Court Opinion

ID: 9638084
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:32:48.304038+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:03.531244
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Associate Justice
(dissenting).
The court holds that “the great weight of authority * * * compels us”. This is a new rule and an important one. I think it is erroneous.
Usually there are good reasons for a doctrine which is widely accepted, and uniformity itself has some value even in criminal law. Accordingly we should consider the weight of authority elsewhere for what it may be worth. But we should not determine our action by a count of foreign cases regardless of logic, consistency, and social need. “The social value of a rule has become a test of growing power and importance”.1 We should decide the question before us “in accordance with present-day standards of wisdom and justice rather than in accordance with some outworn and antiquated rule of the past” 2 which was never adopted here. To let judges who lived and *700died in other times and places make our decisions would be to abdicate as judges and serve as tellers.
This court, like every other American court, overrules its own decisions when need arises.3 Decisions of other courts are not more binding on us. Only last month we rejected a rule which was supported by the overwhelming weight of authority and adopted a contrary rule which we thought more logical and more useful.4 As the New York Court of Appeals has said, “we may as well disregard the overwhelming weight of authority elsewhere and start with a rule of our own, consistent with practical experience”.5 This court’s new rule against new rules appears to mean that this court must take no part in the development of the law.
Considered without regard to the foreign cases on which the court relies, the indictment is plainly valid. No doubt a promise is commonly an undertaking, but it is always an assertion of a present intention to perform. “I will” means among other things “I intend to”. It is so understood and it is meant to be so understood. Intention is a fact and present intention is a present fact. A promise made without an intention to perform is therefore a false statement about a present fact. This factual and declarative aspect of a promise is not a new discovery. It has come to be widely recognized in civil actions for deceit.6
In criminal cases most courts and text writers have clung to an old illusion that the same words cannot embody both a promise and a statement of fact. But this tradition that in a criminal case “the statement of an intention is not a statement of an existing fact” has begun to break down.7 It is an obvious fiction. The meaning of words is the same whether their author is-prosecuted civilly or criminally or not at all. The fiction that a promise made without intent to perform does not embody a misrepresentation conflicts with the facts, with the deceit cases, and with the interest of society in protecting itself against fraud. An Act of Congress makes it a crime in the District of- Columbia to obtain money “by any false pretense, with intent to defraud”.8 Congress did not exempt, and the court should not exempt, a pretense conveyed by words which also convey a promise. As a matter of plain English there could be no clearer case of false and fraudulent pretense than a borrower’s pretense that he intends to repay money which he actually does not intend to repay.
The old illusion that a promise states no facts is not the only source of the old tolerance of falsehoods regarding intention. That a fool and his money are soon parted was once accepted as a sort of natural law. In 1821 the fact that “common prudence and caution would have prevented any- injury” seemed to an English court a good reason for refusing to penalize an injury which had been intentionally inflicted by a false promise. The fact that common agility in dodging an intentional blow would have prevented any injury would not have seemed a reason for refusing to penalize a battery. Fools were fair game though cripples were not. But in modern times, no one not talking law would be likely to deny that society should protect mental as well as physical helplessness against intentional injuries.
Though the court decides the case on the basis of authority, the opinion concludes-with a defense of the prevailing rule. But *701to justify this rule it would be necessary to show that false pretenses regarding intention are a harmless way of obtaining money, or else that intention cannot be proved in prosecutions for false pretenses as it is constantly proved in other criminal prosecutions and in civil actions for deceit-.
Difficulties of proof are seldom greater in criminal cases than in civil, except that the prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. No peculiar difficulty of proof distinguishes this crime from others. Intentions of one sort or another must be proved in most criminal cases. They are usually proved by conduct. It is inherently no more difficult to prove an intent not to perform a promise than, for example, an intent to monopolize, to commit a felony, .or to receive goods knowing them to be stolen. Appellant’s conduct showed his intent. After getting $375 from a nurse by promising to buy liquor stamps and repay the money, he made the same promise a few days later and got $700 more. He said he needed the money to get the stamps. Yet he bought less than $40 worth of stamps, if any, during the next six weeks, and there is no evidence that he bought any stamps at any later time. Meanwhile he continued to borrow money from the woman. He made no repayments at any time. The jury might well conclude, as it did, that the difference between his promises and-his performance was not accidental but was part of his original plan. The court does not suggest that the proof of his original intention was insufficient. If it were thought to be insufficient, the conviction should be reversed on that ground. The rule which the court adopts will make prosecutions impossible even when admissions or other evidence make guilt obvious.
No peculiar danger to innocent men distinguishes this crime from others. No honest borrower who fails to repay a loan, or changes his mind about the use which he intended to make of the money, is likely to be charged with obtaining it by false pretenses. Prosecutions are not undertaken without evidence and convictions do not withstand attack unless they are supported by sufficient evidence. The danger of a counter suit for malicious prosecution is always present to discourage unfounded charges. The court’s picture of a flood of indictments against honest business men is unconvincing. No such flood has been observed in the few jurisdictions which have adopted the modern rule. It is true that innocent men are sometimes accused of crime. Innocent men have been convicted of murder.9 As long as rape is a crime, intercourse which is actually voluntary or even entirely imaginary will sometimes be charged and even punished as rape. Since it is impossible to prevent occasional miscarriage of justice, every criminal statute jeopardizes innocent people in some degree. The court suggests that the law should not jeopardize legitimate business. But this is the unavoidable price of public protection against illegitimate business. If the suggestion is sound the anti-trust law, the pure food law, the child labor law, the law against receiving stolen goods, and many others should be repealed, for malicious and damaging charges and erroneous convictions are possible under all of them. If the suggestion is sound the entire law of false pretenses and not merely a part of it should be repealed, for legal machinery is fallible with respect to the making, the falsity, and the maker’s knowledge of the falsity, of representations of every kind.
There is, as the court says, a vast difference between criminal penalties and civil redress. It is the more unfortunate to hold, as the court does, that a common sort of fraud is not a crime. Since civil redress is not punitive but compensatory, the decision means that the law of the District of Columbia offers no deterrent to this sort of fraud. If a swindler has property which can be taken in execution on a civil judgment, he may not always win by practicing this fraud. But he cannot lose. If he perseveres he will win in the long run, for he will not always be sued to judgment. And one who has no property on which execution can be levied is bound to win as often as he can find a victim.

