Court Opinion

ID: 9461841
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:25:54.703284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:17.402642
License: Public Domain

MANSFIELD, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part):
I concur in Judge Friendly’s characteristically thorough and scholarly opinion except for that portion which reverses defendants’ convictions on Count 2 on the gro'und that § 2114 is “limited to crimes having a postal nexus.” From this I must respectfully dissent. I would affirm the convictions on Count 2.
Section 2114 plainly prohibits defendants’ conduct and is not limited to postal offenses. To reach the majority’s view one must stand a well-established principle of legislative interpretation on .its head. Although it has been observed, somewhat in jest, that some may have a tendency to “go to the statute” only “when the legislative history is doubtful,” see Greenwood v. United States, 350 U.S. 366, 374, 76 S.Ct. 410, 415, 100 L.Ed. 412 (1956) (Frankfurter, J.), the recent decision of a panel of this court in United States v. Rivera, 513 F.2d 519 (2d Cir. 1975), relied upon by the majority, went to an even greater extreme. It substituted dubious legislative history for the plain, unambiguous language of the statute. Despite the suggestion by Rivera that the “plain meaning” doctrine of statutory interpretation of Caminetti v. United States, 242 U.S. 470, 485, 37 S.Ct. 192, 61 L.Ed. 442 (1971), has become outmoded, it remains very much *968alive and viable. See, e.g., United States v. Oregon, 366 U.S. 643, 648, 81 S.Ct. 1278, 1281, 6 L.Ed.2d 575 (1961), where Justice Black, speaking for the Court, stated:
“Having concluded that the provisions of § 1 are clear and unequivocal on their face, we find no need to resort to the legislative history of the Act. Since the State has placed such heavy reliance upon that history, however, we do deem it appropriate to point out that this history is at best inconclusive. It is true, as the State points out, that Representative Rankin, as Chairman of the Committee handling the bill on the floor of the House, expressed his view during the course of discussion of the bill on the floor that the 1941 Act would not apply to insane veterans incompetent to make valid contracts. But such statements, even when they stand alone, have never been regarded as sufficiently compelling to justify deviation from the plain language of a statute.” [Footnotes omitted].
The proper time-tested procedure is first to consult the statute and be guided by its plain meaning, with resort to legislative history only when the statute appears ambiguous.
“There is, of course, no more persuasive evidence of the purpose of a statute than the words by which the legislature undertook to give expression to its wishes. Often these words are sufficient in and of themselves to determine the purpose of the legislation. In such cases we have followed their plain meaning.” United States v. American Trucking Ass’ns, Inc., 310 U.S. 534, 543, 60 S.Ct. 1059, 1063, 84 L.Ed. 1345 (1940). [Footnotes omitted].
See Browder v. United States, 312 U.S. 335, 338, 61 S.Ct. 599, 601, 85 L.Ed. 862 (1941), where the Court stated:
“The plain meaning of the words of the act covers this use. No single argument has more weight in statutory interpretation than this.” [Footnote omitted].
In accord, Addison v. Holly Hill Fruit Prods., Inc., 322 U.S. 607, 617-18, 64 S.Ct. 1215, 88 L.Ed. 1488 (1944).
As Justice Jackson stated in his concurrence in Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Corp., 341 U.S. 384, 395-96, 71 S.Ct. 745, 751, 95 L.Ed. 1035 (1951):
“Resort to legislative history is only justified where the face of the Act is inescapably ambiguous, and then I think we should not go beyond Committee reports, which presumably are well considered and carefully prepared. I cannot deny that I have sometimes offended against that rule. But to select casual statements from floor debates, not always distinguished for candor or accuracy, as a basis for making up our minds what law Congress intended to enact is to substitute ourselves for the Congress in one of its important functions. The Rules of the House and Senate, with the sanction of the Constitution, require three readings of an Act in each House before final enactment. That is intended, I take it, to make sure that each House knows what it is passing and passes what it wants, and that what is enacted was formally reduced to writing. It is the business of Congress to sum up its own debates in its legislation.”
See also Malat v. Riddell, 383 U.S. 569, 86 S.Ct. 1030, 16 L.Ed.2d 102 (1966); Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Brown, 380 U.S. 563, 571-72, 85 S.Ct. 1162, 14 L.Ed.2d 75 (1965).
