POLLOCK v. WILLIAMS, SHERIFF.
No. 345
Supreme Court of the United States
April 10, 1944
322 U.S. 4
It is clear that the Commission on the facts found had power to include in the authorization provision for service greater than the carrier had asked. Section 208 (a) of the Act provides that in any certificate issued under either § 206 or § 207 “there shall, at the time of issuance and from time to time thereafter, be attached to the exercise of the privileges granted by the certificate such reasonable terms, conditions, and limitations as the public convenience and necessity may from time to time require, including terms, conditions, and limitations as to the extension of the route or routes of the carrier.”
Judgment affirmed.
Argued February 10, 1944.—Decided April 10, 1944.
Mr. John C. Wynn, Assistant Attorney General of Florida, with whom Messrs. J. Tom Watson, Attorney General, and Woodrow M. Melvin, Assistant Attorney General, were on the brief, for appellee.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant Pollock questions the validity of a statute of the State of Florida making it a misdemeanor to induce advances with intent to defraud by a promise to perform labor and further making failure to perform labor for which money has been obtained prima facie evidence of intent to defraud.1 It conflicts, he says, with the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution and with the antipeonage statute enacted by Congress thereunder. Claims also are made under the due process and equal
Pollock was arrested January 5, 1943, on a warrant issued three days before which charged that on the 17th of October, 1942, he did “with intent to injure and defraud under and by reason of a contract and promise to perform labor and service, procure and obtain money, to-wit: the sum of $5.00, as advances from one J. V. O‘Albora, a corporation, contrary to the statute in such cases made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the State of Florida.” He was taken before the county judge on the same day, entered a plea of guilty, and was sentenced to pay a fine of $100 and in default to serve sixty days in the county jail. He was immediately committed.
On January 11, 1943, a writ of habeas corpus was issued by the judge of the circuit court, directed to the jail keeper, who is appellee here. Petition for the writ challenged the constitutionality of the statutes under which Pollock was confined and set forth that “at the trial aforesaid, he was not told that he was entitled to counsel, and that counsel would be provided for him if he wished, and he did not know that he had such right. Petitioner was without funds and unable to employ counsel. He further avers that he did not understand the nature of the charge against him, but understood that if he owed any money to his prior employer and had quit his employment without paying the same, he was guilty, which facts he admitted.” The Sheriff‘s return makes no denial of these allegations, but merely sets forth that he holds the prisoner by virtue of the commitment “based upon the judgment and conviction as set forth in the petition.” The Supreme Court of Florida has said that “undenied allegations of the petition are taken as true.” 2
Florida advances no argument that the presumption section of this statute is constitutional, nor could it plausibly do so in view of our decisions. It contends, however, (1) that we can give no consideration to the presumption section because it was not in fact brought into play in the case, by reason of the plea of guilty; (2) that so severed the section denouncing the crime is constitutional.
I.
These issues emerge from an historical background against which the Florida legislation in question must be appraised.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, made in 1865, declares that involuntary servitude
Clyatt v. United States was a case from Florida in which the Federal Act was used as a sword and an employer
Then came the twice-considered case of Bailey v. Alabama10 in which the Act and the Constitution were raised as a shield against conviction of a laborer under an Alabama act substantially the same as the one before us now. Bailey, a Negro, had obtained $15 from a corporation on a written agreement to work for a year at $12 per month, $10.75 to be paid him and $1.25 per month to apply on his debt. In about a month he quit. He was convicted, fined $30, or in default sentenced to hard labor for 20 days in lieu of the fine and 116 days on account of costs. The Court considered that the portion of the state law defining the crime would require proof of intent to defraud, and so did not strike down that part; nor was it expressly sustained, nor was it necessarily reached, for the prima facie evidence provision had been used to obtain a conviction.
