Court Opinion

ID: 9419413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:23.508113+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.974017
License: Public Domain

MR. Justice Murphy,
dissenting:
We are dealing here with a criminal statute, the penalties of which circumscribe personal freedom. Before we sanction the imposition of such penalties no doubts should exist as to the statutory proscription of the acts in question. Otherwise individuals are punished without having been adequately warned as to those actions which subjected them to liability.
It is doubtful whether an arrest not followed by actual peonage clearly and unmistakably falls within the prohibition of § 269 of the Criminal Code. The court below, at least, felt that the statute did not cover such a situation. Other judges have expressed similar doubts. United States v. Eberhart, 127 F. 252; dissenting opinion in Taylor v. United States, 244 F. 321, 332, 333. And in order to reach the opposite conclusion, this Court labels the statutory language as “inartistic” and as lacking in “strict grammatical construction.” It then proceeds to rewrite the statute, in conformity with what it conceives to have been the original intention of Congress, so as to penalize “whoever . . . arrests . . . any person for the purpose of placing him in a condition of peonage.” I cannot assent to this judicial revision of a criminal law. Congress alone has power to amend or clarify the criminal sanctions of a statute.
Apologia for inadequate legislative draftsmanship and reliance on the admitted evils of peonage cannot replace the right of each individual to a fair warning from Congress as to those actions for which penalties are inflicted. *531Punishment without clear legislative authority might conceivably contain more potential seeds of oppression than the arrest of a person “to a condition of peonage.”