Court Opinion

ID: 9641674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:37:39.471485+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:39.055676
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Smith joined by Justice Griffin,
dissenting.
I agree that the majority opinion does express a very harsh doctrine. I do not agree with the majority, and, therefore, respectfully file this dissent. The tentative opinion of the Court of Civil Appeals accompanying the certificate does not agree with the majority.
The provisions of Sections 5 and 6, Article 725d, Vernon’s Annotated Penal Code, reads as follows:
“Sec. 5. An owner of a seized vessel, vehicle or aircraft may file a verified answer within twenty (20) days of the mailing or publication of notice of seizure. If no such answer is filed, the court shall hear evidence of violation of this Act and shall upon motion forfeit such vessel, vehicle or aircraft to the Texas Department of Public Safety, Narcotics Section. If such answer is filed, a time for hearing on forfeiture shall be set within thirty (30) days of the date of filing the answer and notice of such hearing shall be sent to all owners as prescribed in Section 4 of this Act.
“Sec. 6. If it shall appear that the owner of the vessel, vehicle or aircraft has filed a verified answer denying the use of such vessel, vehicle or aircraft in violation of this Act, then *174the burden shall rest upon the State, represented by the District Attorney to prove as in other penal cases, the violation of the provisions of this Act. Provided, however, that in the event no answer has been filed by the owner of said vessel, vehicle or aircraft, the notice of seizure may be introduced into evidence and shall be prima facie evidence of said violation.
“At the hearing, any claimant of any right, title or interest in the vessel, vehicle or aircraft may prove his lien, mortgage or conditional sales contract, to be bona fide and created without knowledge that the vessel, vehicle or aircraft was to be used in violation of this Act.”
These sections were adopted by amendment to the Act, and indicate a clear purpose to hold not subject to the Act all innocent owners. Section 5 expressly provides for notice to owners and a hearing. Section 6 places the burden upon the State, represented by the District Attorney of the district where the matter is pending to prove, as in other penal cases, the violation of the provisions of the Act. Why provide for notice and hearing to owners of any vehicle listed in the Act, and why have a hearing if no relief can be obtained? In our case, we are dealing with a penal statute of Texas and it is my contention that the federal rule has no application to the case at bar. The hearing necessarily is governed by the penal laws of Texas and the Act itself takes cognizance of the well known rule of innocence, and the words of Section 5 and 6 lead to but one conclusion, that conclusion being that if the State fails to discharge its burden by failing to show a violation of the Act, then, and in that event, the innocent owner would be entitled to possession of his vehicle, and the forfeiture would be denied.
A hearing was had in this case. The trial court heard the pleadings and evidence and argument of counsel and after a full trial on the question of whether or not the owner, Wayne Richards, had violated any provisions of Articlé 725d, supra, entered its judgment in favor of Richards and the Ridglea State Bank, who was also a defendant and was an innocent lienholder. The judgment of the Court contained the following findings:
“1. April 27, 1956, the defendant Portwood unlawfully possessed contraband narcotics which he transported in Tar-rant County, Texas, by means of a 1955 Ford pick-up, 1956 license No. IB 7996, whereof the defendant Richards is the registered and real owner and the defendant Ridglea State *175Bank a registered and bona fide lien holder for a debt less than the persent value of the vehicle.
“2. Portwood’s possession of the vehicle was accomplished by representation to the owner, Richards, that he wished to borrow it for not more than three quarters of an hour, to drive home and change clothes. Richards’ lending of the vehicle was gratuitous. He did not know Portwood possessed narcotics, and the transportation by means of his pick-up was without Richards’ consent or knowledge.”
It is inconceivable under the record in this case that this Court can find any sound basis for the harsh result as indicated in the majority opinion.
