Court Opinion

ID: 9460084
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:40:11.824295+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:27.790646
License: Public Domain

*358WIDENER, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially):
I concur in the result.
We have a broad statute, 49 U.S.C. § 1472, which makes criminal with misdemeanor punishment the nonmalicious giving of false information in certain instances concerning a “deadly or dangerous weapon;” and a narrow statute, 18 U.S.C. § 35 (the amendment with which we are concerned being the last enacted), which provides a civil penalty in the same certain instances for giving the same information concerning “destructive substances.”
We have properly held that a bomb, admittedly a “destructive substance” under 18 U.S.C. § 35, is also a “deadly or dangerous weapon.” But bombs are not the only deadly or dangerous weapons, so the broad statute should include the narrow as the general includes the specific.
While noting that either under the opinion of the court or my concurrence, Mrs. Omirly may yet be proceeded against civilly, I would arrive at the majority result by applying the principle stated in Townsend v. Little, 109 U.S. 504, 3 S.Ct. 357, 27 L.Ed. 1012 (1883):
“According to the well-settled rule, general and specific provisions, in apparent contradiction, whether in the same or different statutes, and without regard to priority of enactment, may subsist together, the specific qualifying and supplying exceptions to the general. . . .” 109 U.S. 504, 512, 3 S.Ct. 357, 362, 27 L.Ed. 1012.
Since “[sjpecific terms prevail over the general in the same or another statute which otherwise might be controlling,” Ginsberg & Sons v. Popkin, 285 U.S. 204, 208, 52 S.Ct. 322, 323, 76 L.Ed. 704 (1932), and since the two statutes “may subsist together,” Townsend, supra at 512 of 109 U.S., 3 S.Ct. 357, I would hold that the civil penalty provision of 18 U.S.C. § 35 applies to Mrs. Omirly’s act, with no inference of repeal by implication.