Court Opinion

ID: 9641936
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:43:40.375292+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:40.938579
License: Public Domain

WOODROUGH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
The appellant was indicted with others for the offense of conspiring against the civil rights of a citizen in violation of section 51, title 18 USCA, and having pleaded guilty, was sentenced to imprisonment for seven years. He prosecuted this appeal on the only ground open to him in view of his plea, namely, that the indictment does not state facts sufficient to make a case within the jurisdiction of the federal court.
The substance of the indictment is that there was a conspiracy, the object of which was to injure and oppress a citizen named Harrison because he had exercised a right secured to him by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that to effect the object of the conspiracy the appellant threatened the citizen on one day and, together with his coconspirators, committed a violent assault upon him the next day. The right the citizen is alleged to have exercised was the “right * * * to report to * * * certain investigators of the Department of Justice of the United States, and which said investigators were then and there duly and legally acting in the discharge of their official duties as such officers, that distilled spirits, to-wit: alcohol, would be unlawfully removed to and brought to the premises numbered 3055 Dickson St., St. Louis, Missouri, on November 23, 1933, in violation of the laws of the United States. * * * ”
The appellant does not question that the indictment fully and sufficiently de- ' scribes the criminal assault he and his associates conspired to and did commit upon the citizen, Harrison, but his point is that there are no facts to show that the assault was devised or committed because the citizen had exercised a federal right. Conceding that it is a right of a citizen secured to him by federal law'to give information to federal officers touching federal offenses, appellant insists that the indictment alleges no facts to show that the matter about which the citizen, Harrison, gave information was, or was on probable grounds believed to be, a federal offense.
Inspection of the indictment discloses that the only fact Harrison is said to have informed the federal officers about was the fact that alcohol would be removed to certain premises. True, it is stated in the indictment as the conclusion of the informer or of the grand jury that the removal of the alcohol would be “unlawful” and “in violation of the laws of the United States.” But no facts are alleged on account of which the removal of the alcohol would become unlawful or in violation of the laws of the United States.
There are no crimes against the United States except such as are defined by its laws, and no law which would be violated by the reported removal of the alcohol is pointed out or referred to in the indictment. Nothing in the indictment fixes the matter about which Harrison informed as a federal offense except the unsupported conclusion that it was “unlawful” and “in violation of the laws of the United States.”
Although it may be said that there are many circumstances under which a removal of alcohol becomes a violation of federal laws, it is also very difficult to imagine any overt actions which may not offend some federal law if done with a certain intent and under certain circumstances. It remains that the facts charged in the indictment concerning the transaction reported upon do not show that any federal offense was involved. If the citizen, Harrison, had informed federal officers about a counterfeiting of United States money, or. about the stealing of government property, or forging its bonds, or about anything made criminal by specific laws of the United States, a different situation would be presented.
In prosecution for conspiracies to misuse the mails in furtherance of schemes to defraud, it has been frequently said that the conspiracy to misuse the mails is the gist of the offense. Such a conspiracy touches directly the carrying of mails, which it is the federal function to protect. But under this statute, the conditions are reversed. The conspiracy to assault *391and the assault are state crimes that do not of themselves offend against the federal government. It is the motive behind the conspiracy, the reason why it was carried on that alone touches the federal interest. Necessarily then, as the reason for the conspiracy and the motive behind it constitute the sole basis of federal jurisdiction, they are of the gist of the federal offense. Each of the states has reserved its sovereign power to' inquire into and adjudicate concerning assaults and batteries committed within its borders, and if there are facts to justify federal jurisdiction in such a matter, such facts must appear upon the face of the pleading upon which jurisdiction is based.
A federal court should not, indeed it has no power, to take charge of such an offense on merely general allegations made by way of conclusion that there was invasion of a citizen’s federal right, or that a transaction violated some federal law not specified or connected by any allegations of fact. Under our dual system of government, it is incumbent upon the federal courts to exercise meticulous care to avoid encroachment upon the sovereign powers of any state.
As it does not appear from any of the facts pleaded in the indictment herein that the citizen, Harrison, had reported to the federal employees called “investigators” any acts or transactions made criminal by any federal law, there was no jurisdiction in the federal court over the assault upon him or the conspiracy to commit the same.
The indictment contains the allegation that the defendants therein named did remove and bring distilled spirits to certain premises in St. Louis, Mo., but tlie allegation is in no way connected with the charge sought to be presented by the indictment, and is merely surplusage.
The appellant also complains against the severity of his sentence. Seven years’ imprisonment was imposed under the indictment here considered, and it is stated at the bar that some additional years were imposed for his violation of the liquor law in the same transaction. Conceding that this court may not on that ground reverse a sentence that is kept within the limit of the statute, it seems not inappropriate to recall the declaration of the Supreme Court in Fox v. State of Ohio, 5 How. 410, 12 L. Ed. 213, that the institutions both of the state and federal systems are administered in a benignant spirit. The instances in which extreme penalties are prescribed by Congress are very rare. The statute here involved permitting the harsh penalty of ten years’ imprisonment for a violation is exceptional because it was enacted in the cruel aftermath of the Civil War to suppress with extraordinary rigor massed violence against the newly bestowed civil rights of the negro race. To heap its extreme harshness upon this single negro for an assault is benignant only in a bitterly ironical sense. In thousands of cases every year local magistrates who know the parties before them find ten days’ in jail or a fine that can be paid sufficient to tame the aggressor and save the peace and dignity of the State where angry men have inflicted blows.
I think there was no jurisdiction to render the judgment appealed from, and it should be reversed.