Court Opinion

ID: 9442315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:43:45.961747+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:03.646448
License: Public Domain

HOLMES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
We should not, I think, read the word willfully into the conspiracy statute on civil rights before the word conspire, as indicated in the majority opinion. The Congress did not put it there, and we should not undertake to do so by interpretation. The word was not added to the substantive offense until 1909, although the original act was approved in 1866. It was said that this addition was to make the section “less severe.” 325 U.S. 100, 65 S.Ct. 1035, 42 Cong.Rec. 60 Cong., 2nd Session, p. 3599.
There are several conspiracy statutes in the new Criminal Code, 18 U.S.C.A. §§ 241, 286, 371, 372, 2271, and 2384, and only in Section 2271 do we find the word so modified, the language used being “whoever * * * willfully and corruptly conspires,” etc. Thus, apparently, there was legislative discrimination in the employment of adverbs to modify this verb. To conspire, as used in Section 51, 18 U.S.C. A., Sec. 241 of the new code, means to enter into a conspiracy, as defined at common law, to do the things mentioned in said section. The word does not need to be modified, limited, or supplemented, because common-law words used in a federal statute ordinarily “take their intended meaning from the common law.” Cf. Norris v. United States, 5 Cir., 152 F.2d 808, 811. Therefore, to conspire, as used in said sec*654tion and applicable here, means to enter into an agreement to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate, any citizen in the enjoyment of any right secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States. The unlawful agreement, that is, the conspiracy, is the gist of the crime defined in the statute; and, in order to render •the offense complete, it is not necessary that any act should be done, in furtherance of the unlawful agreement entered into between the parties. Each conspirator is criminally responsible for every substantive crime committed in furtherance of the conspiracy, whether specifically contemplated or not; Turner v. State, 97 Ala. 57, 12 So. 54; Boyd v. U. S., 142 U.S. 450, 12 S.Ct. 292, 35 L.Ed. 1077; but an acquittal of the substantive offense ordinarily does not bar a prosecution for conspiracy.
In Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 89 L.Ed. 1495, 162 A.L.R. 1330, the court was dealing with an indictment for the substantive offense, under what is now Section 242 of the new Criminal Code, and it admittedly strained to uphold the constitutionality of the statute, because, it said, 325 U.S. at page 100, 65 S.Ct. at page 1035; “We hesitate to say that when Congress sought to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment in this fashion it did a vain thing. We hesitate to conclude that for 80 years this effort of Congress, renewed several times, to protect the important rights of the individual guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment has been an idle gesture. Yet if the Act falls by reason of vagueness so far as due process of law is concerned, there would seem to be a similar lack of specificity when the privileges and immunities clause (Madden v. Kentucky, 309 U.S. 83, 60 S.Ct. 406, 84 L.Ed. 590, 125 A.L.R. 1383) and the equal protection clause (Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84; Hill v. Texas, 316 U.S. 400, 62 S.Ct. 1159, 86 L.Ed. 1559) of the Fourteenth Amendment are involved. Only if no construction can save the Act from this claim of unconstitutionality are we willing to reach that re-suit. We do not reach it, for we are of the view that if § 20 is confined more narrowly than the lower courts confined it, it can be preserved as one of the sanctions to the great rights which the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to secure.”
There is no necessity for the conspiracy feature of this legislation, on constitutional grounds, to be more narrowly confined than is indicated by the language used in the statute. The Congress itself has made a distinction between the substantive offense and the crime of conspiracy by adding the word willfully as an ingredient of the substantive offense and by failing to make such addition to the essential elements composing the offense of conspiracy. The reason for the legislative distinction may be found in the differences inhering in the two offenses. One who enters into a criminal conspiracy to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate, any citizen in the enjoyment of a civil right does not need any legislative warning other than that of the statute itself, which is specific enough to cover any such right that is embraced in the agreement. Statutory specificity is essential to give due notice that an act has been made criminal before it is done; specificity in criminal prosecutions is required to inform the accused of the nature and cause of the accusation against him, so that he may adequately prepare his defense, and plead his acquittal or conviction on another trial for the same offense. More than this is not constitutionally required.
More particularity is sometimes required in indictments than in statutes; that is, less specificity is required in legislation, in order to warn the public to refrain from doing an interdicted act, than is necessary in an indictment in order to inform the defendant of the nature and cause of the accusation against him. For instance, ordinarily in an indictment it is sufficient to charge an offense in the words of the statute,1 but this is not true unless the words of the statute set forth all the essential elements of the offense; and the fact that the statute, read in the light of the com*655mon law, enables the court to infer the intent of the Congress does not dispense with the necessity of alleging in the indictment all the facts necessary to bring the case within that intent. See U. S. v. Carll, 105 U.S. 611, at page 613, 26 L.Ed. 1135, in which the court said:
