Court Opinion

ID: 9444655
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:07:55.08621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:57.185674
License: Public Domain

HASTIE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Comment on two important general considerations prefaces this dissenting opinion.
Judges are likely to be thoughtful, patriotic and well informed citizens who over the years have read, heard and observed much about the world wide organization of the Communist party and its activities. Therefore, they cannot escape serious apprehension, or even strong personal conviction, that policies and practices both hostile and dangerous to our institutions are promoted by that organization. Jurors too are likely to share these apprehensions and convictions. Moreover, we do not and should not apologize that our ethical notions, religious convictions and political views of the type of social order that is decent and rewarding to its members, all combine to make the totalitarian Communist state as it functions in much of the world today odious and frightful in our sight.
These facts of life are stated at the outset because they add greatly to the difficulty of deciding such a case as we have here. The defendants are Communists. They are charged with conspiracy to teach and persuade people that they should engage in violent insurrection against our government as speedily as circumstances may permit. The record is very long and its analysis is a tedious and unwelcome task. In such circumstances it is very difficult to evaluate thousands of pages of testimony and exhibits without somewhere along the line permitting the thought that these defendants are an undeserving lot, and likely to have done the things with which they are charged, to distort judgment of the probative value of the evidence, or even to take the place of evidence on some important issue. Indeed, there is a very clear indication that this has already happened. The record shows that during the trial the prosecutor candidly stated in open court that “at this particular time, we do not contend that there is any question of the personal guilt of any of the defendants involved here, except with the possible exception of Mr. Nelson [Mesarosh]. * * *” Although the opinion of this court takes the position that the prosecutor’s case was not as weak as he thought, I think the quoted admission accurately reflected the state of the record throughout the trial. In any event, it is difficult to believe that *460persons trying to be fair, as the jurors here undoubtedly were, would have been willing to send anyone but a Communist to jail after hearing such an admission by the government that the personal guilt of the accused was not established.
My second preliminary observation is this. Our responsibility as a Court of Appeals is magnified by the often-stated reluctance of the Supreme Court to review the adequacy of proof which has satisfied both a trial court and a Court of Appeals. Indeed, in the one recently reviewed case of this very type the Supreme Court refused to consider the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the conviction. Dennis v. United States, 1951, 341 U.S. 494, 71 S.Ct. 857, 871, 95 L.Ed. 1137. Thus, this court may well be the only appellate tribunal which will consider whether the evidence against these defendants meets the high standard of proof our law imposes in all criminal cases.
We come now to the particulars of this case. The defendants have been convicted under the Smith Act of conspiring to teach and persuade people that they should bring about the overthrow of the existing government of the United States as soon as possible and that violent means must be employed to that end.
In his charge .to the jury, the trial judge made a clear, detailed and accurate statement of what the prosecution had to prove to establish the defendants’ guilt:
“In order to find any of the defendants guilty of the alleged conspiracy to violate the Smith Act, the evidence must satisfy you beyond a reasonable doubt that the following elements have been proved: First, that the conspiracy to teach and advocate the duty and necessity (of overthrowing or destroying the government was conceived by certain conspirators, and continued to function within the three-year period prior to the finding of the indictment; second, with respect to each defendant individually and separately considered, that he knowingly and Wilfully was a member of that conspiracy during its existence, with knowledge of its unlawful purpose, and with the intent that such teaching and advocacy be a rule or principle of action, and with language reasonably and ordinarily calculated to incite persons to such action; third, that a defendant, while a member of the conspiracy, had the specific intent to cause or bring about the overthrow or destruction of the government of the United States by force and violence as speedily as circumstances would permit; fourth, that thereafter at least one overt act as charged was knowingly committed by one of the conspirators within the period of the statute of limitations, that is, within the three-year period from January 18, 1949, to January 18, 1952; fifth, that such overt act was committed in furtherance of an object or purpose of the conspiracy; * *
My study of the record has convinced me that on certain of the issues thus stated there was no such proof as would warrant submission of the case to the jury. Therefore, the defendants were entitled to directed verdicts of acquittal.
