319 U.S. 503 | SCOTUS | 1943
Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is an indictment in five counts. Four charge Johnson with attempts to defraud the income tax for each of the years from 1936 to 1939, inclusive, and charge a dozen others with aiding and abetting Johnson’s efforts. The fifth count charges Johnson and the others with conspir
As to foúr of the defendants, the cause was dismissed upon motion of the United States Attorney; three others were acquitted by the jury. Of the six remaining defendants, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty on all five counts against Johnson, Sommers, Hartigan, Flanagan, and Kelly, and against Brown on counts three and four, the substantive counts for the years 1938 and 1939, and on the conspiracy count. The district court imposed on Johnson a sentence of five years on each of the first four counts and of two years on the conspiracy count, as well as a fine of $10,000 on each of the five counts. The terms of imprisonment were to run concurrently and the payment of $10,000 would discharge all fines. Lesser concurrent sentences and fines were imposed on the other defendants.
The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the judgments. Its holding undermined the entire prosecution in that it found the indictment void because it was returned by an illegally constituted grand jury. But it went beyond that major ruling. It found the four substantive counts of the indictment, in so far as they charged defendants as aiders and abettors, fatally defective. Proceeding to the merits, the court held that the case properly went to the jury against Johnson on the last four counts and that the evidence sustained the verdict against all the defendants on the conspiracy count, but that a verdict should have been directed for Johnson on the first count and for the other defendants on all but the conspiracy count. Finally, it found that the testimony of an expert accountant for the
Inasmuch as the initiation of prosecution through grand juries forms a vital feature of the federal system of criminal justice, the law governing its procedures and the appropriate considerations for determining the legality of its actions are matters of -first importance. Therefore, in deciding that the defendants were held to answer for an infamous crime on what was merely a scrap of paper and not “the indictment of the Grand Jury” as required by the Fifth Amendment, the lower court went beyond that which relates to the special circumstances of a particular case. Unlike most of the other rulings below, the court here dealt with a matter of deep concern to the administration of federal criminal law. At the root of the court’s decision is its finding that an order extending the life of the grand jury was void, and that the indictment was therefore returned by a body not lawfully empowered to act. A brief history of the proceedings which led to the filing of this indictment in open court on March 29, 1940, is therefore essential.
Terms of court of the District Court for the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Illinois are, by statute, fixed for the first Monday in February, March, April, May, June, July, September, October, and November, and on the third Monday in December. 28 U. S. C. § 152. This grand jury was impaneled at the December
“Now comes the Second December Term 1939 Grand Jury for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, by Dorothy W. Binder, Forewoman, and in open Court requests that an order be entered authorizing them, the said Second December, 1939 Grand Jury, heretofore authorized to sit during the February 1940 Term of this Court, to continue to sit during tile Term of Court succeeding the said February Term of Court, to-wit, the March 1940 Term of Court, to finish investigations begun but not finished by said Grand Jury during the said December 1939 and the said February 1940 Terms of this Court, and which said investigations cannot be finished during the said February 1940 Term of Court; and the Court being fully advised in the premises,
“It Is Therefore Ordered That the Second December 1939 Grand Jury, now sitting in this Division and District, be, and it is hereby authorized to continue to sit during the March 1940 Term of Court for the purpose of finishing said investigations.”