Later came United States v. Reynolds and United States v. Broughton11 in which the Act of 1867 was sword again. Reynolds and Broughton were indicted under it. The Alabama Code authorized one under some circumstances to become surety for a convict, pay his fine, and be reimbursed by labor. Reynolds and Broughton each got himself a convict to work out fines and costs as a farm hand at $6.00 per month. After a time each convict refused to labor further and, under the statute, each was convicted for the refusal. This Court said, “Thus, under pain of recurring prosecutions, the convict may be kept at labor, to satisfy the demands of his employer.” It held the Alabama statute unconstitutional and employers under it subject to prosecution.
In Taylor v. Georgia12 the Federal Act was again applied as a shield, against conviction by resort to the presumption, of a Negro laborer, under a Georgia statute in effect like the one before us now. We made no effort to separate valid from invalid elements in the statute, although the substantive and procedural provisions were, as here, in separate, and separately numbered, sections. We said, “We think that the sections of the Georgia Code upon which this conviction rests are repugnant to the Thirteenth Amendment and to the Act of 1867, and that the conviction must therefore be reversed.” Only recently in a case from Northern Florida a creditor-employer was indicted under the Federal Act for arresting a debtor to peonage, and we sustained the indictment. United States v. Gaskin.13
These cases decided by this Court under the Act of 1867 came either from Florida or one of the adjoining states.
In 1891, the Legislature created an offense of two elements: obtaining money or property upon a false promise to perform service, and abandonment of service without just cause and without restitution of what had been obtained.15 In 1905, this Court decided Clyatt v. United States, indicating that any person, including public officers,
II.
The State contends that we must exclude the prima facie evidence provision from consideration because in fact it played no part in producing this conviction. Such was the holding of the State Supreme Court. We are not concluded by that holding, however, but under the circumstances are authorized to make an independent determination.21
Especially in view of the undenied assertions in Pollock‘s petition we cannot doubt that the presumption provision had a coercive effect in producing the plea of guilty. The statute laid its undivided weight upon him. The legislature had not even included a separability clause.22 Of course the function of the prima facie evidence section is to make it possible to convict where proof of guilt is lacking. No one questions that we clearly have held that such a presumption is prohibited by the Constitution and the federal statute. The Florida Legislature has enacted and twice re-enacted it since we so held. We cannot assume it was doing an idle thing. Since the presumption was known to be unconstitutional and of no use in a contested case, the only explanation we can find for its persistent appearance in the statute is its extra-legal coercive effect in suppressing defenses. It confronted this defendant. There was every probability that a law so recently and repeatedly enacted by the legislature would be followed by the trial court, whose judge was not required to be a lawyer. The possibility of obtaining relief by appeal was not bright, as the event proved, for Pollock had to come all the way to this Court and was required, and quite regularly, to post a supersedeas bond of $500, a hundred times the amount of his debt. He was an illiterate Negro laborer in the toils of the law for the want of $5. Such considerations bear importantly on the decision of a prisoner even if aided by counsel, as Pollock was not, whether to plead guilty and hope for leniency or to fight. It is plain that, had his plight after conviction
In the light of its history, there is no reason to believe that the law was generally used or especially useful merely to punish deceit. Florida has a general and comprehensive statute making it a crime to obtain money or property by false pretenses23 or commit “gross fraud or cheat at common law.”24 These appear to authorize prosecution for even the petty amount involved here.25 We can conceive reasons, even if unconstitutional ones, which might lead well-intentioned persons to apply this Act as a means to make otherwise shiftless men work,26 but if in addition to this general fraud protection employers as a class are so susceptible to imposition that they need extra legislation, or workmen so crafty and subtle as to constitute a special menace, we do not know it, nor are we advised of such facts.
We think that a state which maintains such a law in face of the court decisions we have recited may not be heard to say that a plea of guilty under the circumstances is not due to pressure of its statutory threat to convict him on the presumption.
As we have seen, Florida persisted in putting upon its statute books a provision creating a presumption of fraud
In the view we take of the purpose and effect of this prima facie evidence provision it is not material whether as matter of state law it is regarded as an independent and severable provision.
