Court Opinion

ID: 9419460
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:36.192073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:18.264729
License: Public Domain

Mb. Justice Frankfurter,
dissenting:
Mr. Justice Roberts and I are unable to agree with the Court’s decision.
The ultimate issue in this case is whether a federal court should, by issuing an injunction, aid in the consummation of what appears to be a violation of the Criminal Code of the United States. For it must not be forgotten that a mandatory injunction, the relief sought in this suit, “is *394an extraordinary remedial process which is granted, not as a matter of right but in the exercise of a sound judicial discretion.” Morrison v. Work, 266 U. S. 481, 490.
A large shipment of wine and spirituous liquors was seized by law-enforcement officers of the State of Oklahoma while the liquor had temporarily come to rest at the terminal of the Transit Company. The liquor, in course of transit from East St. Louis, Illinois, to the Fort Sill, Military Reservation, was destined for the Officers Club at the Reservation for delivery to several hundred members of the Club on whose behalf its secretary was managing the importation of the liquor. Upon seizure the liquor was deposited in the County Court House of Oklahoma County, where it is held as an illegal shipment of intoxicating liquor subject to forfeiture and destruction. Thereupon the Transit Company brought this suit for a mandatory injunction against the state officers, requiring them to return the shipment and to refrain from interfering with its delivery by the Transit Company at the Reservation. The injunction issued and the Circuit Court of Appeals, in two separate opinions, approved, with one judge dissenting. 48 F. Supp. 594; 137 F. 2d 274.
The facts establish that that which was done, if it had been done in Oklahoma proper, would under its laws have constituted a misdemeanor. Delivery of the liquor on the Reservation would therefore be an offense under the federal criminal law by virtue of the Act of June 6th, 1940, 54 Stat. 234, whereby Congress made applicable to the Reservation the penal laws of Oklahoma in existence on February 1, 1940, 18 U. S. C. § 468. But even if there were doubt that the importation of the liquor into the Reservation under the circumstances of this record would offend the Criminal Code of the United States, on the ground that the act if committed within the jurisdiction of Oklahoma “by the laws thereof in force on February 1, 1940 . . . would be penal,” equity should resolve the *395doubt in favor of law by denying the extraordinary remedy of injunction instead of resolving it against law by granting the injunction.
Oklahoma is, colloquially speaking, a dry State. Only for strictly defined purposes may liquor from without the State be lawfully brought into it for consumption. Prohibited importations are penalized. If a transaction like the one before us related wholly to Oklahoma soil it would— there can hardly be doubt—be outlawed. The Circuit Judge who speaks with special knowledge of Oklahoma law assures us that “the State of Oklahoma, by its Constitution and laws, makes it unlawful to possess, transport, furnish, or receive this particular shipment of intoxicating liquor, and it is therefore contraband and subject to seizure and confiscation under the laws of the State,” 137 F. 2d at 279. Judge Murrah calls specific attention to an Oklahoma statute which makes it a misdemeanor “for any person in this State to receive directly or indirectly any liquors, the sale of which are prohibited by the laws of this State, from a common or other carrier.”1 The opinion of Judge Phillips recognizes that this Act of 1917 penalizes the *396transaction before us within Oklahoma, but rejects its bearing when a federal court is asked to grant an injunction involving this law by suggesting that this statute is “unconstitutional.” He bases this suggestion on the argument that inasmuch as the Oklahoma Supreme Court has held that a statute making mere possession of over one quart of spirituous liquors unlawful is not “a reasonable exercise of the police powers,” and therefore beyond the power of the legislature to make unlawful, Ex parte Wilson, 6 Okla. Cr. 451, 475, “it must likewise be beyond its power to make unlawful the possession of intoxicating liquor for personal use received from a common carrier.” 