Court Opinion

ID: 9450130
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:36:00.320905+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:09.636086
License: Public Domain

DIMOCK, District Judge
(coneur-ring).
As I read the majority opinion, the distinction thát it draws is between the servitor’s belief that he is being confined, by law, by force or by threat of force and his submitting to continued service because of a threat of another kind. I cannot find this distinction between different means of confinement to be implied by the statute.
The opinion rejects what I would consider the plain and intended meaning of “involuntary” as dealing only with the will of the servitor. That word raises the question of whether the will of the servitor has been subjugated, i. e., whether he has been rendered incapable of making a rational choice, and not the question of what were the means by which the servitude was imposed. It is impossible to generalize the means by which the will of man can be subjugated. What to one man is a paralyzing threat is to another merely a harsh alternative. Threats of force are the most extreme of threats to most of us but there are many who can brave this risk and will crumble in the face of others. To a drug addict the threat of deprivation of his supply is certainly more overbearing than the threat of almost any kind of force, yet it is a means falling outside of the majority’s guilt criterion.
On the other hand cases may be súp-posed within the majority’s guilt criterion where the servitude would not be' in*488voluntary. Take the case of United States v. Ingalls, D.C.S.D.Cal.S.D., 73 F.Supp. 76, cited by the majority. There was there a threat of prosecution and consequent imprisonment by the employer of a maidservant. All that my brethren would require in that case would be that she believe that the threat would be carried out. The Ingalls opinion, however, went into great detail as to the domination exercised by the employer and reached the conclusion, p. 78, that the servant “was a person wholly subject to the will of defendant; that she was one who had no freedom of action and whose person and services were wholly under the control of defendant.” The mere belief of a threat of imprisonment is not, to my mind, enough to satisfy the requirement of the statute. The victim must also have such fear of the consequences as to deprive him of will power.
The servitude may be voluntary though imposed by a means falling within the majority’s guilt criterion and may be involuntary though imposed by a means falling without that criterion.
The “void for vagueness” doctrine does not compel us to substitute for the statutory test of involuntariness an arbitrary classification of means. To have an arbitrary classification which will resolve with equal facility all of the cases that would arise under the statute is indeed a tempting prospect. It is much harder to have to work under a statute which will raise difficult questions in the borderline cases inevitable wherever the application of a statute depends upon an appraisal of the state of the human mind. Statutes are not, however, void for vagueness because they raise difficult questions of fact. They are void for vagueness only where they fail to articulate a definite standard. Jordan v. De George, 341 U.S. 223, 229-232, 71 S.Ct. 703, 95 L.Ed. 886. I should not have thought that a statute fixing involuntariness as a standard would fall within that class.
Where the subjugation of the will of the servant is so complete as to render him incapable of making a rational choice, the servitude is involuntary within the terms of the statute and it is only where there is such subjugation that the servitude is involuntary. Where a master “willfully” thus subjugates a servant’s will, he has violated section 1584 of Title 18 of the United States Code. Unless he does so, there is no such violation. There is no evidence in the record from which the jury could have found willful subjugation of a servant’s will. I concur in the result.