III.
We are induced by the evident misunderstanding of our decisions by the Florida Supreme Court, in what we are convinced was a conscientious and painstaking study of them, to make more explicit the basis of constitutional invalidity of this type of statute.
The undoubted aim of the Thirteenth Amendment as implemented by the Antipeonage Act was not merely to end slavery but to maintain a system of completely free and voluntary labor throughout the United States. Forced labor in some special circumstances may be consistent with the general basic system of free labor. For example, forced labor has been sustained as a means of punishing crime,27 and there are duties such as work on
Where peonage has existed in the United States it has done so chiefly by virtue of laws like the statute in question. Whether the statute did or did not include the presumption seems to have made little difference in its practical effect. In 1910, in response to a resolution of the House of Representatives, the Immigration Commission reported the results of an investigation of peonage among immigrants in the United States.29 It found that no general system of peonage existed, and that sentiment did not support it anywhere. On the other hand, it found sporadic cases of probable peonage in every state in the Union except Oklahoma and Connecticut. It pointed out that “there has probably existed in Maine the most com-
It is a mistake to believe that in dealing with statutes of this type we have held the presumption section to be the only source of invalidity. On the contrary, the substantive section has contributed largely to the conclusion of unconstitutionality of the presumption section. The latter in a different context might not be invalid. Indeed, we have sustained the power of the state to enact an almost identical presumption of fraud, but in transactions that did not involve involuntary labor to discharge a debt. James-Dickinson Farm Mortgage Co. v. Harry.34 Absent this feature any objection to prima facie evidence or presumption statutes of the state can arise only under the Fourteenth Amendment, rather than under the Thirteenth. In deciding peonage cases under the latter this Court has been as careful to point out the broad power of the state to create presumptions as it has to point out its power to punish frauds. It “has frequently recognized the general power of every legislature to prescribe the evidence which shall be received, and the effect of that evidence in the courts of its own government. In the exercise of this
In Taylor v. Georgia both sections of the Act were held unconstitutional. There the State relied on the presumption to convict. But it was not denied that a state has power reasonably to prescribe the prima facie inferences to be drawn from circumstantial evidence. It was the substance of the crime to establish which the presumption was invoked that gave a forbidden aspect to that method of short-cutting the road to conviction. The decision striking down both sections was not, as the Supreme Court of Florida thought, a casual and unconsidered use of the plural. Mr. Justice Byrnes knew whereof he spoke; unconstitutionality inhered in the substantive quite as much as in the procedural section and no part of the invalid statute could be separated to be salvaged. Where in the same substantive context the State threatens by statute to convict on a presumption, its inherent coercive power is such that we are constrained to hold that it is equally use-
It is true that in each opinion dealing with statutes of this type this Court has expressly recognized the right of the state to punish fraud, even in matters of this kind, by statutes which do not either in form or in operation lend themselves to sheltering the practice of peonage. Deceit is not put beyond the power of the state because the cheat is a laborer nor because the device for swindling is an agreement to labor. But when the state undertakes to deal with this specialized form of fraud, it must respect the constitutional and statutory command that it may not make failure to labor in discharge of a debt any part of a crime. It may not directly or indirectly command involuntary servitude, even if it was voluntarily contracted for.
From what we have said about the practical considerations which are relevant to the inquiry whether any particular state act conflicts with the Antipeonage Act of 1867 because it is one by which “any attempt shall hereafter be made to establish, maintain or enforce” the prohibited servitude, it is apparent that we should not pass on hypothetical acts. Reservation of the question of the validity of an act unassociated with a presumption now, as heretofore, does not denote approval. The Supreme Court of Florida has held such an act standing alone unconstitutional.37 A considerable recorded experience would merit examination in relation to any specific labor fraud act.38 We do not enter upon the inquiry further than the Act before us.
