Court Opinion

ID: 9454453
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:46:50.952529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:07.334729
License: Public Domain

MYRON L. GORDON, District Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the court’s opinion insofar as it concludes that the plaintiff is without standing to bring this injunctive action. However, I also believe that the defendant’s conviction under 29 U.S.C. Section 186(b) is not a conviction for “bribery”; it is therefore insufficient as a matter of law to enable the government to disqualify Clarence Jalas from holding office under 29 U.S.C. Section 504(a).
Section 504 provides that after conviction for certain offenses, a person may not hold a position of responsibility with a labor organization; the statute recites a number of major felonies, including bribery, which will serve to bar a person from union office:
“Robbery, bribery, extortion, embezzlement, grand larceny, burglary, arson, violation of narcotics laws, murder, rape, assault with intent to kill, assault which inflicts grievous bodily injury * * (emphasis added)
In these proceedings, the government seeks to prohibit Mr. Jalas from holding office in this union because of a conviction upon his plea of guilty of a violation of Section 186. This section is specifically denominated in the statute as a misdemeanor; it carries a maximum imprisonment of 1 year. However, the general United States statute on bribery, which appears in Title 18 U.S.C. Section 201, is a felony, and it authorizes imprisonment for as long as 3 years.
It is my opinion that when the Congress used the word “bribery” in Section 504, it referred to a felony, and not to a mere misdemeanor. The distinction is not merely one of form or, indeed, one relating only to the term of potential imprisonment. An inherent part of bribery is the element of specific intent, which is absent in Section 186, to which Mr. Jalas entered a plea of guilty. See State v. Alfonsi, 33 Wis.2d 469, 147 N.W.2d 550 (1967). One can no more be guilty of bribery without having a corrupt intent than one can be guilty of theft without an animus furandi.
When Section 504 was before the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 469, 85 S.Ct. 1707, 1726, 14 L.Ed.2d 484 (1965), Mr. Justice White, dissenting, referred to that section in these terms:
“ * * * the provision of the statute now before the Court which disqualifies felons from holding union office.” (emphasis added)
In De Veau v. Braisted, 363 U.S. 144, 80 S.Ct. 1146, 4 L.Ed.2d 1109 (1960), the court considered a state law which proscribed the labor union activities of one who had been convicted of a felony. Said the court at p. 158, 80 S.Ct. p. 1154.
“Barring convicted felons from certain employments is a familiar legislative device to insure against corruption in specified, vital areas.” (emphasis added)
United States v. Nardello, 393 U.S. 286, 89 S.Ct. 534, 21 L.Ed.2d 487, does not, in my opinion, compel a conclusion that the word “bribery”, appearing in Section 504, is broad enough to include the misdemeanors specified in 29 U.S.C. Section 186. In Nardello the court held that a state law on “blackmail” was applicable to 18 U.S.C. Section 1952, which prohibited travel in interstate commerce with intent to carry on “extortion”. It is noted that in that case each of the statutes relating to blackmail included an intent to extort in defining the prohibited offense. In the case at bar, the government seeks to treat Mr. Jalas as one who had pleaded guilty to bribery, even though the charge to which he actually pleaded guilty was a misdemeanor and one which did not provide for a specific or corrupt intent on his part. In my view such an offense is not bribery.