I
It is basic and inescapable datum of this case, that the defendants were indicted and convicted for conspiracy to engage in dangerous talk and indoctrination, and nothing more than that. It has not been charged, much less proved, that they have joined a conspiracy to overthrow our government. It is not even contended that their plan or scheme which, the government says, was adopted in 1945, matured into or was evidenced by any illegal teaching or advocacy during the three years — the period of the statute of limitations — immediately preceding the 1952 presentment of the present indictment.
The difficulty of squaring such punishment of talk or planning to talk with the prohibition of the First Amendment is immediately apparent. Were the matter *461one of first impression, we would face a difficult question whether consistent with the prohibition of this Amendment Congress could, without unlawful abridgment of free speech, make criminal such a scheme to organize and carry out a campaign of dangerous talk. But the Supreme Court has wrestled with this problem and concluded that within stated narrow limits such talk may be punished, the First Amendment notwithstanding. Dennis v. United States, supra. However, the fact remains that generally talk hostile to the government is the very sort of thing the First Amendment removes from Congressional power to proscribe. Therefore, the narrow limits which define punishable talk, as the Supreme Court has staked them out in the Dennis case, must be regarded as of utmost importance. They are not mere formalities. They are essentials which must be clearly proved to save any conviction of planning or indulging in dangerous talk from the prohibition of the First Amendment.
Of special concern here is the Supreme Court’s limitation of its Dennis decision to situations in which it is established as a fact that the actual or contemplated verbal conduct is calculated to incite men to violence as soon as circumstances will permit. In the leading opinion in the Dennis case, Chief Justice Vinson stressed the fact that the jury must have found, pursuant to appropriate instructions, that advocacy was directed toward violent action “as speedily as the circumstances would permit.” It seems to have been his view that this much proximity was necessary to satisfy the clear and present danger test, which he recognized as a measure of constitutional limitation on Congressional power in this kind of case. It was the threat of violent action at first opportunity which he regarded as so imminently dangerous that Congress could make advocacy so directed a crime. To that extent validity remains in Professor Chafee’s often quoted formulation: “The real issue in every free speech controversy is this: whether the state may punish all words which have some tendency however remote, to bring about acts in violation of law, or only words which directly incite to acts in violation of law.” Free Speech in the United States, 1941, 23. Compare the observation of Professor Goodrich, now a member of this court: “This is very important; the liability is not to be found in the general effect of the words, nor in what may be thought to be their dangerous tendency. Indeed, the test is similar to the common law liability for attempt to commit a crime — the act done by the wrongdoer must have come dangerously near to success.” Goodrich, Does the Constitution Protect Free Speech?, 1921, 19 Mich.L.Rev. 487, 492, 2 Select Essays on Constitutional Law, 1938, 1068, 1072.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s opinion also noted the importance of the finding that the scheme of the defendants was to incite to violent action as soon as feasible. He cites a clearly punishable plot to overthrow the government as one extreme and “a seminar in political theory” as the other, with the Dennis scheme somewhere in between. Apparently, what made the Dennis scheme punishable like a treasonable conspiracy rather than permissible like political indoctrination was this design to bring about violent action as soon as circumstances would permit. A Marxist group may lawfully attempt to persuade people to believe unreservedly that the writings of Marx and Lenin and similar dogma constitute the only acceptable guide to struggle for a desirable kind of society. This must be coupled with some call to unlawful action against the government to make the conduct punishable. But a call to action in the indefinite future is a meaningless contradiction of terms. Some meaningful orientation in time, whether by specification of the time when action is to be taken or otherwise, is an essential part of every call to action. Thus, the government has found it necessary here, as in the Dennis case, to charge a design to cause violent action as soon as circumstances will permit, in order to establish requisite incitation beyond indoctrination with revolutionary politi*462cal theory. The trial judge properly stated and emphasized this requirement in his above-quoted instructions to the jury.
Such are the considerations which define the essential and restrictive frame of reference in relation to which the evidence must be evaluated.