The court below construed this order as authorizing the grand jury to sit during March to enable it to finish investigations begun in February, while under the governing statute, § 284 of the Judicial Code, 28 U. S. C. § 421, it could be authorized only “to finish investigations begun but not finished by such grand jury” during its original term, i. e., the December 1939 term. So to read the order, however, is to dissociate language from its appropriate function and to disregard the historic role of the grand
The foundation for the holding that the order extending the grand jury into the March term purported to give authority in defiance of the statute is the phrase in the order reciting the grand jury’s request that it be authorized to continue its sitting during the March term “to finish investigations begun but not finished by said grand jury during the said December 1939 and the said February 1940 Terms of this Court, and which said investigations cannot be finished during the said February 1940 Term of Court.” The Circuit Court of Appeals read this to mean that the grand jury requested a continuance into the March term to finish investigations begun in the February as well as in the original December term. But surely the recital “to finish investigations begun but not finished by said grand jury during the said December 1939 and the said February 1940 Terms,” is, at the worst, dubious as to what was begun and what was finished. Judge Evans rightly resolved the ambiguity by reading the disputed language “during the said December 1939 and the said February 1940 Terms” as qualifying “finished” rather than “begun,” and therefore meaning that the grand jury was unable to finish during the December and February terms that which it had begun when it first came into being in the December term. Such a rendering makes good English as well as good sense. To read it as the court below read it is to go out of one’s way in finding that the judge who granted the order of extension either wilfully or irresponsibly did a legally forbidden act, namely, to allow
The failure of the court below to recognize the essential function of the grand jury in our system of criminal justice is revealed by its subsidiary argument in regard to the fourth count. Since that charges an attempted evasion of Johnson’s taxes for the year 1939, and since such an attempt could not have become manifest prior to the filing of his return on March 15, 1940, the court reasoned that the “investigation” into this charge necessarily could not have been begun prior to the March term and that it therefore constituted a “new” investigation. Such a view misconceives the duties and workings of a grand jury. It is invested with broad investigatorial powers into what may be found to be offenses against federal criminal law. Its work is not circumscribed by the technical requirements governing the ascertainment of guilt once it has made the charges that culminate its inquiries. A grand jury that begins the investigation of what may be found to be obstructions to justice or passport frauds or tax evasions opens up all the ramifications of the particular field of inquiry. Its investigation in such cases may be into a course of conduct continuing during, and perhaps even after, its inquiry. And Congress certainly did not restrict a grand jury in dealing with all crimes disclosed by its investigation. The very purpose of the Act of February 25, 1931, 46 Stat. 1417, 28 U. S. C. § 421, allowing grand
One can hardly conceive of a clearer case of a continuing investigation of an old subject-matter than that presented here. The grand jury in December 1939 began investigation into alleged tax evasions by Johnson. It was allowed to continue its sitting during the February term, and its authority was further extended to permit it to sit during March. The grand jury found a systematic practice of tax evasion over a courge of years, and
By way of reinsurance of its main basis for invalidating the indictment, the Circuit Court of Appeals relied on a wholly different line of argument from that which we have just rejected. It held that the preliminary motions, by which the defendants sought to quash the indictment because of the grand jury’s illegality, raised issues of fact. It therefore found that the district court, instead of granting the government’s motion to strike the pleas in abatement, should have put the government to answer. The indictment itself alleged that the grand jury “having begun but not finished during said December Term . . . an investigation of the matters charged in this indictment, and having continued to sit by order of this Court . . . during the February and March Terms ... for the purpose of finishing investigations begun but not finished during said December Term. . . .” The court below was apparently of the view that a mere denial of such a solemn allegation by the grand jury puts its truth in issue, that the burden is upon the government “to support it with proof,” and that failure to vindicate the authority of the grand jury is “fatal.” Assuming that under any circumstances a grand jury’s allegation that the indictment which it returns was the outcome of an investigation “begun” during its original term and was not a forbidden new investigation “begun” during an extended term, within the meaning of § 284 of the Judicial Code, 28 U. S. C. § 421, presented a traversable issue, the cir
Were the ruling of the court below allowed to stand, the mere challenge, in effect, of the regularity of a grand jury’s proceedings would cast upon the government the affirmative duty of proving such regularity. Nothing could be more destructive of the workings of our grand jury system or more hostile to its historic status. That institution, unlike the situation in many states, is part of the federal constitutional system. To allow the intrusion, implied by the lower court’s attitude, into the indispensable secrecy of grand jury proceedings — as important for the protection of the innocent as for the pursuit of the guilty — would subvert the functions of federal grand juries by all sorts of devices which some states have seen fit to permit in their local procedure, such as ready resort to inspection of grand jury minutes. The district court was quite within its right in striking the preliminary motions which challenged the legality of the grand jury that returned the indictment. To construe these pleadings as the court below did would be to resuscitate seventeenth century notions of interpreting pleadings and to do so in an aggravated form by applying them to the administration of the criminal law in the twentieth century. Protections of substance which now safeguard the rights of the accused do not require the invention of such new refinements of criminal pleading.
