder, but rather that it was involuntary manslaughter in the commission of an unlawful act.” 140 F. 2d at 666.

 It does not appear that the state has taken any steps toward prosecution for violation of its law.

 Cf. notes 7 and 10. And see Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370, 397; Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 15-18; Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226, 233-234; Raymond v. Chicago Traction Co., 207 U. S. 20, 35-37; Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123; Home Tel. & Tel. Co. v. Los Angeles, 227 U. S. 278, 288-289; Cuyahoga Power Co. v. Akron, 240 U. S. 462; Fidelity & Deposit Co. v. Tafoya, 270 U. S. 426, 434; Hopkins v. Southern California Telephone Co., 275 U. S. 393, 398; Iowa-Des Moines Bank v. Bennett, 284 U. S. 239, 245-246; Nixon v. Condon, 286 U. S. 73, 89; Mosher v. City of Phoenix, 287 U. S. 29; Sterling v. Constantin, 287 U. S. 378, 393; Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U. S. 103; Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U. S. 337, 343; Hague v. C. I. O., 307 U. S. 496, 512; Cochran v. Kansas, 316 U. S. 255; Pyle v. Kansas, 317 U. S. 213.

 “The prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment are directed to the States, ... It is these which Congress is empowered to enforce, and to enforce against State action, however put forth, whether that action be executive, legislative, or judicial. . . . Whoever, by virtue of public position under a State government, deprives another of property, life, or liberty, without due process of law, or denies or takes away the equal protection of the laws, violates the constitutional inhibition; and as he acts in the name and for the State, and is clothed with the State’s power, his act is that of the State. This must be so, *116or the constitutional prohibition has no meaning.” Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 346-347.
“Misuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law, is action taken 'under color of’ state law.” United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, 326, citing Ex parte Virginia, supra, and other authorities.

 Cf. Part III infra. “Such enforcement [of the Fourteenth Amendment by Congress] is no invasion of State sovereignty. No law can be, which the people of the States have, by the Constitution of the United States, empowered Congress to enact. This extent of the powers of the general government is overlooked, when it is said, as it has been in this ease, that the act of March 1, 1875, [18 Stat., part 3, 336] interferes with State rights.” Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. at 346.

 Cf. Home Tel. & Tel. Co. v. Los Angeles, 227 U. S. 278, 287.

 Compare Barney v. City of New York, 193 U. S. 430, with Home Tel. & Tel. Co. v. Los Angeles, 227 U. S. 278, the latter suggesting that the former, “if it conflicted with the doctrine” of Raymond v. Chicago Traction Co., 207 U. S. 20, and Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123, “is now so distinguished or qualified as not to be here authoritative or even persuasive.” 227 U. S. at 294. See also Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U. S. 1, 13; Isseks, Jurisdiction of the Lower Federal Courts to Enjoin Unauthorized Action of State Officials, 40 Harv. L. Rev. 969, 972.

 Petitioners’ objections in law were stated most specifically in the demurrer to the indictment. These grounds also were incorporated in their motion for a directed verdict and their statement of grounds for appeal. The grounds for demurrer maintained that the facts alleged were not sufficient to constitute a federal offense, to fall within or violate the terms of any federal law or statute, or to confer jurisdiction upon the District or other federal court. One ground attacked the indictment for vagueness.

 Section 19 of the Criminal Code (18 U. S. C. § 51):
“If two or more persons conspire to 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, or because of his having so exercised the same, or if two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured, they shall be fined not more than $5,000 and imprisoned not more than ten years, and shall, moreover, be thereafter ineligible to any office, or place of honor, profit, or trust *119created by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” (Emphasis added.)
Section 20 (18 U. S. C. § 52) is as follows:
“Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects, or causes to be subjected, any inhabitant of any State, Territory, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such inhabitant being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined not more than $1,000, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” (Emphasis added.)

 Cf. note 32. President Johnson, vetoing another bill on July 16, 1866, stated that the penalties of the Civil Rights Act “are denounced against the person who willfully violates the law.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 3839.

 For the history of these changes, see the authorities cited in the opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas, particularly Flack, Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment (1908).

 United States v. Rhodes, 27 Fed. Cas. 785, No. 16,151; United States v. Jackson, 26 Fed. Cas. 563, No. 15,459; United States v. Buntin, 10 F. 730; cf. United States v. Stone, 188 F. 836, a prosecution under § 37 of the Criminal Code for conspiracy to violate § 20; cf., also 197 F. 483; United States v. Horton, 26 Fed. Cas. 375, No. 15,392. The constitutionality of the statute was sustained in the Rhodes case in 1866, and in the Jackson case in 1874. It was likewise sustained in In re Turner, 24 Fed. Cas. 337, No. 14,247 (1867); Smith v. Moody, 26 Ind. 299 (1866).

