Court Opinion

ID: 9418194
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:12:22.383242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:13.080220
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Holmes,
with whom concurred
Mr. Justice Lurton, dissenting.
We all agree that this case is to be considered and decided in the sam° way as if it arose in Idaho or New York. *246Neither public document nor evidence discloses a law which by its administration is made something different from what it appears on its face, and therefore the fact that in Alabama it mainly concerns the blacks does not matter. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, does not apply. T shall begin then by assuming for the moment what I think is not true and shall try to show not to be true, that this statute punishes the mere refusal to labor according to contract as a crime, and shall inquire whether there would be anything contrary to the Thirteenth Amendment or the statute if it did, supposing it to have been enacted in the State of New York. I cannot believe it. ,The Thirteenth Amendment does not outlaw contracts for labor. That would be at least as great a misfortune for the laborer as for the man that employed him. For it certainly would affect the terms of the bargain"unfavorably for the laboring man if it were understood that the employer could do nothing in case the laborer saw fit to -break his word. But any legal liability for breach of a contract is a disagreeable consequence which tends to make the contractor do as he said he would. Liability to an action for damages has that tendency as well as a fine. If the mere imposition of such consequences as tend to make a man keep to his promise is the creation of peonage when the contract happens to be for labor, I do not see why the allowance of a civil action is not, as well as an indictment ending in fine. Peonage is service to a private master at which a man is kept by bodily compulsion against his will. But the creation of the ordinary legal motives for right conduct does not produce it. Breach of a legal contract without excuse is wrong conduct, even if the contract is for labor, and if a State adds to civil liability a criminal liability to fine, it simply intensifies the legal motive for doing right, it does not make the laborer a slave.
But if a fine may be imposed, imprisonment may be *247imposed in case of a failure to pay it. . Nor does it matter if labor is added to the imprisonment. Imprisonment with hard labor is not stricken from the statute books. On the contrary, involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime is excepted from the prohibition of the Thirteenth Amendment in so. many words. Also tbe power of the States to make breach of contract a crime is not done away with by the abolition of slavery. But if breach of contract may be made a crime at all, it may be made a crime with all the consequences usually attached to crime. There is produced a. sort of illusion if a contract to labor ends in compulsory labor in a prison. But compulsory work for no private master in a jail is not peonage. If work in a jail is not condemned in itself, without regard to what the conduct is it punishes, it may be made a consequence of any conduct that the State has power to punish at all. I do not blink the fact that the liability to imprisonment may work as a motive when a fine without it would not, and that it may induce the laborer to keep on when hie would like to leave. But it does not strike me as an objection to a law that it is effective. - If the contract is one that ought not to be made, prohibit it. But if it is a perfectly fair and proper contract, I can see no reason why the State should not throw its weight on the side of performance. There is no relation between its doing so in the manner supposed and allowing a private master to use private force upon á laborer who wishes to leave.
But all that I have said so far goes beyond the needs of the case as I understand it.. I think it a mistake to say that this statute attaches its punishment to the mere breach of a contract to labor. It does nor purport to dp so; what it purports to punish is fraudulently obtaining money by a false pretense of an intent to keep the written contract in consideration of which the money is advanced. (It is not necessary to cite cases to show that such an in*248tent may be the subject of a material false representation.) But the import of the'statute is supposed to .be changed 'by the provision that a refusal to perform, coupled with a failure to return the money advanced, shall be prima facie evidence of fraudulent intent. I agree that if the statute created a conclusive presumption it might be. held to make a disguised change in the substantive law. Keller v. United States, 213 U. S. 138, 150. But it only-makes the conduct prima facie evidence, a very different matter. Is it not evidence that a man had a fraudulent intent if he receives an advance upon a contract over night and leaves in the morning? I should have thought that it very plainly whs. Of course the statute is in general terms and applies to a departure at any time without excuse or repayment, but that does no harm except on a tacit assumption, that this law is not administered as it would be in New York, and that juries will act with prejudice against the laboring man. For prima facie evidence is only evidence, and as such may be held bthe jury insufficient to make out guilt. 161 Alabama, 78. This was decided by the Supreme Court of Alabama in this case, and we should be bound by their construction of the statute, even if we thought it wrong. But I venture to add that I think it entirely right. State v. Intoxicating Liquors, 80 Maine, 57. This being so, I take it that a fair jury would acquit, if the only evidence were a departure after eleven months’ work, and if it received no color from some special well-known course of events. But the matter well may be left to a jury, because their experience as men of the world may teach them that in certain conditions it is so common for laborers to remain during a part of the season, receiving advances, and then to depart at the period of need in the hope of greater wages at a neighboring plantation, that when a laborer follows that course there is a fair inference of fact that he intended it .from the beginning. The Alabama stat*249ute, as construed by the state court and as we must take it, merely says, as a court might say, that the prosecution may go to the jury. This means and means only that the court cannot say, from its knowledge of the ordinary course of events, that the jury could not be justified by its knowledge in drawing the inference from the facts proved. In my opinion the statute embodies little if anything more than what I should have told the jury was the law without it. The right of the State to regulate laws of evidence is admitted, and the statute does not go much beyond the common law. Commonwealth v. Rubin, 165 Massachusetts, 453.
I do not see how the result that I have reached thus far is affected by the rule laid down by the court, but not contained in the statute, that the prisoner cannot testify to his uncommunicated intentions, and therefore, it is assumed, would not be permitted to offer a naked denial of an intent to defraud. If there is an excuse for breaking the contract it will be found in external circumstances, and can be proved. So the sum of the wrong supposed to be inflicted is that the intent to go off without repaying may be put further back than it would be otherwise. But if there is a wrong it lies in leaving the evidence to the jury, a wrong that is not affected by the letting in.or keeping out an item of evidence on the other side. I have stated why I think it was not a wrong.
To sum up, I think that obtaining money by fraud may be made a crime as well as murder or theft; that a false representation, expressed or implied, at the time of making a contract of labor that one intends to perform it and ■ thereby obtaining an advance, may be declared a case of fraudulently obtaining money as well as any other; that if made a crime it may be punished,like any other crime, and that an unjustified departure from the promised service without repayment may be declared a sufficient case to go to the jury for their judgment; all without in any *250way infringing the Thirteenth Amendment or the statutes of the United States.
Mr. Justice Lurton concurs in this dissent.