Court Opinion

ID: 9650940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:56:51.646096+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:27.651057
License: Public Domain

*243PARIS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I regret that I am not able to concur with the opinion to which the majority adheres. I differ from them but on one point; but regrettably, that point is vital to the case. The prosecution rests on a violation of the provisions of section 240, title 18 USCA. I am not able to avoid the conclusion that section 240, supra, does not cover the facts charged, or proved, in this prosecution.
It is so well-settled as to require no citation of cases, that there are no common-law crimes under the federal criminal law; so as a corollary, it follows, that before any person can be convicted of an alleged federal offense, the prosecution must be able to lay its finger on the statute which defines and denounces the act committed as a crime against the United States. If this cannot be done, the prosecution must fail.
Tt is equally as- well-settled, as the cases cited in the majority opinion conclusively prove, that a penal statute must be strictly construed; unless by its own terms (as the statute under discussion does not) it shall provide for a liberal construction. And this means, of course, that unless a given act is clearly denounced as a crime by the plain words of a statute such act is not a crime, and that no person can be demonstrated to be guilty, or to come within the terms of a criminal statute by a priori reasoning, philosophical deduction, or logical ratiocination. The words of a criminal statute, in short, must be to the plain man, as signposts, warning him of danger.
Section 240, supra, found in the Criminal Code as section 134, was enacted in 1909 (35 Stat. 1113), and is fairly new as a statute. I have found no other case of prosecution under its provisions, oí bribery of a witness before a grand jury. Violation of it is referred to in the case of Keeney v. United States (C. C. A.) 17 F.(2d) 976, as warranting a proceeding for contempt of court. Section 240, supra, nowhere mentions a grand jury. It merely denounces as a crime the receiving a bribe by one “being, or about to be, a witness upon a trial, hearing, or other proceeding, before any court or any officer authorized by the laws * * * to hear evidence or take testimony.” Some four other sections of the Criminal Code which deal with analogous crimes, namely, sections 133, 135, 136, and 137 (18 USCA §§ 239, 241, 242, 243), do mention juries, but section 134, 18 USCA § 240, supra, does not.
Within the strict rule of construction enjoined on courts, I do not believe that a grand jury is either a court or an officer, and the section mentions none other than a court or an officer. So I am of opinion that no prosecution (unless for contempt, and on that we are not called to pass) will lie under section 240, supra, for the act of receiving a bribe by a witness, when that witness is a witness, or is to be a witness, before a grand jury. It may be an unfortunate instance of casus omissus, but that is a matter for the Congress to consider.
The only case cited by counsel for appellee, is Davey v. United States (C. C. A.) 208 F. 237, 241. The citation is misleading for the latter case is not in point, and if that case had held (as it did not) that section 240, applied to witnesses before a grand jury, it would have been bald dictum, because the indictment therein up for discussion was based on section 241, of title 18 USCA, while the instant case is an attempted prosecution under section 240, supra. Said section 241, by its plain words clearly applies to grand juries, for they are named specifically, while they are not so named in section 240. Simply because prosecution may lie under sections 241 or 239, title 18 USCA does not of itself at all warrant a prosecution under section 240, supra. It is quite certain that the cy pres doctrine has no application to the criminal law. I am of opinion the case should be reversed and the defendants discharged.