137 F. 2d at 277.2 In other words, it is argued that because the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that the mere possession of liquor cannot be made a crime by Oklahoma, Oklahoma cannot prohibit the receipt of liquor from a carrier. On such reasoning a law that has been on the Oklahoma statute books for more than twenty-five years, and during that period actively enforced and never questioned, is thrown into discard when a federal court is asked to exercise its duty of discretion in granting the extraordinary relief of an injunction. I am unable to follow such reasoning because Oklahoma law makes it baseless. The validity of this provision, as already indicated,, has been taken for granted by the Oklahoma courts. It was the subject of litigation in De Hasque v. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co., 68 Okla. 183, 173 P. 73, and Crossland v. State, 74 Okla. 58, 176 P. 944, and a conviction under this Section was sus*397tained in Walker v. State, 18 Okla. Cr. 661, 197 P. 520. This is a specific statute, the continuing validity of which is wholly unaffected by speculative doubts regarding other and irrelevant liquor legislation of Oklahoma. The dissenting judge was justified in reading the Act of 1917 as conclusively condemning the transaction which the carrier was seeking to consummate as an offense, were it subject to Oklahoma law.3
But the shipment of liquor in controversy was for delivery on the Fort Sill Reservation, that is, a place within the physical boundaries of Oklahoma but beyond its jurisdiction. It was stipulated between the parties that the purpose of the suit was to enable the Transit Company to transport and deliver the shipment to its destination in the Reservation. Such was the basis of the District Court’s decree requiring the return of the shipment and enjoining interference with “delivery of said shipment to its destination” and no place else. This brings us to the second half of the question in this case: may the Transit Company, according to the law that rules such matters on the Reservation, lawfully deliver this liquor at Fort Sill? Of course all transactions on the Reservation are subject to regulation by Congress. Constitution, Art. IY, § 3, *398par. 2; see Collins v. Yosemite Park Co., 304 U. S. 518; Penn Dairies v. Milk Control Comm’n, 318 U. S. 261; Pacific Coast Dairy v. Department of Agriculture, 318 U. S. 285. If it chooses, Congress may provide a rule of law which runs counter to the expressed dry policy of Oklahoma, and it may do so either specifically for Fort Sill or generally for all federal reservations. Congress has not done so. It has done the opposite. For more than a hundred years most of the rules of life on national reservations have been controlled by the laws of the States in which these reservations are located. By the Act of March 3,1825 (4 Stat. 115), Congress provided that when something is done on a federal reservation which is not made penal by the laws of Congress but which under State law, if the State had jurisdiction, would be punishable, the act should be equally punished as wrongful if committed on the reservation. In thus adopting the penal laws of the States as its code for lawful conduct on federal reservations within the States, Congress did not give to the States a free hand to impose the continuing process of State law-making on places over which the United States has jurisdiction. Only the laws of the States existing at the time when the Act of March 3, 1825 was enacted became operative on the reservations. United States v. Paul, 6 Pet. 141. And so, in view of the inevitable modifications and additions in the penal laws of the States, Congress has accommodated its adoption of those state laws, as the governing federal law, by bringing up to date from time to time its adoption for enforcement on federal reservations of the policies of the States which have penal sanctions. Accordingly, the Act of March 3, 1825, was in substance reenacted on April 5, 1866, 14 Stat. 12, 13, was carried forward in § 5391 of the Revised Statutes of 1878, was again reenacted on July 7, 1898, 30 Stat. 717, and became § 289 of the Federal Penal Code of 1910, 35 Stat. 1088, 1145. Since then and in relatively quick sue-*399cession, Congress has three times brought still nearer the effective date of state penal laws applicable on federal reservations, to wit by the amendments of June 15, 1933, 48 Stat. 152; June 20, 1935, 49 Stat. 394; and June 6, 1940, 54 Stat. 234. The last Amendment now controls whereby
“Whoever . . . shall do . . . any act or thing which is not made penal by any laws of Congress, but which if committed or omitted within the jurisdiction of the State, Territory, or district in which such place is situated, by the laws thereof in force on February 1, 1940, and remaining in force at the time of the doing ... of such act or thing, would be penal, shall be deemed guilty of a like offense and be subject to a like punishment.” 18 U. S. C. § 468.
