Court Opinion

ID: 9442503
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:50:01.241482+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:07.004033
License: Public Domain

RIDDICK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The presentment in this case, after reciting that the Grand Jury was engaged in “an inquiry concerning the violation of certain Federal laws and the identity of the person or persons violating those laws,” charged that “it became necessary for said Grand Jury to inquire into and ascertain the facts concerning the acquisition by Blanche A. Howard of between seventeen and eighteen thousand dollars during the years 1944 to 1949, inclusive, and the name of the person from whom Blanche A. Howard acquired the said sum of money,” and “that the said Blanche A. Howard, in answer to questions propounded to her, fails and refuses to truthfully tell where she got the $18,000 in cash * * * or to truthfully tell the name of the person from whom she received said $18,000.”
The remainder of the presentment contains a detailed recital of information in the possession of the Grand Jury and of the testimony of respondent before the Grand Jury, ostensibly made for the purpose of substantiating the charge of the Grand Jury that Blanche A. Howard was guilty of perjury in testifying that she received the seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars from one Jack Griffin alias Jack Gregory during the years 1932 to 1934. The presentment, having charged respondent with perjury in the respects stated, describes this alleged perjury as “obstructive, evasive, perjurious and contumacious,” which, of course, it was if the charge of the presentment is true. But this characterization of respondent’s testimony does not change the fact that the only charge of the presentment is that Blanche A. Howard was guilty of the crime of perjury.
Obviously, the presentment was laboriously prepared with a view to escaping the rule announced by the Supreme Court in Ex parte Hudgings, 249 U.S. 378, 39 S.Ct. 337, 63 L.Ed. 656, 11 A.L.R. 333, and In re Michael, 326 U.S. 224, 66 S.Ct. 78, 90 L.Ed. 30, which is that a witness may not be punished for contempt for perjury alone under section 268 of the Judicial Code, *916and that there “must be added-to the essential elements of perjury under the general law the further element of obstruction to the Court in the performance of its' duty.” The only element of obstruction charged in the presentment and found by the court is the alleged perjury of respondent in her testimony concerning the identity of the person from whom she received the seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars. In its finding the court followed the pattern set and borrowed the dfescriptive language used by tlie Grand Jury in the presentment. I think the effort to escape the rule in the Hudgings and Michael cases is as futile as it is obvious. I dissent.