Court Opinion

ID: 9653539
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:48:24.299481+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:59.902383
License: Public Domain

SIBLEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Horror at what happened in this case has, 1 think, interfered with a calm consideration of the law involved. Certainly, if the evidence for the prosecution is credited, the appellants ought to be in the penitentiary. The question is, ought they to be in a penitentiary of the United States?
Death resulted from the beating of a prisoner on the head with a club. The prisoner’s loaded shotgun was at hand, and one officer had a pistol. No one attempted to shoot the prisoner. When he appeared to be in a bad condition he was taken at once by the sheriff into another county to a hospital. I do not think it was a wilful murder, but rather that it was involuntary manslaughter in the commission of an unlawful act. The indictment does not charge an intentional killing, and no such issue was submitted to the jury.
What does the indictment charge ? Count 2 is the key count, being merely repeated in Count 3 as a conspiracy. In it there is an elaborate list of rights and immunities alleged to be secured and protected by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, but these are allegations of law. It is alleged that the defendants acted under color of the law of Georgia and the City of Newton, but no special act of the Legislature or ordinance of the town is mentioned. The fact allegations are these: Screws, being State Sheriff, and Jones, being a city police officer, wilfully deprived Hall of his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, “that is to say, the defendants arrested and caused to be arrested said Hall * * * and then and there unlawfully and wrongfully did assault, strike and beat said Hall about the head with human fists and a blackjack, causing injuries which were the proximate and immediate cause of his death”. The arrest is not alleged to be unlawful, but only the beating. Do these facts make a crime against the United States ? The affirmative answer is sought in Section 20 of the Criminal Code, the applicable words being: “Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects * * * any inhabitant of any State, Territory or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges and immunities secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States * * * shall be fined * * * or imprisoned * * * or both.”
Who is protected? Any inhabitant of any part of the United States territory.
Who is punishable? Whoever acts under color of any law or custom. The statute does not mention State laws, or State customs, or State officers, hut applies equally to federal or territorial laws and customs and officers, and indeed to all persons acting by virtue of any supposed law or custom, whether valid or invalid. The statute does not mention the Fourteenth Amendment and does not profess to be “appropriate legislation” to enforce it. It takes hold of every person in the United States and makes him a potential criminal if he acts under color of any law or custom.
What does it forbid? Wilful deprivation of any right secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Wilful, I take it, means intentional, not by accident or misfortune. Does it mean that a particular clause of the Constitution was in mind, with a definite intention to violate it? In this case there is no reason to suppose that Screws and Jones once thought of the Fourteenth Amendment, or that they knew much or anything about it. The jury were not instructed to make any such enquiry. The accused intentionally beat Hall, and the jury were told that was enough, if not justified.
Now it is a common form of legislation to say that a violation of any prevision of a particular act shall be a crime. The citizen has everything before his eyes and can readily know what he may not do. Far *667more serious would it be to attempt to make criminal “every deprivation of rights secured” even by one elaborate act, say the Interstate Commerce Act, 49 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq., or the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq. If this statute had confined itself to punishing State officers for helping a State to deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment, which is the function here assigned to it, it seems to me it would have been too vague to make a good criminal ■statute, for not even the judges on the bench know just what that portion of the Fourteenth Amendment means, and ideas about it have changed very greatly since Section 20 was first enacted. What it does is to gather up every provision of the Federal Constitution, and every provision of every federal statute which may secure or protect any sort of personal, civil, property or political right, and declare it to be a crime to deprive anyone of his right. Who can enumerate what rights are secured by the Bill of Rights of the Federal Constitution ? Or by the prohibitions against State action in the original Constitution, or the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and other Amendments? Or in such laws of the United States as the Interstate Commerce Act, the National Labor Relations Law, the Railway Labor Act, Federal Employers’ Liability Act, War Risk Insurance Act, Harbor Workers’ Act, Seamen’s Acts, Fair Labor Standards Act, and fifty others? It seems to me that such wholesale criminal legislation is not constitutionally possible, because there is in it no ascertainable standard of guilt, and the right to be precisely informed of the things to be charged as crimes is not practically preserved. United States v. L. Cohen Grocery Co., 255 U.S. 81, 41 S.Ct. 298, 65 L.Ed. 516, 14 A.L.R. 1045.
The statutory words, taken in their full sweep, would involve startling consequences. Judges and prosecuting officers, State and federal, tread on dangerous ground. An intentional refusal to send for witnesses, to furnish counsel, to grant a prompt trial, or a full indictment, may make them criminals. Many federal boards have made many “regulations”, some of which no doubt are contrary to rights secured by the federal laws. Those who act under color of such regulations are liable to prosecution. Every State Sheriff or United States Marshal who uses force on a prisoner, every prison warden who disciplines, is liable to have to answer a federal indictment, as to whether his act was lawful, or only under color of law. A warden censors a prisoner’s mail; does he deny his rights under the postal laws? A law of Georgia permits a landowner to impound trespassing cattle till damages are paid. If under color of this law one impounds cattle and then kills and eats them unlawfully, he is of course a criminal under State law, but as he has, under color of a law, taken property without due process of law he also must suffer federal imprisonment. In this very case Jones and Screws had, a few days before, apparently without due process, taken Hall’s pistol. They might have been federally indicted for that. When Hall was arrested his shotgun was taken from his home, not in a search of his person but apparently without lawful warrant. This was federally indictable. Policemen everywhere arrest without warrant unlawfully. They are all guilty of wilfully depriving the prisoner of liberty without due process of law, and indictable under this statute, taken at its face value.
But it is said the present is a clear case of deprivation of rights, and a serious one because life was taken, even if not wilfully taken. Who is to decide whether the right is a clear one, or how serious the deprivation must be? The judge and jury? Thus construed, the statute falls squarely under the decision in the Cohen Grocery case, supra.
The only reasonable construction of the statute which it seems to me could be upheld is that where one, knowing a law or regulation or custom is contrary to a right secured by the Federal Constitution or laws, wilfully undertakes to enforce the law or regulation or custom, he shall be punished. There is here no law or regulation or custom to beat a prisoner, white or black. It is lawful to subdue one, if he resists or attacks the arresting officer. That law is not contrary to any right federally secured. It is also a custom in Georgia to strike one who calls you to your face a “son of a bitch”, but as the District Judge charged the jury in this case the privilege of resenting such words does not extend to an arresting officer. There is not shown here by allegation or evidence or judicial notice any law, regulation or custom under color of which Screws and Jones struck Hall unless, as they claimed, to subdue him, which would not have deprived him of any right. If they simply struck him unlawfully, as alleged, they are liable on their official bonds, they are liable in damages for assault and bat*668tery, and they are liable to criminal prosecution under Georgia law, and because of the fatal consequence, the prosecution may be for involuntary manslaughter or perhaps murder. I do not think Section 20, if sustainable at all, can be applied to the case.