Petitioner was convicted under the Hobbs Anti-Racketeering Act,
18 U.S.C. § 1951, on two counts, for obstructing interstate
commerce by extortion and for conspiring to do so. He was sentenced
to consecutive terms of 12 years on each count, though the sentence
on one count was suspended and replaced with a five-year probation
to commence at the expiration of the sentence on the other count.
He sought a correction of the sentence under Rule 35 of the Federal
Rules of Criminal Procedure, claiming that the maximum penalty
under the Act for obstructing interstate commerce by any means is
20 years, and that Congress did not intend to subject individuals
to two penalties.
Held: under the Act, obstructing interstate commerce by
extortion and conspiring to do so are separate offenses; separate
consecutive sentences may be imposed for each offense. Pp.
364 U. S.
587-597.
274 F.2d 601 affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner was convicted by a jury in the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on two counts. Count I
charged a conspiracy to obstruct commerce by extorting money, and
Count II charged the substantive offense of obstructing commerce by
extortion, both crimes made punishable by the Hobbs
Anti-Racketeering
Page 364 U. S. 588
Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951. [
Footnote
1] Petitioner was sentenced to consecutive terms of twelve
years on each count, but the sentence on Count II was suspended and
replaced with a five-year probation to commence at the expiration
of his sentence under Count I. [
Footnote 2] On appeal, the conviction was affirmed, 223
F.2d 171.
Petitioner thereafter sought a correction of his sentence,
invoking Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Criminal
Page 364 U. S. 589
Procedure, as well as 28 U.S.C. § 2255. [
Footnote 3] He claimed that the maximum penalty for
obstructing interstate commerce under the Act by any means is
twenty years, and that Congress did not intend to subject
individuals to two penalties. The District Court denied relief,
holding that the Hobbs Act gave no indication of a departure from
the usual rule that a conspiracy and the substantive crime which
was its object may be cumulatively punished. 173 F. Supp. 98. The
Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed this judgment, 274
F.2d 601. Deeming the question raised by petitioner of sufficient
importance, we brought the case here. 362 U.S. 939.
Under the early common law, a conspiracy -- which constituted a
misdemeanor -- was said to merge with the completed felony which
was its object.
See Commonwealth v. Kingsbury, 5 Mass.
106. This rule, however, was based upon significant procedural
distinctions between misdemeanors and felonies. The defendant in a
misdemeanor trial was entitled to counsel and a copy of the
indictment; these advantages were unavailable on trial for a
felony.
King v. Westbeer, 1 Leach 12, 15, 168 Eng.Rep.
108, 110 (1739);
see Clark and Marshall, Crimes, § 2.03,
n. 96 (6th ed). Therefore, no conviction was permitted of a
constituent misdemeanor upon an indictment for the felony. When the
substantive crime was also a misdemeanor,
People v.
Mather, 4 Wend., N.Y., 229, 265, or when the conspiracy was
defined by statute as a felony,
State v. Mayberry, 48 Me.
218, 238, merger did not obtain. As these common law procedural
niceties disappeared, the
Page 364 U. S. 590
merger concept lost significance, and today it has been
abandoned.
Queen v. Button, 11 Q.B. 929, 116 Eng.Rep. 720;
Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.
S. 640.
Petitioner does not draw on this archaic law of merger. He
argues that Congress, by combining the conspiracy and the
substantive offense in one provision, § 1951, manifested an intent
not to punish commission of two offenses cumulatively. Unlike the
merger doctrine, petitioner's position does not question that the
Government could charge a conspiracy even when the substantive
crime that was its object had been completed. His concern is with
the punitive consequences of the choice thus open to the
Government; it can indict for both or either offense, but,
petitioner contends, it can punish only for one.
The present Hobbs Act had as its antecedent the
Anti-Racketeering Act of 1934. [
Footnote 4] In view of this Court's restrictive
Page 364 U. S. 591
decision in
United States v. Local 807, 315 U.
S. 521 (1942), Congress, under the leadership of
Representative Hobbs, sought to stiffen the 1934 legislation. After
several unsuccessful attempts over a period of four years, a bill
was passed in 1946 which deleted any reference to wages paid by an
employer to an employee, on which the decision in Local 807 had
relied. [
Footnote 5] The 1934
Act was further invigorated by increasing the maximum penalty from
ten to twenty years.