We impute to the Legislature no intention to oppress, but we are compelled to hold that the Florida Act of 1919 as brought forward on the statutes as §§ 817.09 and 817.10 of the Statutes of 1941 are, by virtue of the Thirteenth Amendment and the Antipeonage Act of the United States, null and void. The judgment of the court below is reversed and the cause is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE REED, dissenting:
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:
“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
“Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
To meet the problem of peonage, that is, “compulsory service in payment of a debt,”1 Congress enacted the legislation set out in note 8 of the Court‘s opinion which de-
However much peonage may offend our susceptibilities, and however great our distaste for a statute which is capable of use as a means of imposing peonage on the working man, the present statute is, in this Court, no more immune than any other which a state may enact, from the salutary requirement that its constitutionality must be presumed, and that the burden rests on him who assails it, on constitutional grounds, to show that it is either unconstitutional on its face or that it has been or will be in fact so applied as to deny his constitutional rights.
This Court now holds, as it has held before, that when the presumption section is applied in the trial of a criminal charge under the substantive section, both are invalid and a conviction thus obtained by resort to a presumption of law which may be false in fact, cannot be sustained. But the Court‘s opinion fails to bridge the gap between
Whether this conclusion rests upon the ground that the State of Florida cannot constitutionally make it a penal offense for a laborer fraudulently to procure advances of wages for which he intends to render no service or upon the ground that the presumption section has in fact operated in this case to coerce petitioner‘s plea of guilty, the one is plainly without support in law and the other is without support in the record.
So far as the decision of the Court rests on the ground that the substantive section is unconstitutional on its face, the decision necessarily proceeds on the assumption that because of the Thirteenth Amendment a state is without power to punish a workman who fraudulently procures an advance of a wage when he intends not to work for it, or that the two sections in law and in fact are inseparable in their application so that the substantive section is tainted by the presumption section, although in this case it is not shown to have influenced the plea of guilty.
We are given no constitutional reason for saying that a state may not punish the fraudulent procurement of an advance of wages as well as the giving of a check drawn on a bank account in which there are no funds, or any other course of conduct which the common law has long recognized, as the procuring of money or property by fraud or deceit. There is of course no constitutional reason why Florida should not punish fraud in labor contracts differently from fraud in other classes of contracts. Legislation need not seek to correct every abuse by a single enactment. The state may select its objective. Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 370; Tigner v. Texas, 310 U. S. 141, 149.
Not only has the Supreme Court of Florida held as a matter of law that the two sections of the statute now before us are separable,2 but it is obvious that as a matter of law the presumption section is not called into operation where, as here, the accused does not go to trial but pleads guilty to the substantive charge. In rejecting these conclusions as to the separability of the two sections, we take it that the Court is not rejecting the Supreme Court of Florida‘s interpretation of the Florida statute, but rather that it concludes as a matter of fact that the presumption section is so all-pervasive in its operation that we must
But neither the present record nor any facts of which we can take judicial notice lend support to that conclusion. For all that appears petitioner had no defense to the charge even though the substantive section had stood alone. Unless we are to presume that the statute can only be given an unconstitutional application, we cannot say that petitioner had any defense to the charge of fraud to which he pleaded guilty, and certainly we can-not treat the presumption section as depriving him of a defense which he did not have.
The Court apparently concludes that the enactment and maintenance of the presumption section, after a determination here of its invalidity, makes the entire statute invalid on its face. This result is reached by assuming that the existence of the presumption section coerces involuntary labor under the contract by fear of conviction for violation of the first or substantive section. We cannot properly take judicial notice of such an effect. If pleaded and proven a different situation would emerge.