Section 2114 is not even slightly ambiguous. It plainly provides in clear and unequivocal language that “[w]hoever assaults any person having lawful charge, control, or custody of any mail matter or of any money or other property of the United States, ... or robs any such person of mail matter, or of any money, or other property of the United States ” (emphasis added) is guilty of a crime punishable by up to 10 years for the first offense and by a mandatory 25-year term if the custodian is wounded or has his life put in jeopardy by a dangerous weapon. If Congress had wanted to limit the offenses prohib*969ited by § 2114 to any assault on a postal employee or any assault upon a person holding money or other property in the custody of the United States Post Office, it surely knew how to do so. It has repeatedly enacted laws limited to offenses with respect to “mail,” “letters” or “packets,” 18 U.S.C. §§ 1693, 1694, 1695, 1696, 1698,1700, 1701, 1703, a “post office or any authorized depository for mail matter,” 18 U.S.C. § 1702, a “letter box,” “mail receptacle” or “authorized depository for mail matter,” 18 U.S.C. §§ 1705, 1708, “mail bags,” 18 U.S.C. § 1706, “property used by the Post Office Department,” 18 U.S.C. § 1707, “postal funds,” 18 U.S.C. § 1711, a “letter or mail carrier,” 18 U.S.C. § 1702, and a “postmaster” or “Postal Service Employee,” 18 U.S.C. § 1709.
I share Judge Friendly’s view that the 1948 transfer of § 2114 (formerly § 320) by the Reviser of the Criminal Code from the subdivision of the Code entitled “Offenses Against Postal Service” to Chapter 103, entitled “Robbery and Burglary,” did not enlarge the scope of the statute, which had been enacted in 1935. At best it indicated that the Reviser may have believed that § 2114 reached beyond an assault on a postal employee or a custodian of postal property. But it is equally apparent that the earlier placement of the 1935 statute in the subdivision entitled “Offenses Against Postal Service,” to which Judge Friendly attaches significance, did not restrict the scope of the statute. Indeed, prior to the 1948 revision, the Code did not have any subdivision classifying crimes in the broad generic terms later used in the 1948 revision (e.g., embezzlement, theft, extortion, gambling, homicide, fraud, rape, etc.), much less in the comprehensive and coordinated terms proposed by the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws.1 Thus prior to 1948 there was not a more general subdivision of the Code into which § 2114 (formerly § 320) could have been placed. It is significant, for instance, that prior to 1948 the statute making it a crime to kill various classifications of federal officers and employees, 18 U.S.C. § 253, now 18 U.S.C. § 1114, was to be found in Chapter 6, entitled “Offenses Against Public Justice,” there being no chapter entitled “Homicide” until 1948.
Assuming that § 2114 was ambiguous, which it is not, and that resort to legislative history was permissible for the purpose of resolving the ambiguity, that history provides scant assistance to the majority. If anything, it reinforces the statute’s plain unequivocal language. The majority relies heavily upon the statement of one Congressman, Donald C. Dobbins, on the floor of Congress, during debates on the bill, to the effect that its only purpose was to protect property in the custody of postal officials. See 79 Cong.Rec. 8205 (1935). If this was the sole purpose, one naturally asks why the bill did not so limit itself, like scores of statutes that are so limited. Aside from the failure to take this course, which would be immediately obvious to the least skillful of draftsmen, to attach controlling significance to one statement from floor debates, as Justice Jackson observed in Schwegmann Bros, v. Calvert Corp., supra, is a rather flimsy basis for interpretation. Indeed, an exchange which occurred on the floor between Congressmen Truax and Wolcott with respect to the bill on the same date evidences a desire to pass a broad bill. A suggestion by Mr. Truax that the bill should penalize the burglarizing of a person’s home drew a rejoinder by Congressman Wolcott that for jurisdictional reasons “the bill is confined to assaults on Federal law-enforcement officers.” 79 Cong.Rec. 8205 (1935).
*970The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the authoritative source for interpretation of a statute lies in the committee report on the bill, which “represents the considered and collective understanding of those Congressmen involved in drafting and studying proposed legislation,” Zuber v. Allen, 396 U.S. 168, 186, 90 S.Ct. 314, 324, 24 L.Ed.2d 345 (1969), as distinguished from the passing comments of one member, United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 385, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968); Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Corp., supra, 341 U.S. at 395, 71 S.Ct. 745. Here the official reports of both the House and Senate Committees with respect to the bill disclose that, although the bill was introduced at the request of the Postmaster General and hence referred to the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads of each House, both committees understood its purpose to be “to bring within the provisions of the Penal Code the crime of robbing or attempting to rob custodians of Government moneys.” H.R.Rep. No. 582, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935); Sen.Rep. No. 1440, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935). The bill was described by the House Committee Report as one “Safeguarding Custodians of Government Moneys and Property’’ and by the Senate Committee Report as “Providing for Punishment for the Crime of Robbing or Attempting to Rob Custodians of Government Moneys or Property.” Id. Thus, although the immediate need for the bill may have arisen from a desire on the part of the Postmaster General to subject assaults on custodians of postal funds to the same penalty as those upon custodians of mail, it was recognized that an assault upon any custodian of any government property should be equally punishable. Indeed, even the letter of the Postmaster General referred to in the two committee reports stated in two places that the bill was designed to punish the crime of “robbing or attempting to rob custodians of Government moneys.” Id. Thus neither the Postmaster General nor the two committees believed that the crime should be limited to postal employees or postal property.