 Cf. the authorities cited infra at note 25.

 Referring to § 20, the Court said: “The generality of the section, made applicable as it is to deprivations of any constitutional right, does not obscure its meaning or impair its force within the scope of its application, which is restricted by its terms to deprivations which are willfully inflicted by those acting under color of any law, statute and the like.” 313 U. S. at 328.
Concerning § 19, also involved, the Court pointed to the decisions in Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651, and United States v. Mosley, 238 U. S. 383, cf. note 22, and commented: . . the Court found no uncertainty or ambiguity in the statutory language, obviously devised to protect the citizen ‘in the free exercise or enjoyment of any *122right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution/ and concerned itself with the question whether the right to participate in choosing a representative is so secured. Such is our function here.” 313 U. S. at 321. The opinion stated further: “The suggestion that § 19 . . . is not sufficiently specific to be deemed applicable to primary elections, will hardly bear examination. Section 19 speaks neither of elections nor of primaries. In unambiguous language it protects ‘any right or privilege secured by the Constitution/ a phrase which . . . extends to the right of the voter to have his vote counted ... as well as to numerous other constitutional rights which are wholly unrelated to the choice of a representative in Congress,” citing United States v. Waddell, 112 U. S. 76; Logan v. United States, 144 U. S. 263; In re Quarles, 158 U. S. 532; Motes v. United States, 178 U. S. 458; Guinn v. United States, 238 U. S. 347. Cf. note 18.

 The dissenting opinion did not urge that §§ 19 and 20 are wholly void for ambiguity, since it put to one side cases involving discrimination for race or color as “plainly outlawed by the Fourteenth Amendment,” as to which it was said, “Since the constitutional mandate is plain, there is no reason why § 19 or § 20 should not be applicable.” However it was thought “no such unambiguous mandate” had been given by the constitutional provisions relevant in the Classic case. 313 U. S. at 332.

 Cf. note 18.

 Whether or not the two are coextensive in limitation of federal and state power, respectively, there is certainly a very broad correlation in coverage, and it hardly could be maintained that one is confined by more clear-cut boundaries than the other, although differences in meandering of the boundaries may exist.

 The Court’s opinion in the Classic case treated this clause of § 20, cf. note 12, as entirely distinct from the preceding clauses, stating that “the qualification with respect to alienage, color and race, refers only to differences in punishment and not to deprivations of any rights or privileges secured by the Constitution,” (emphasis added) as was thought to be evidenced by the grammatical structure of the section and “the necessities of the practical application of its provisions.” 313 U. S. 326.
The “pains and penalties” provision is clearly one against discrimination. ' It does not follow that the qualification as to alienage, color and face does not also refer to the “deprivation of any rights or privileges” clause, though not in an exclusive sense. No authority for the contrary- dictum was cited. History here would seem to outweigh doubtful grammar, since, as § 20 originally appeared in the Civil Rights Act, the qualification as to “color or race” (alienage was added later)- seems clearly applicable to its entire prohibition. Although the section is not exclusively a discrimination statute, it would seem clearly, in the light of its history, to include discrimination for alienage, color or race among the prohibited modes of depriving persons of rights or privileges.

 Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651 (1884); United States v. Waddell, 112 U. S. 76 (1884); Logan v. United States, 144 U. S. 263 (1892); In re Quarles and Butler, 158 U. S. 532 (1895); Motes v. United States, 178 U. S. 458 (1900); United States v. Mosley, 238 U. S. 383 (1915); United States v. Morris, 125 F. 322 (1903); United States v. Lackey, 99 F. 952 (1900), reversed on other grounds, 107 F. 114, cert. denied, 181 U. S. 621.
In United States v. Mosley, supra, as is noted in the text, the Court summarily disposed of the question of validity, stating that the section’s constitutionality “is not open to question.” 238 U. S. at 386. Cf. note 17. The Court was concerned with implied repeal, but stated: “But § 6 [the antecedent of § 19 in the Enforcement Act] being devoted, as we have said, to the protection of all Federal rights from conspiracies against them . . . Just as the Fourteenth Amendment . . . was adopted with a view to the protection of the colored race but has been found to be equally important in its application to the rights of all, § 6 had a general scope and used general words that have become the most important . . . The section now begins with sweeping general words. Those words always were in the act, and the present form gives them a congressional interpretation. Even if that interpretation would not have been held correct in an indictment under § 6, which we are far from intimating, and if we cannot interpret the past by the present, we cannot allow the past so far to affect the present as to deprive citizens of the United States of the general protection which on its face § 19 most reasonably affords.” 238 U. S. at 387-388. (Emphasis added.) The dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Lamar raised no question of the section’s validity. It maintained that Congress had not included or had removed protection of voting rights from the section, leaving only civil rights within its coverage. 238 ü. S. at 390.
The cases holding that the Fourteenth Amendment and § 19 do not apply to infractions of constitutional rights involving no state action recognize and often affirm the section’s applicability to wrongful action by state officials which infringes them: United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542 (1876); Hodges v. United States, 203 U. S. 1 (1906); United States v. Powell, 212 U. S. 564 (1909), see also 151 F. *126648; Ex parte Riggins, 134 F. 404 (1904), dismissed, 199 U. S. 547; United States v. Sanges, 48 F. 78 (1891), writ of error dismissed, 144 U. S. 310; Powe v. United States, 109 F. 2d 147 (1940), cert. denied, 309 U. S. 679. See also United States v. Hall, 26 Fed. Cas. 79, No. 15,282 (1871); United States v. Mall, 26 Fed. Cas. 1147, No. 15,712 (1871).