The petition for habeas corpus in this case can hardly be said to go farther than object to conviction on the ground of the unconstitutionality of the Florida statute as a whole. No coercion to plead guilty is alleged. The statements in the petition as to lack of counsel and of knowledge of the elements of the offense are referred to in the Court‘s opinion but we do not understand that the Court relies upon them. No use was made of the presumption section at the trial. Petitioner pleaded guilty to the substantive crime. No allegations or proof appear in the record that the Florida statute was used or applied to promote peonage or involuntary servitude of petitioner or to coerce his plea of guilty. The decision is in effect that
We cannot conclude that a statute which merely punishes a fraud in a contract, as the first section does if considered alone, violates the provision of the Thirteenth Amendment against involuntary servitude or is null and void under
The conviction should be affirmed.
The CHIEF JUSTICE joins in this dissent.
Notes
“817.09 Obtaining property by fraudulent promise to perform labor or service.—Any person in this state who shall, with intent to injure and defraud, under and by reason of a contract or promise to perform labor or service, procure or obtain money or other thing of value as a credit, or as advances, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding six months.
“817.10 Same; prima facie evidence of fraudulent intent.—In all prosecutions for a violation of § 817.09 the failure or refusal, without just cause, to perform such labor or service or to pay for the money or other thing of value so obtained or procured shall be prima facie evidence of the intent to injure and defraud.” Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U. S. 219, 242.
The court then took up Bailey v. Alabama, 211 U. S. 452, and noted as to it: “We think it very significant that the court remarked upon the lack of doubt that the offenses defined could be made a crime. Gist of the decision, as we understand it, was, summarizing, that the part of the law describing the crime and the one providing for the presumption were not interdependent and that if, in the prosecution, the state did not resort to the latter the validity of the former would be unaffected.”
Later, speaking of our opinion in the Taylor case, the Florida court said: “The section anent presumptive evidence had been relied upon to secure a conviction, so the court again had for determination the question of the constitutionality of the first section when the second was brought into play. Not being faced with that problem here we conclude that the first Bailey decision and ours in Phillips v. Bell are in accord and that they in turn are not in conflict with the rulings in the second Bailey case and Taylor v. Georgia, supra.”
“Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
“The holding of any person to service or labor under the system known as peonage is hereby declared to be unlawful, and the same is hereby abolished and forever prohibited in the Territory of New Mexico, or in any other Territory or State of the United States; and all acts, laws, resolutions, orders, regulations, or usages of the Territory of New Mexico, or of any other Territory or State of the United States, which have heretofore established, maintained, or enforced, or by virtue of which any attempt shall hereafter be made to establish, maintain, or enforce, directly or indirectly, the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise, be, and the same are hereby, declared null and void; and any person or persons who shall hold, arrest, or return, or cause to be held, arrested, or returned, or in any manner aid in the arrest or return of any person or persons to a condition of peonage, shall, upon conviction, be punished by fine not less than one thousand nor more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not less than one nor more than five years, or both, at the discretion of the court.” The first part of the statute is now
“Section 1. That from and after the passage of this act any person in the State of Florida, who shall contract with another to perform for him services of any kind with intent to procure money, or other thing of value thereby, and not to perform the service contracted for, or whoever, after having so contracted, shall obtain or procure from the hirer money or other thing of value, with intent not to perform such service, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine of not more than one thousand dollars or by imprisonment in the county jail not more than one year, or by both fine and imprisonment.
“Sec. 2. That satisfactory proof of the contract, the procuring thereon of money or other thing of value, the failure to perform the services so contracted for, or failure to return the money so advanced with interest thereon at the time said labor or service was to be performed, without good and sufficient cause, shall be deemed prima facie evidence of the intent referred to in the preceding section.” Florida Laws 1907, c. 5678.
“Sec. 2. That Chapter 5678, Acts of 1907, be and the same is hereby repealed.
“Sec. 3. That all laws in conflict with the provisions of this Act are hereby repealed.” Florida Laws 1913, c. 6528.