I think the rule announced in the case of General Motors Acceptance Corporation, 118 Texas 189, 12 S.W. 968, 970, should be applied in the present case. In that case the statute involved did not except from its operation the interest of an innocent lien holder as does the case at bar. In spite of that fact, this Court, speaking through the Commission of Appeals, interpreted the Act and held that the property of an innocent lien holder could not be forfeited. In so holding the court used language broad enough in its terms to cover a situation such as we have here, where an innocent owner is involved. In holding in favor of the innocent lien holder, the Court said:
“Manifestly, the seizure, sale, etc., are provided by way of penalty for the crime of ‘unlawful transportation or storage of intoxicating liquor.’ And, in our opinion, there is lack of all warrant for a supposition that a person who is entirely innocent of commission or complicity in the offense is to be punished by forfeiture of his property. The supposition is devoid of merit for at least two reasons: (a) The language of the statute, recognizing, as it does, the inherent innocence of the property itself, implies the contrary; (b) our Bill of Rights, including due process as an indispensable requisite, opposes insuperable obstacles to that species of fiat, and it cannot be supposed that the Legislature intended to do what it was powerless to do.
“We are aware of decisions to the effect that due process, in so far as guaranteed in the Federal Constitution, is not condemned in a statute designed for that purpose (see Van Oster v. Kansas, 272 U.S. 465, 47 Sup. Ct. 133, 71 L. Ed. 354, 47 A.L.R. 1044), but the actual result disclosed in the opinion cited aids demonstration of their unsoundness. Stella Van Os-*176ter, against whom no charge was made, lost her property although the alleged criminal was acquitted by a jury of his peers and although the thing itself was not guilty, within the fiction of moral taint of inanimates. There was lacking the ‘analogy of the law of deodand,’ the element of ‘negligence of the owner,’ the ‘goring by an ox so that he shall be stoned’ and the ‘falling of a thing to cause a man’s death’ referred to in Goldsmith, Jr. —Grant Co. v. United States, 254 U.S. 505, 510, 511, 41 Sup. Ct. 189, 65 L. Ed. 376. The opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States are entitled to great respect, but in a case like this they are not obligatory. There is to be found in Goldsmith, Jr. — Grant Co. v. United States virtually an apology for the doctrine applied in Van Oster v. Kansas and what amounts to a recognition of the impossibility of squaring the doctrine ‘with accepted tests of human conduct.’ Our duty includes use of independent judgment, and in its performance we cannot accept the doctrine urged. Clem v. Evans (Texas Com. App.) 291 S.W. 871, 51 A.L.R. 1135.”
In the case of Lorance v. State, Texas Civ. App., 172 S.W. 2d 386, er. ref., the claimant of the automobile involved was an innocent owner who filed her claim contending that she owned the automobile and did not know it was being used or would be used by her son in the illegal transportation of intoxicating liquor and prayed that it be restored to her. Although the Court only passed on the jurisdictional question, it did reverse and remand the case for trial on this particular issue. In the course of the opinion the General Motors case, supra, was quoted at great length and apparently with approval. This Court refused a writ of error. It is my view that the same principles should govern the disposition of the present case.
The purpose of these statutes in the prohibition days was the same as it is today with narcotics, i.e., the curbing of transportation of illegal products to various parts of the United States as well as Texas. This decision today is designed to close the avenues of such transportation and the accessibility of ready markets for the harmful narcotics by way of a reasonable exercise of police power. Conceding that there is such a relation of the Act to the unlawful transportation of narcotics, there is a qualification upon the exercise of police power. That qualification is that the exercise of police power must be reasonable. The measure invoked by the Court in this instance is too drastic and only bears relation to the purpose of the Act at the tremendous expense of innocent owners of automobiles. This expense is that the innocent person’s automobile is taken and *177thereby extinguishing all right, title, and interest in the property. There appears no possible method by which the innocent owner could discover that the bailee was engaged in narcotic traffic unless it was a matter of common knowledge to all. No matter how careful the average owner may be, it would be impossible for him to detect the illegal product.
