Court Opinion

ID: 9418616
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:34:12.038836+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:07.128349
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice McReynolds,
dissenting.
I accept the views stated by Mr. Justice Butler. With clarity he points out the unreasonableness of the construction of the statute advocated by counsel for the United States. But I go further.
The provision under which we are told that one may be presumed unlawfully to have purchased an unstamped package of morphine within the district where he is found in possession of it conflicts with those constitutional guaranties heretofore supposed to protect all against arbitrary conviction and punishment. The suggested rational connection between the fact proved and the ultimate fact presumed is imaginary.
Once the thumbscrew and the following confession made conviction easy; but that method was crude and, I suppose, now would be declared unlawful upon some ground. Hereafter, presumption is to lighten the burden of the prosecutor. The victim will be spared the trouble of confessing and will go to his cell without mutilation or disquieting outcry.
*421Probably most of those accelerated to prison under the present Act will be unfortunate addicts and their abettors; but even they live under the Constitution. And where will the next step take us?
When the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Law became effective probably some drug containing opium could have been found in a million or more households within the Union. Paregoric, laudanum, Dover’s Powders, were common remedies. Did every man and woman who possessed one of these instantly become a presumptive criminal and liable to imprisonment unless he could explain to the satisfaction of a jury when and where he got the stuff? Certainly, I cannot assent to any such notion, and it seems worthwhile to say so.
Mr. Justice Butler concurs in these views.