“In late years the natives who formerly supplied the labor for the logging concerns in that State have been engaged in the paper mills, and the lumber companies have been compelled to import laborers, largely foreigners, from other States. Boston is the chief labor market for the Maine forests. The employment agents misrepresent conditions in the woods, and frequently tell the laborers that the camps will be but a few miles from some town where they can go from time to time for recreation and enjoyment. Arriving at the outskirts of civilization the laborers are driven in wagons a short distance into the forests and then have to walk sometimes 60 or 70 miles into the interior, the roads being impassable for vehicles. The men will then be kept in the heart of the forest for months throughout the winter, living in a most rugged fashion and with no recreation whatever. A great many of them have rebelled against this treatment, and they have left their employers by the score. The lumbermen having advanced transportation and supplies have appealed to the legislature for protection. In February, 1907, a bill became a law making it a crime for a person to—
enter into an agreement to labor for any lumbering operation or in driving logs and in consideration thereof receive any advances of goods, money, or transportation, and unreasonably and with intent to defraud, fail to enter into said employment as agreed and labor a sufficient length of time to reimburse his employer for said advances and expenses.
Judges in municipal courts and trial justices were given jurisdiction to try cases under this law, and the act provided that it would take effect immediately upon approval. When this bill was before the legislature, requests were made by citizens interested in factories and other industries that the provisions of the statute be made to protect all employers of labor. The attorney who introduced the bill on behalf of the lumber interests which he represented, has stated that he had refused to accede to these requests, inasmuch as he believed the provision should not be extended. The protection granted by the statute, therefore, was restricted to a favored class, persons interested in ‘lumbering operations and in driving logs.‘” Peonage Report, supra note 29, p. 447.
the failure or refusal of any employee to perform such labor or render such services in accordance with his contract or to pay in money the amount for such transportation or such advancement shall be prima facie evidence of his intent to defraud;
as appears in the contract-labor law of Minnesota and in the statutes of other States in the West and the South. However, justices of the peace in Maine have decided indiscriminately that, in order to obtain a conviction under the law of that State, it is necessary to show only that the laborer obtained the ‘advances’ and failed ‘to labor a sufficient length of time to reimburse his employer.’
“A justice at Houlton, Maine, who is a lawyer by profession, told the attorney representing the peonage committee that he decided in cases brought under the contract-labor law that ‘the burden of proof is upon the defendant,’ who must show to the court ‘beyond a reasonable doubt that he had no intent to defraud.’ This justice added that once in a while if a laborer has a really good excuse he will let him off, as he believes ‘every man has some rights, although he may be poor.’ Another justice of the peace at Patten, Maine, stated that if it was shown that a laborer had obtained the advances and had not worked sufficiently to settle for them he found the defendant guilty without considering the question of intent to defraud. This seems to be the general attitude of the rural justices of Maine toward the contract-labor law.
“Considerable peonage has resulted from this statute. The law has been vigorously enforced. Soon after its passage prosecutions were commenced in the lumber regions, and the jail at Dover, the county seat of one of the large lumber counties of Maine, was crowded with laborers convicted of defrauding their employers out of ‘advances of goods, money, or transportation.’
“Involuntary servitude results in utilizing this statute to intimidate laborers to work against their will. On account of the vigorous methods pursued in enforcing the above-described law, it soon became known throughout the lumber region of Maine that any laborer was liable to imprisonment who refused to work according to the provisions of his contract until he had settled for all advances, no matter what misrepresentations may have been made to induce him to enter into the agreement. The contract-labor law has become a club which the foremen and superintendents draw upon the laborers who refuse to go to work or to continue at work. If a man leaves his employer before settling for advances, he will be pursued and apprehended, or someone will telephone to the constable, who will arrest the laborer. He will then be brought before the justice, and ‘sent down the river,’ to prison; or if he consents to labor until he shall have reimbursed for all advances and the fine and cost of the prosecution, the employer will settle with the court and constable and will take the laborer back into the forest. No doubt many of the laborers never attempt to escape, although they may consider that they have been basely deceived about the conditions of labor.” Peonage Report, supra note 29, pp. 448-49.