“The language of the statute on which this indictment is founded includes the case of every person who, with intent to defraud, utters any forged obligation of the United States. But the offense at which it is aimed is similar to the common-law offense of uttering a forged or counterfeit bill. In this case, as in that, knowledge that the instrument is forged and counterfeited is essential to make out the crime; and an uttering, with intent to defraud, of an instrument in fact counterfeit, but supposed by the defendant to be genuine, though within the words of the statute, would not be within its meaning and obj ect.
“This indictment, by omitting the allegation contained in the indictment in United States v. Howell (11 Wall. 432 [20 L.Ed. 195]), and in all approved precedents, that the defendant knew the instrument which he uttered to be false, forged, and counterfeit, fails to charge him with any crime. The omission is of matter of substance, and not a ‘defect or imperfection in matter of form only,’ within the meaning of Sec. 1025 of the Revised Statutes. By the settled rules of criminal pleading, and the authorities above cited, therefore, the question of the sufficiency of the indictment must be answered in the negative.”
The principle thus announced has been summed up as follows: “Legislation may proceed by implication, but good pleading cannot.” 2 The attack in the instant case is on the legislation, not on the pleading. There is no serious question here about the validity of the indictment if the applicable legislation is constitutional. The crime charged in the indictment, in substance, is that the appellants, acting under color of the laws of Florida, conspired to injure certain citizens of the United States in the free exercise and enjoyment of the rights and privileges secured to each of them by the 14th Amendment, which are particularly alleged to be the right not to be deprived of their liberty, and the right not to be subjected to punishment, without due process of law; also the right not to be compelled to testify against themselves or to be subjected to illegal coercion to testify against others. The details of the conspiracy are fully alleged, and the only real constitutional question is whether or not the act itself is invalid for vagueness or uncertainty.
It is unnecessary for me to amplify my views, owing to the elaborate discussion of kindred legislation in the Screws case, wherein four opinions were written but a majority of the court never concurred entirely in any one of them. An analysis of the four opinions reveals that three of the Justices dissented; two were in favor of affirming the judgment outright (although one of them voted for reversal in order to dispose of the case) ; and four were unwilling to hold the act unconstitutional if its scope was narrowly confined by interpretation. Thus six upheld the constitutionality of the act as construed in the opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas. Three dissented outright, saying that [325 U.S. 91, 65 S.Ct. 1063] “this shapeless and all-embracing statute can serve as a dangerous instrument of political intimidation and coercion in the hands of those so inclined.” Since a majority of the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute before them in the Screws case, a fortiori, the constitutionality of Section 241 should be upheld in this case.
The conviction under review on this appeal is for conspiracy only. The courts have found it difficult to frame an accurate and complete definition of the common-law crime of conspiracy, it being suggested by. eminent legal writers that perhaps it cannot be done.3 Necessarily it is equally difficult, and perhaps impossible, to frame a statutory definition sufficiently accurate to include all agreements that are punishable as conspiracies, and at the same time *656to avoid including some that are not punishable as such. Let us bear in mind, however, that the law does not punish mere intention on the part of anyone. There must be an unlawful agreement or combination to accomplish, by concerted action, some criminal or unlawful purpose, or to accomplish some purpose not in itself criminal by unlawful means. In many of the states, as well as at common law, the crime of conspiracy is defined in the most general terms.4 Such statutes are not void for vagueness or uncertainty, provided the language used is sufficient to give warning to all persons to refrain from committing the kind or class of conspiracy that is within the letter and spirit of the legislative definition. Where the intention of the Congress is clear from the language of the statute, the indictment must expressly allege every material ingredient of the offense even though the statute has included some element only by implication.
Under our dual form of state and national government, the same act may be a crime against two sovereignties. Therefore, conspiring to deprive a citizen of the United States of his life or liberty without due process of law may be punishable as one crime against the United States and as another crime against the State in which the deed is done. Punishment may be inflicted by either sovereignty that has custody of the defendant. To steal property in interstate commerce may be, and generally is, a crime against both a state and the United States; the same is true as to robbery of an interstate shipment, and numerous other crimes.
Since Section 241 is sufficiently definite to warn the public to refrain from entering into conspiracies against citizens of the United States of the class defined therein; and since the indictment here is for a conspiracy of the prohibited class, and is sufficient to inform the defendants of the nature and cause of the ‘ accusation against them, and the record is otherwise free from reversible error, I dissent from the judgment of reversal.

. Ledbetter v. United States, 170 U.S. 606, 611-612, 18 S.Ct 774, 42 L.Ed. 1162; Sutton v. United States, 5 Cir., 157 F.2d 661, 663.

. Grimsley v. United States, 5 Cir., 50 F.2d 509, 511.

. Clark & Marshall’s Law of Crimes, 2 Ed., p. 194; 8 Cye. 620.

. See Miss.Code of 1942, Vol. 2, Sec. 2056, in which one definition is as follows: “If two or more persons conspire * * * to commit a crime * * * each of them, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor”.