Another ruling of general importance in the law of criminal pleading was made by the Circuit Court of Appeals. It will be recalled that the first four counts charge Johnson with attempts to defraud the revenue, and that the other defendants are in the same counts charged as aiders and abettors of Johnson. The court below ruled that a demurrer of the defendants other than Johnson to
We are constrained to say that the court was led into error by a misreading of the statutes which underlie these counts and the allegations which laid the offenses. The basis of each of the four counts, we have noted, is a penal sanction in successive revenue laws, now generalized by the provision in the Internal Revenue Code, 53 Stat. 63, 26 U. S. C. § 145 (b), which makes it a felony for any person who, being subject to the income tax, “willfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this chapter or the payment thereof.” Section 332 of the Criminal Code (18 U. S. C. § 550) makes every person who “directly commits any act constituting an offense defined in any law of the United States, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces, or procures its commission” a “principal.” The vice of the lower court’s ruling is its misconception of the nature of the offense defined by § 145 (b) with which Johnson is charged, as well as that of the relation of aiders and abettors, made principals by § 332 of the Criminal Code to such an offense. In short, the Circuit Court of Appeals read the substantive counts as though they charged Johnson merely with the filing of false returns on March 15th. That may only be a misdemeanor under § 145 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code, but that is not the offense with which Johnson was
There remain only questions pertinent to this case, and more particularly whether the evidence warranted leaving the case to the jury. This was a six weeks’ trial of which the record, even in the abbreviated form used on appeal, runs over a thousand printed pages. We have painstakingly examined it all, but it would be unprofitable to give more than the barest outline of what went to the jury. The details sufficiently appear from the two opinions below.
Johnson was a gambler on a magnificent scale. The income which he himself reported from winnings for one of the years in question exceeded a quarter of a million
The jury decided this central issue against Johnson. And the argument that there was not enough evidence on which a jury was entitled to make such a finding does not call for extended discussion. In making this ultimate finding the jury must have found that the string of gambling houses with which Johnson was associated over a period of years, while ostensibly conducted as separate enterprises by his co-defendants in separate ownership, was in fact a single unified gambling enterprise. A voluminous body of lurid and tedious testimony, often through obviously unwilling witnesses, amply justified the jury in finding that these pretended separate houses were under a single domination. The testimony also amply justified the cpnclusion that Johnson owned a proprietary interest in this network of gambling houses and was not merely a patron or an occasional accommodating dealer when other
That he had large, unreported income was reinforced by proof which warranted the jury in finding that certainly for the years 1937,1938, and 1939, the private expenditures of Johnson exceeded his available declared resources. It is on this latter ground — namely, that presumably Johnson’s expenditures justified the finding that he had some unreported income which was properly attributable to his earnings from the gambling houses — that the court below thought that the evidence on three of the substantive counts, those for 1937,1938, and 1939, was sufficient to go to the jury. That is enough to sustain the judgment against Johnson, for the sentences on all the counts were imposed to run concurrently.
Of course the government did not have to prove the exact amounts of unreported income by Johnson. To require more or more meticulous proof than this record discloses that there were unreported profits from an elab
Not many words are needed to dispose of the question of the sufficiency of the evidence to warrant submission to the jury of the substantive counts against the other aiders and abettors, Sommers, Hartigan, Flanagan, and Kelly. In holding that the motion for directed verdicts on the counts charging aiding and abetting should have been granted, the court below was largely misled by its erroneous conception, with which we have already dealt, of the crime of aiding and abetting in the circumstances of this case. In other words, as a matter of evidence as well as a matter of pleading, the court was dominated by the notion that the co-defendants did not aid and abet Johnson if they actually did not share in the making of his false return on each March 15th. The nub of the matter is that they aided and abetted if they consciously were parties to the concealment of his interest in these gambling clubs of which they themselves pretended to be proprietors. Evidence of conduct, acts and admissions, amply warranted the trial court to send the substantive counts against the aiders and abettors to the jury.
The decision below must therefore be reversed and the cause remanded to the Circuit Court of Appeals for proper disposition in accordance with this opinion.
Reversed.
After the case came here, the Government asked that the petition as to Flanagan, who had died, be dismissed. Accordingly, we dismiss the writ as to Flanagan and leave the disposition of the fine that was imposed on him to the Circuit Court of Appeals. See United States v. Pomeroy, 152 F. 279, reversed in 164 F. 324.
Concurrence Opinion
concurs in that portion of the opinion which deals with the validity of the indictment. He is of opinion that the judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals should be affirmed because, in the case of Johnson, substantial trial errors in the admission of evidence operated to his prejudice, and, in the case of the other defendants, because there was no evidence whatever to prove that they aided or abetted Johnson in any effort to commit a fraud upon the revenue and none to prove that they were parties to a conspiracy with him having the same object.