The very important purpose of this legislation in the working of our dual system, as expounded after the fullest consideration heretofore given to this subject by this Court, bears repetition:
“while the statute leaves no doubt where acts are done on reservations which are expressly prohibited and punished as crimes by a law of the United States, that law is dominant and controlling, yet, on the other hand, where no law of the United States has expressly provided for the punishment of offenses committed on reservations, all acts done on such reservations which are made criminal by the laws of the several States are left to be punished under the applicable state statutes. When these results of the statute are borne in mind it becomes manifest that Congress, in adopting it, sedulously considered the twofold character of our constitutional government, and had in view the enlightened purpose, so far as the punishment of crime was concerned, to interfere as little as might be with the authority of the States on that subject over all territory situated within their exterior boundaries, and which hence would be subject to exclusive state jurisdie*400tion but for the existence of a United States reservation. In accomplishing these purposes it is apparent that the .statute, instead of fixing by its own terms the punishment for crimes committed on such reservations which were not previously provided for by a law of the United States, adopted and wrote in the state law, with the single difference that the offense, although punished as an offense against the United States, was nevertheless punishable only in the way and to the extent that it would have been punishable if the territory embraced by the reservation remained subject to the jurisdiction of the State.” United States v. Press Publishing Co., 219 U. S. 1, 9-10.4
Therefore the crucial question in relation to our present problem is whether any law of Congress has overridden the Oklahoma Act of 1917 which makes unlawful the transaction that the Transit Company seeks to consummate with the aid of an injunction issued by a federal court.
There is no such law. Long before the Twenty-first Amendment, Congress did provide that “The sale of or dealing in, beer, wine or any intoxicating liquors by any person in any post exchange or canteen or army transport or upon any premises used for military purposes by the United States, is hereby prohibited.” Act of February 2, *4011901, § 38, 31 Stat. 748, 758, 10 U. S. C. § 1350. Plainly, the purpose of this legislation is not to supplant social policies in regard to alcoholic liquor in the various States within which the many federal enclaves are located except to the extent of providing minimum regulations to restrict the free dealing in liquor at all Army posts including those within wet States. The specific barrier thus erected by Congress against the liberal liquor policies of some States should not now be used as a qualification of the generality of the Assimilative Crimes Statute in order to serve as a barrier against the prohibitory laws of other States. No such policy can be drawn from the Act of 1901—quite the opposite is implied. And assuming that the military could assert such a policy in the interest of Army morale, there is wholly lacking any manifestation that the Army deems it necessary for the morale of its officers that at Fort Sill conduct should be permitted which if committed in the surrounding territory of Oklahoma would offend its penal laws. So far as the War Department has indicated a policy, its policy like that of the Assimilative Crimes Statute is to adopt on military reservations the laws of their respective States. Thus, in reference to A. G. 250.1, § YI, par. 4 (1-20-43) of Circular No. 29 of the War Department, Jan. 25, 1943, provides: “Beer of an alcoholic content not in excess of 3.2 per centum by weight may be sold or dealt in upon any of the mentioned premises unless a State enactment of the State in which the premises are located prohibits the sale of or dealing in such beer throughout the entire State.” And the Judge Advocate General has said that “War Department policy does not favor sale of such [3.2] beer by exchanges in States where its sale is absolutely prohibited . . .” Bulletin of the Judge Advocate General of the Army, July 1942, p. 100, § 310.
Even if there were more hypothetical doubt than the laws and decisions of Oklahoma make manifest as to the *402validity and vitality of the Act of 1917 and its applicability to the importation of the liquor shipment involved in this case, if the importation were into Oklahoma proper, such a contingency should be left for determination by appropriate proceedings in the state court to recover the liquor and not be made the basis for an injunction against the state law in the federal court. Since federal law here too turns on state law by adoption through the Assimilative Crimes Statute, the basis of our decision in Penn Dairies v. Milk Control Comm’n, supra, becomes relevant. Here, as in that case, there is an “absence of some evidence of an inflexible Congressional policy,” 318 U. S. at 275, opposed to the policy expressed by the State. In this case as in that, we should therefore be slow to strike down state legislation by elaborate implications. The discretionary powers of equity particularly counsel against it. And even if there were more doubt than appears regarding the adoption of the Act of 1917 by the Assimilative Crimes Statute, whereby the delivery of the liquor by the Transit Company on the Reservation would constitute a misdemeanor, that doubt too should not be resolved against the law in such a proceeding as this for an injunction. That question although federal may also be litigated as part of the indicated state court suit, where the Attorney General may intervene and then come here if he chooses to assert whatever position the Government deems it appropriate to press.