It is illustrated by the act itself that the Legislature intended to inject the element of innocence into its legislation. The innocent owner may well be covered by analogy to these situations in the Act itself. Although the Legislature expressly made allowance and exempted the innocent lienholder and the common carrier from the Act, it is said that there is no mention of the innocent owner and therefore must be included within the Act. The Legislature has made allowance for the innocent lienholder on the basis that he has no control over the vehicle and therefore not responsible for its use. They have also made allowance by exemption for the public carrier because they are not at liberty to refuse service to any single individual but are obligated to serve them all. It is stated that there is a difference in a lienholder and an innocent owner, but, nevertheless, there are many examples and situations in which unscrupulous individuals engaged in dope transportation could obtain immunity as far as their property is concerned under the guise of innocent lienholders. The innocent party in the situation at hand should not be punished where there is legislation such as Secs. 5 and 6 of Article 725d, supra, which clearly provides for a hearing and trial which would result in absolving the owner of all wrong.
It is evident that the Congress felt that the rule set up by the federal courts was harsh. They set up a procedure by which there could be remission or mitigation of these types of penalties. 19 U.S.C.A. 1618 and 49 U.S.C.A. 784. They provide that any person interested in any vehicle seized under the provisions of that chapter may tile with the Secretary of the Treasury or Secretary of Commerce a petition for remission or mitigation of such fine or penalty. If the appeal body finds that the forfeiture was incurred without willful negligence or intention on the part of the petitioner to violate the law, he may remit as he sees reasonable and just. However, in Texas, we have no such legislation to allow an innocent person to appeal in a situation as before us today. If there were some other legislative enactment to give the innocent owner some redress, this doctrine just announced by the majority would not be so offensive. In short, what the majority has accomplished today is that the *178doctrine of deodands has been revived under the guise of a reasonable exercise of police power.
In my judgment the provisions of Sections 5 and 6 of Article 725d, Vernon’s Annotated Penal Code of Texas, significantly point up the element of innocence and specifically place the burden of proof upon the State, represented by the Ditsrict Attorney of the district, to prove, as in other penal cases, the violation of the provisions of this Act.
The majority opinion recognizes that the doctrine of deo-dand was finally discarded in England by statute, and was so repugnant to the American concept of justice that it was not included as part of the common law of this country, yet, the majority justifies that same repugnant doctrine and adopts it as the law of Texas under the guise of a reasonable exercise of police power.
The fact that the Legislature has specifically excepted innocent bona fide lien holders, common carriers, and owners whose automobiles have been unlawfully taken by the wrongdoer does not justify invoking the rule of construction that an exception makes plain the intent that the statute should apply in all cases not excepted. I rather think that the Legislature realized that it was powerless to enact a statute which would authorize the forfeiture of an automobile of an innocent owner. I do not believe it was the intention of the Legislature in passing Article 725d, Vernon’s Annotated Penal Code of Texas, to permit the property of an innocent owner to be forfeited when "used by another in violation of the Article. Otherwise, it would not have adopted Sections 5 and 6 by amendment. It has never been held by this or any other court in Texas that the property of an innocent owner, one who has committed no wrong, can be seized and forfeited to the State. In our case, the forfeited property goes to the Texas Department of Public Safety instead of to the King, as in the days of the doctrine of the deodand. I cannot believe that the Legislature intended to do that which it was prohibited from doing by the Bill of Rights, as set forth in Article 1 of the State Constitution.
The appellant states that the only issue for determination is whether or not the Legislature in the exercise of the general police power may provide for the forfeiture of a chattel where that property has been used for or in connection with a specified unlawful purpose or act, even though the owner thereof had no knowledge of or guilt in the unlawful act. After citing *179a number of federal authorities, among them being those discussed in the Texas case of General Motors Acceptance Corporation v. State, supra, the appellant, in its brief announces that in the event we hold the Act under consideration unconstitutional, it is particularly disturbed over the prospect of a majority of narcotic cases, in which a vehicle is involved, will be handled by federal agents, and that the revenue derived from the sale of confiscated automobiles of innocent owners will go to the Federal Government instead of the State of Texas.