The indictment charged and the prosecution undertook to prove the particular time and circumstances of the beginning of the alleged conspiracy. The indictment charged that “from on or about April 1,1945 and continuously thereafter * * * the defendants * * * did conspire” to engage in advocacy of insurrectionary action proscribed by the Smith Act. It was the government’s theory that early in 1945 there occurred a demonstrable basic change in the policy and program of the organized American Communists. The prosecution showed that during a period which continued through 1944 and into 1945, the American Communists carried out a policy and program of attempting to achieve the political, social, and economic changes they desired within the framework of our polity and by constitutional and lawful means. In charging the jury the court recognized this state of the record, saying that the “prosecution claims to have proved that during World War II, the objectives of the party were revised * * * and that a plan of cooperation between the working classes and the other classes, called the bourgeoisie, was adopted * *
But in 1945, a Reconstituting Convention eschewed the “deviations” of the past and undertook to reorganize and reorient the American Communists under the lately abandoned Communist Party name and with the avowed design of strict adherence to “Marxism-Leninism”. The prosecution undertook to prove that this was the beginning of the conspiracy to advocate the violent overthrow of our government with which defendants are charged.
The prosecution first introduced the text of certain speeches and resolutions of the 1945 Communist convention together with the resultant new constitution of the Communist Party. These were presented by the government as the overt manifestation and authoritative statement of the conspiratorial agreement. But, as the government has recognized throughout this case, these statements and documents do not on their face sanction the violent overthrow of the existing government much less call for work toward its achievement as soon as possible. Contrariwise, the new party constitution states that the “Communist Party upholds the achievements of American democracy and defends the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights.” The preamble extols American democracy and one of the subsequent articles calls for the disciplining of members who participate in any activities to undermine or weaken our basic American institutions.
Beyond this the prosecution, after showing that William Z. Foster was the dominant figure in the convention, put in evidence his explanation of the new party line in the following report to the convention:
“The fourth and last false conception that I wish to speak against is the idea being circulated by ‘Left’ sectarian voices in our Party to the effect that the present program of the Party is only transitory, that we are on our way to a much more Left interpretation of the present national and world situation. According to these comrades, we are going to, or should, denounce the war against Japan as imperialist, condemn the decisions of Teheran as unachievable, drop the slogan of national unity, call for a farmer-labor government, give up our wartime no-strike pledge, abandon the fight for 60,000,000 jobs, bring forward the question of socialism as an immediate issue, and generally adopt a class-against-class policy.
“But these comrades are indulging in wishful thinking. Our Party, if I know it, is not going to take any such Leftist course. For the *463Party, in its overwhelming majority, understands that Leftist policies of this character would be no less disastrous to us than Browder’s Right revisionism. The line of the National Committee’s Resolution is the correct one; in its analysis, its formulation of immediate demands, and its placing of the question of socialism. We must hew to the line of that Resolution, taking into account, of course, necessary amendments. We are not getting rid of Browder’s Right opportunism to fall into a swamp of ‘Left’ sectarianism.”
After thus putting in evidence the new policy and position of the reconstituted Communist Party as openly stated in terms of adherence to American institutions, the prosecution undertook to show that all of this had a sinister meaning, not obvious on its face. The key, it is said, to the real intendment is to be found not in the above-quoted specific averments of policy but in the announced general purpose — which the defendants admit — to eschew recent “deviations” from classical Marxist doctrine and to follow “basic Communist principles of scientific socialism”. In the reconstituting papers this revised “line” was called “Marxism-Leninism.” Accordingly, the prosecution undertook to establish the meaning of this phrase through a former Communist named Lautner.
This witness then testified that on the basis of his experience as a member of the Communist Party for 20 years it was his opinion that the use of the expression “Marxism-Leninism” in the 1945 party constitution implied a sanction of the violent overthrow of capitalist government inconsistent with the avowals of respect for American institutions which appear elsewhere in the 1945 constitution and the proceedings of the 1945 convention. When asked his opinion of the provision in the constitution for expulsion of persons who should attempt to overthrow the American institutions of majority rule, he said that “it is a self serving declaration”. He made no comment on Foster’s explanation of the new “line”.