Reading § 2114 according to its plain and unequivocal language serves the additional purpose of lending consistency to federal statutes dealing with the offense of violent robbery of a government employee. Under the majority’s strained interpretation of § 2114, the violent attempted robbery of a person having custody of postal property would carry a mandatory 25-year sentence whereas the successful robbery of a person having custody of other government money or property would be punishable by a maximum of 15 years imprisonment under § 2112 or by a maximum of 10 years as an assault under § 111 (and then only if a “deadly or dangerous weapon” were used). This meaningless disparity would be eliminated by a holding that a violent robbery of a custodian of any government property (whether it be mail matter or other property) draws the same penalty.
Apparently the factor that was of most force in persuading the panel in Rivera to reach its interpretation of § 2114, which the majority here follows, was the position taken by the Solicitor General of the United States in United States v. Hanahan, 442 F.2d 649 (7th Cir. 1971), vac. & rem’d, 414 U.S. 807, 94 S.Ct. 169, 38 L.Ed.2d 43 (1973), to the effect that § 2114 was intended to be limited to “robberies of post offices or postal employees,” which was promptly adopted by the Ninth Circuit in United States v. Fernandez, 497 F.2d 730 (9th Cir. 1974). Were we dealing with an interpretation of a statute or rule by a governmental agency based upon its highly specialized expertise in administering it, or an interpretation contemporaneous with the enactment of the statute or rule, the governmental agency’s view might be entitled to considerable weight. Thompson v. Clifford, 132 U.S.App.D.C. 351, 408 F.2d 154, 166-67 (1968); see, e.g., Zuber v. Allen, supra, 396 U.S. at 192-94, 90 S.Ct. 314; Perine v. William Norton & Co., Inc., 509 F.2d 114, 120 (2d Cir. 1974); Soriano v. United States, 494 F.2d 681, 683 (9th Cir. 1974); Foremost Dairies, Inc. v. Wirtz, 381 F.2d 653, 659-60 (5th Cir. 1967), cert. denied sub nom., 390 U.S. 946, 88 S.Ct. *9711031, 19 L.Ed.2d 1134 (1968). But, with due respect to the Solicitor General, he possesses no specialized or- unusual knowledge about the language or history of § 2114 entitling his opinion to any special deference. Moreover, his interpretation follows by almost 40 years the amendment of § 2114 which concerns us here. The members of this court are in just as good a position as the Solicitor General to interpret the statute and' need not defer to his construction when,, as here, there are “compelling indications that it is wrong.” Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 381, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 1802, 23 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969); see, e.g., Espinoza v. Farah Mfg. Co., 414 U.S. 86, 93-95, 94 S.Ct. 334, 38 L.Ed.2d 287 (1973). For the reasons stated above his view is incorrect in this case, influenced as it apparently was by the harshness of the mandatory 25-year sentence called for by § 2114 as compared with the maximum 15-year term imposed for violation of § 2112. Undoubtedly this view was a strong influence in leading the Fernandez court into error. Sensing that it could not rely upon legislative history to interpret an unambiguous statute, the Ninth Circuit in Fernandez solved the problem by labelling § 2114 “ambiguous.” A fair reading of the statute, however, discloses that it is not in the least bit ambiguous.

. The majority’s suggestion that the Brown Commission’s interpretation of § 2114 is in accord with that adopted by it does not bear scrutiny. Although the Commission (at p. 15) referred, in discussing jurisdictional bases for the federal criminal code, to § 2114 as dealing with mail, it later stated more accurately (p. 204) that § 2X14 deals with “the mails, and other federal property.” Furthermore, of course, § 2114 adds an offense not prohibited by § 2112, i.e., robbery that results in the infliction of a wound or that involves a dangerous weapon.