The appellant candidly admits that the principles underlying the doctrine of the deodand are proclaimed and sustained in the several federal cases relied upon. For example, appellant states its position to be: “The principle of forfeiture is recognized as a proceeding in rem against the chattel in which the law ascribes to it a power of complicity and guilt in the offense without regard to the position or intent of the legal owner of the property.” The case of Goldsmith, Jr.-Grant Company v. United States, 254 U.S. 505, 41 Sup Ct. 189, 191, 65 L. Ed. 376, announces the principle which the majority holds was fully intended to be adopted as the law in Texas, and the one upon which appellant relies. In that case the Court said: “In breaches of revenue provisions some forms of property are facilities, and therefore it may be said, that Congress interposes the care and responsibilities of their owner in aid of the prohibitions of the law and its punitive provisions, by ascribing to the property a certain personality, a power of complicity and guilt in the wrong. In such case there is some analogy to the law of deodand by which a personal chattel that was the immediate cause of the death of any reasonable creature was forfeited. To the superstitious reason to which the rule was ascribed, Blackstone adds ‘that such misfortunes are in part owing to the negligence of the owner, and therefore he is properly punished by such forfeiture’. And he observed, ‘A like punishment is in like cases inflicted by the Mosaical law: “if an ox gore a man that he die, the ox shall be stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten.” And, among the Athenians, whatever was the cause of a man’s death, by falling upon him, was exterminated or cast out of the dominions of the republic.’ ” This doctrine was rejected in Parker-Harris Co. v. Tate, 135 Tenn. 509, 188 S.W. 54. In that case the court said, in part:
“In this state, we have a positive denunciation of its principle [deodand doctrine] firmly imbedded in the fundamental law. * * *.
*180If appellant is invoking the doctrine of deodand, seemingly it implies that the Legislature lacks that fidelity to logic and judicial morality exhibited by the Athenians and the children of Israel. Those ancients at least were consistent. Under their law the guilty thing, whether it was the unreasoning ox or the inanimate brick, was destroyed. No alchemy of sale transmuted its character and restored it to its former position of social resepctability. Although the deodand doctrine does not appear to be by our Constitution expressly eliminated from our jurisprudence, we do not think that it has ever been adhered to in this State, and we believe that the forfeiture of the property of an innocent owner must rest upon a more substantial ground than the “fiction of moral taint of inanimates.”
If it was the intention of the Legislature that the property of an innocent owner of an automobile should be forfeited as held by the majority, then that portion of Article 725d, supra, upon which the State relies, is void because it is in violation of the State Constitution. Article 1, Section 19, of the Constitution, provides that “No citizen of this state shall be deprived of life, liberty, property or immunities, or in any manner disfranchised, except by the due course of the law of the land.” And Section 29 of the same Article reads: “To guard against transgressions of the high powers herein delegated, we declare that everything in this ‘Bill of Rights’ is excepted out of the general powers of government, and shall forever remain inviolate, and all laws contrary thereto, * * * shall be void.”
The people must be protected in their property rights as provided in the Constitution. The Legislature has no authority to transgress upon the right of a citizen, who has committed no wrong. He has the right to acquire and own property, and to use it as he pleases so long as his act in such use harms no one, and so long as his permissive use by others of his property is innocently authorized. In the case of Spann v. City of Dallas, 111 Texas 350, 235 S.W. 513, 515, 19 A.L.R. 1387, this court said:
“* * * In our Constitution the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights are, by express provision, ‘excepted out of the general powers of government.’ It is declared that they ‘shall forever remain inviolate,’ and that ‘all laws contrary thereto shall be void.’
“To secure their property was one of the great ends for which men entered into society. The right to acquire and own *181property, and to deal with it and use it as the owner chooses, so long as the use harms nobody, is a natural right. It does not owe its origin to constitutions. It existed before them. It is a part of the citizen’s natural liberty — an expression of his freedom, guaranteed as inviolate by every American Bill of Rights.”

“It is not a right, therefore, over which the police power is paramount. Like every other fundamental liberty, it is a right to which the police power is subordinate.”

The law of the. land means the general law. It means that a citizen shall hold his liberty, life, property and immunities under the protection of the general rules of society. See Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations, Sixth Edition, p. 431. An enactment of the Legislature may not be “the law of the land.” Certainly it is not when the enactment is under a power which has been “excepted out of the general powers of government.”
I would answer both certified questions in the negative.
Opinion delivered April 24, 1957.