But, more important, in the light of the legal requirement that a punishable scheme must have been directed toward violence as soon as feasible, Lautner’s opinion was given merely in terms of a generalized revolutionary goal of the Communist group. Its inadequacy is highlighted by another excerpt from the trial charge, reemphasizing the point we are considering:
“The intent required is not merely the intentional advocacy or teaching of the overthrow and destruction of the government of the United States by force and violence. The Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that each defendant, in addition, had the further specific intent to accomplish the overthrow of the government of the United States by force and violence as speedily as circumstances would permit. Such further and additional intent must be clearly and plainly proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and can not be inferred simply from advocacy of the overthrow of the government of the United States by force and violence, if there was such advocacy.”
If this court accepts that formulation as a correct statement of law, it seems very clear that the prosecution did not prove its case.
Lautner did not point to a single thing indicating that the 1945 program contemplated, beyond inculcation of belief in and approval of an ultimate revolution, teaching that the time had now come to work for the overthrow of the existing government as soon as possible. It has already been pointed out, but will bear restatement, that this distinction is of basic importance in all constitutional theory of restrictions on utterance permissible under the First Amendment. The line which the courts try to draw distinguishes punishable incitation to insurrectionary action from permissible teaching that at some time in the future *464violence is inevitable and the “proletariat” must be ready for it. Lautner’s testimony does not even make clear whether there is anything in the 1945 program which in his view implies one rather than the other. He did say “I consider myself an expert on the basic aims and objectives of the Marxist-Leninist principles, but I do not consider myself an expert on the twists and turns and tactical innovations from time to time of the Communist Parties”. It is these very “twists and turns and tactical innovations” which create a serious difficulty here. For it is not a sufficient basis for proscription that the Communists are committed to ultimate violent revolutionary action. If their present tactic is a waiting game, characterized by the teaching of revolutionary theory while incitation to action is left for the indefinite future, the First Amendment prevents the government from proscribing their teaching. Our lawful recourse during such a period lies in the field of education and demonstration which will increase devotion to our democratic institutions and thus frustrate Communist preachments. There is some risk in such a course. But the adoption of the First Amendment has committed us to it.
If Lautner did not indicate any proximity of the violence against government said to be contemplated by the 1945 program, I have not found such evidence elsewhere in the record. It is noteworthy that this court’s analysis of the evidence points to nothing which indicates that the Communist teaching, actual or projected, since 1945 has been calculated to incite people to violent aggression against our government as soon as feasible or within any period of time, however defined. This time element, so important in our First Amendment context, is not mentioned in the court's analysis of the record. This court, like the government during the trial, has concentrated attention upon Marxist literature and pronouncements used in Communist teaching and propaganda activities during the 1920’s and 1930’s. But the whole thrust of this showing is directed at establishing, with the aid of the connecting link supplied by Lautner, that approval and advocacy of proletarian revolution are present in current Communist doctrine. There is nothing to show that under the 1945 program people were urged or to be urged to accelerate the revolution by seizing the first opportunity for violence against the government.
The jury was properly charged that it could convict only if the conspiratorial scheme was “to accomplish the overthrow of the government of the United States by force and violence as speedily as circumstances would permit.” I think it could have reached that conclusion only by speculation or by assumption de hors the record.