In my view therefore it was an inequitable exercise of discretion to issue this injunction. Of course, “Equity does not demand that its suitors shall have led blameless lives.” Loughran v. Loughran, 292 U. S. 216, 229. But where the relief sought is not as to something past and collateral, but where it is the very means, as is the case here, for completing an outlawed transaction, a court of equity should withhold its aid and not become the promoter of wrongdoing. The possible illegality of the seizure *403of the liquor by the Oklahoma enforcement officers is quite irrelevant to our problem. “A question of public policy is presented—not a mere adjudication of adversary rights between the two parties.” Weil v. Neary, 278 U. S. 160, 171. The abstention which equity exercises, as it should here, under the short-hand phrase of the “clean hands doctrine” is not due to any desire to punish a litigant for his uncleanliness. “But the objection that the plaintiff comes with unclean hands will be taken by the court itself. It will be taken despite the wish to the contrary of all the parties to the litigation. The court protects itself.” Mr. Justice Brandéis in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 485. It is hardly seemly for a federal court to order the return of liquor seized with full knowledge by the court that the carrier would use the liquor to share in the commission of a misdemeanor. The penal statute here applicable is a police regulation violation of which ought not to be furthered by a federal court. While its violation does not imply moral turpitude, Congress has required that army officers should also conform to the law of a State on which military reservations are located in matters that are outside military concern.

 “Section 1. It shall be unlawful for any person in this State to receive directly or indirectly any liquors, the sale of which is prohibited by the laws of this State, from a common or other carrier.
“It shall also be unlawful for any person in this State to possess any liquor, the sale of which is prohibited by the laws of this State, received directly or indirectly from a common or other carrier in this State. This section shall apply to such liquors intended for personal use, as well as otherwise, and to interstate as well as intrastate shipments or carriage. Any person violating any provision of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction shall be fined not less than $50.00 nor more than $500.00 and by imprisonment for not less than thirty days nor more than six months; Provided, however, that scientific institutions, universities and colleges, and bonded apothecaries, druggists, hospitals or pharmacists may receive and possess pure grain alcohol, as provided by the laws of this State, to be used only for such purposes as are prescribed by the laws of this State.” Laws 1917, ch. 186, p. 350, § 1.

 Ex parte Wilson was decided in 1911. In 1913, the Oklahoma legislature enacted a statute which made the possession of more than one quart of liquor “prima facie evidence of an intention to convey, sell or otherwise dispose of such liquors.” Laws 1913, c. 26, p. 48, § 6, 37 O. S. A. § 82. The validity of this statute was upheld (Caffee v. State, 11 Okla. Cr. 485, 148 P. 680), and the Oklahoma court ruled that it superseded the 1911 Act which had been held invalid. Cf. Jenkins v. State, 28 Okla. Cr. 249, 230 P. 293; Morse v. State, 63 Okla. Cr. 445, 458, 77 P. 2d 757.

 At least one other provision of Oklahoma legislation may well be found to outlaw the delivery of the shipment for the completion of which the carrier is seeking the aid of the federal court. Chapter 16, p. 16, § 1 of the Laws of 1939 makes it “unlawful for any person . . . to import, bring, transport, or cause to be brought or transported into the State of Oklahoma, any intoxicating liquor . . . without a permit first secured therefor as hereinafter provided.” 37 O. S. A. § 41. Permits may be issued, under § 2 of that Act, only for the importation of alcohol for scientific, mechanical, medicinal or sacramental purposes. 37 O. S. A. § 42. Since the importation of the liquor here involved cannot possibly be said to fall within the classifications for which permits are granted, these statutory provisions as applied to the circumstances in this case are penal, and as such, may be applicable to the Reservation under the Assimilative Crimes Act. 54 Stat. 234, 18 U. S. C. §468. See infra.

 And see Webster, the sponsor of the bill in the Senate, in Register of Debates in Congress (Gales & Seaton, 1825) Vol. I, p. 338: “As to the third section [the precursor of the present Assimilative Crimes Act], it must be obvious, that, where the jurisdiction of a small place, containing only a few hundreds of people, (a navy yard for instance,) was ceded to the United States, some provision was required for the punishment of offences; and as, from the use to which the place was to be put, some crimes were likely to be more frequently committed than others, the committee had thought it sufficient to provide for these, and then to leave the residue to be punished by the laws of the state in which the yard, &c. might be. He was persuaded that the people would not view it as any hardship, that the great class of minor offences should continue to be punished in the same manner as they had been before the cession.”