 Cf. the authorities cited in notes 22 and 25; United States v. Saylor, 322 U. S. 385.

 Sections 19 and 37 clearly overlap in condemning conspiracies to violate constitutional rights. The latter, apparently, has been more frequently used, at any rate recently, when civil rather than political rights are involved. It goes without saying that in these cases validity of the application of § 37, charging conspiracy to violate § 20, depends upon the latter’s validity in application to infraction of the rights charged to have been infringed.

 Recent examples involving these and other rights are: Culp v. United States, 131 F. 2d 93; Catlette v. United States, 132 F. 2d 902; United States v. Sutherland, 37 F. Supp. 344; United States v. Trierweiler, 52 F. Supp. 4.
In the Culp case the court said: “That this section [§ 20] has not lost any of its vitality since it was originally enacted, is indicated *127by . . . United States v. Classic ... It is our opinion that a state law enforcement officer who, under color of state law, willfully and without cause, arrests and imprisons an inhabitant of the United States for the purpose of extortion, deprives him of a right, privilege, and immunity secured and protected by the Constitution of the United States, and commits one of the offenses defined in § 52.” 131 F. 2d at 98. Fourteenth Amendment rights were involved also in the Catlette case; and in United States v. Trierweiler, supra, the court said: “The congressional purpose, obviously, is to assure enjoyment of the rights of citizens defined by the Fourteenth Amendment, including the mandate that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law . . .” 52 F. Supp. at 5.
United States v. Buntin, 10 F. 730, involved alleged discrimination for race in denying the right to attend public school. In United States v. Chaplin, 54 F. Supp. 926, the court ruled that a state judge, acting in his judicial capacity, is immune to prosecution under § 37 for violating § 20. But cf. Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339.

 These have been the perennial objections, notwithstanding uniform rejection in cases involving interference with both political and civil rights. Cf. the authorities cited in notes 7, 10, 22 and 25.

 Compare United States v. Chaplin, 54 F. Supp. 926 (see note 25 supra), with Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339.

 Cf. United States v. Buntin, 10 F. 730.

 Cf. authorities cited in notes 7, 10, 22 and 25.

 Cf. Part III.

 Compare the statutes upheld in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568, 573-574; Gorin v. United States, 312 U. S. 19, 23-28; Minnesota v. Probate Court, 309 U. S. 270, 274; Old Dearborn Co. v. Seagram Corp., 299 U. S. 183, 196; Bandini Petroleum Co. v. Superior Court, 284 U. S. 8, 18; Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 360, 368-369; Fox v. Washington, 236 U. S. 273, 277-278; United States v. Keitel, 211 U. S. 370, 393-395.

 1 think all this would be implied if “willfully” had not been added to § 20 by amendment. The addition but reinforces the original purpose. Cf. note 13 supra. Congress, in this legislation, hardly can be taken to have sought to punish merely negligent conduct or honest error of judgment by state officials. The aim was at grosser violations of basic rights and the supreme law. Sensible construction of the language, with other considerations, requires this view. The consistent course of the section’s application supports it.

 See Flack, Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment (1908) 22-38; Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 474-607, 1151 ff.
Senator Davis of Kentucky said that “this short bill repeals all the penal laws' of the States. . . . The cases . . . the . . . bill would bring up every day in the United States would be as numerous as the passing minutes. The result would be to utterly subvert our Government . . .’•’ Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 598.

 Cf. note 8.