II
This indictment was returned in January 1952. The period of the statute of limitations is three years. Therefore, some conduct in furtherance of the conspiracy had to be alleged and proved to have occurred since January 1949, in order to establish that the conspiracy persisted and that defendants adhered to it during the period covered by the indictment. It will be remembered that this was one of the points upon which the charge of the trial judge was very explicit: “[the evidence must establish that] at least one overt act as charged was knowingly committed by one of the conspirators within the period of the statute of limitations, that is, within the three-year period from January 18, 1949, to January 18, 1952; fifth, that such overt act was committed in furtherance of an object or purpose of the conspiracy; * * An examination of the indictment shows that several overt acts were charged as proof that the conspiracy existed after January 1949. Each of these acts is the participation of one or more of the defendants in a Communist Party meeting, nothing more. It is not shown that in 1949 or thereafter a defendant or any alleged co-conspirator said*or did anything advocating insurrection or even making arrangements for such advocacy. Nor does it appear that *465anyone else at any of these meetings was guilty of such conduct. All that appears is that each meeting- was a Communist gathering involving some discussion or planning of miscellaneous party business. This included such matters as discussion of new contacts, financing, enlarging membership, particularly among miners and industrial workers, solving internal difficulties such as those caused by the arrest of leaders, and selecting delegates for other meetings.
The failure of the prosecution to try to show how any of this conduct was in furtherance of the conspiracy charged is very revealing. If the purchase of a gun by one charged as a member of a conspiracy to commit armed robbery should be relied upon as an overt act, the prosecution would certainly try to show, and consider it vital to show, that this weapon was procured for use in the contemplated robbery. The jury may not be left to speculate in the absence of proof whether an act, innocent on its face, is in furtherance of a conspiracy. There must be evidence which, if credited, shows that design. But here the theory seems to have been that affirmative showing of connection between the 1945 conspiracy and some later action taken within the statutory period was not required. The government seems to have reasoned that any participation in a Communist meeting in such a way that the participant knowingly joined in the internal affairs of the organization became, without further showing, an act in furtherance of the conspiracy charged. But this means that the government must change its ground. It is in the position of: having to claim that the Communist Party itself is the conspiracy charged. Only on that theory are Communist meetings in themselves and the attendance of defendants evidence of a continuing conspiracy and their participation. An indictment on that theory might be possible under another section of the statute. But no such charge is made here and we, therefore, have no reason to consider its involvements.
There is one other not improbable explanation of the failure of the prosecution even to try to connect the acts charged and proved after 1948 with advocacy of the violent overthrow of government. The indictment contained a second charge not heretofore mentioned. That was a charge of conspiring to organize the Communist Party as a means of bringing about the violent overthrow of the existing government. But, rightly or wrongly, the trial judge took this aspect of the indictment away from the jury, and we are not in position to review that action. It may well have been that the prosecution had regarded these meetings in 1949 and thereafter as “overt acts” of “organization” of the Communist Party, particularly since they dealt with problems of finance, membership, delegates to conventions and the like. This would explain the failure to show that these meetings dealt in some way with the advocacy of violence against the government, but would not save the government’s case on the particular conspiracy submitted to the jury from the consequences of that failure. Cf. De Jonge v. Oregon, 1937, 299 U.S. 353, 57 S.Ct. 255, 81 L.Ed. 278.
Therefore, the failure of the government to allege and prove acts showing a conspiracy persisting with defendants’ adherence after January 1949, is a second fatal deficiency of the case presented by this record.
The disposition to relax requirements of strict proof in trials of suspected subversives appears whenever the existing order is subjected to stress and strain. It is reported that in 1603, when Sir Walter Raleigh was tried by the king’s judges for treason, his demand for stricter proof was silenced by the court with the withering rejoinder:
“I marvel, Sir Walter, that you being of such experience and wit, should stand on this point; for so many horse-stealers may escape if they may not be condemned without witnesses.” Rex v. Raleigh, 2 State Trials (Howell ed.) 1.
*466In due course the accused was convicted and executed.
It may well be today that a number of Communists, among them schemers for our undoing and destruction, will go unpunished if in their cases we insist upon clear and convincing proof in open court of every element of the alleged crime. There is no gainsaying that “horse-stealers [and worse] may escape”. But that is not too great a price to pay for assurance that our way of administering the criminal law minimizes for everyone the risk of undeserved conviction of crime.
In that spirit, and for the reasons stated in this opinion, I would reverse these convictions.
I am authorized to state that Judge MARIS concurs in this dissenting opinion.