 Funk v. United States, 290 U.S. 371, 382, 54 S.Ct. 212, 215, 78 L.Ed. 369, 93 A.L.R. 1136.

 E. g., George’s Radio, Inc., v. Capital Transit Co., 75 U.S.App.D.C. 187, 126 F.2d 219; Ross v. Hartman, 78 U.S. App.D.C. 217, 139 F.2d 14, 158 A.L.R. 1370, certiorari denied 321 U.S. 790, 64 S.Ct. 790, 88 L.Ed. 1080.

 Kay v. Cain, - U.S.App.D.C. -, 154 F.2d 305.

 Campbell v. New York Evening Post, 245 N.Y. 320, 328, 157 N.E. 153, 156, 52 A.L.R. 1432.

 51 A.L.R. 46, 63 ; 68 A.L.R. 635, 637; 91 A.L.R. 1295, 1297; 125 A.L.R. 879, 881.

 Commonwealth v. Morrison, 252 Mass. 116, 147 N.E. 588; Commonwealth v. McKnight, 289 Mass. 530, 195 N.E. 499, 506, petition for certiorari dismissed 296 U.S. 660, 56 S.Ct. 245, 80 L.Ed. 470; State v. McMahon, 49 R.I. 107, 140 A. 359; People v. Ames, Cal.App., 143 P.2d 92, 96; Smith v. Fontana, D.C. S.D.N.Y., 48 F.Supp. 55. Cf. State v. Bromley, 135 A. 813, 5 N.J.Misc. 195, affirmed 104 N.J.L. 186, 138 A. 923.

 D.C.Code 1940, § 22—1301, 50 Stat. 628.

 Edwin M. Borekard studies a number of instances in his book, Convicting the Innocent.