Petitioner relies on numerous statements by members of Congress
concerning the severity of the twenty-year penalty to illustrate
that cumulative sentences were not
Page 364 U. S. 592
contemplated. [
Footnote 6]
But the legislative history sheds no light whatever on whether the
Congressmen were discussing the question of potential sentences
under the whole bill, or merely defending the maximum punishment
under its
Page 364 U. S. 593
specific sections. All the legislative talk only reiterates what
the statute itself says -- that the maximum penalty is twenty
years.
The distinctiveness between a substantive offense and a
conspiracy to commit is a postulate of our law.
"If has been long and consistently recognized by the Court that
the commission of the substantive offense and a conspiracy to
commit it are separate and distinct offenses."
Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.
S. 640,
328 U. S. 643.
See also Pereira v. United States, 347 U. S.
1,
347 U. S. 11.
Over the years, this distinction has been applied in various
situations. For example, in
Clune v. United States,
159 U. S. 590, the
Court upheld a two-year sentence for conspiracy over the objection
that the crime which was the object of the unlawful agreement could
only be punished by a $100 fine. The same result was reached when,
as in the present case, both offenses were described within the
same statute. In
Carter v. McClaughry, 183 U.
S. 365, cumulative sentences for conspiracy to defraud
and fraud were upheld. "Cumulative sentences," the Court
pronounced,
"are not cumulative punishments, and a single sentence for
several offenses, in excess of that prescribed for one offense, may
be authorized to statute."
183 U.S. at
183 U. S.
394.
This settled principle derives from the reason of things in
dealing with socially reprehensible conduct: collective criminal
agreement -- partnership in crime -- presents a greater potential
threat to the public than individual delicts. Concerted action both
increases the likelihood that the criminal object will be
successfully attained and decreases the probability that the
individuals involved will depart from their path of criminality.
Group association for criminal purposes often, if not normally,
makes possible the attainment of ends more complex than those which
one criminal could accomplish. Nor is the danger of a
conspiratorial group limited to the particular end toward which it
has embarked. Combination in crime
Page 364 U. S. 594
makes more likely the commission of crimes unrelated to the
original purpose for which the group was formed. In sum, the danger
which a conspiracy generates is not confined to the substantive
offense which is the immediate aim of the enterprise. [
Footnote 7]
These considerations are the presuppositions of the separately
defined crimes in § 1951. The punitive consequences that presumably
flow from them must be placed in such context. Congress is, after
all, not a body of laymen unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our
law. This legislation was the formulation of the two Judiciary
Committees, all of whom are lawyers, and the Congress is
predominately a lawyers' body. We attribute
"to Congress a tacit purpose -- in the absence of any
inconsistent expression -- to maintain a long established
distinction between offenses essentially different; a distinction
whose practical importance in the criminal law is not easily
overestimated."
United States v. Rabinowich, 238 U. S.
78,
238 U. S.
88.
These considerations are reinforced by a prior interpretation of
the Sherman Act whose minor penalties influenced the enactment of
the 1934 anti-racketeering legislation. [
Footnote 8] In
American Tobacco Co. v.
United States, 328
Page 364 U. S. 595
U.S. 781, individual and corporate defendants were convicted,
inter alia, of conspiracy to monopolize and
monopolization, both made criminal by § 2. They were sentenced to a
fine of $5,000, the maximum statutory penalty, on each of the
counts. We affirmed these convictions on the basis of our past
decisions in this field of law. 328 U.S. at
328 U. S.
788-789. To dislodge such conventional consequences in
the outlawing of two disparate offenses, conspiracy and substantive
conduct, and effectuate a reversal of the settled interpretation we
pronounced in
American Tobacco would require specific
language to the contrary.
See also Albrecht v. United
States, 273 U. S. 1,
273 U. S. 11;
Burton v. United States, 202 U. S. 344,
202 U. S.
377.
Petitioner argues that some of the other provisions of § 1951
seem to overlap, and would not justify cumulative punishment for
separate crimes. From this he deduces a congressional intent that
the statute allows punishment for only one crime, no matter how
many separately outlawed offenses have been committed. These
contentions raise problems of statutory interpretation not now
here. That some of the substantive sections may be repetitive as
being variants in phrasing of the same delict, or that petitioner
could not be cumulatively punished for both an attempt to extort
and a completed act of extortion, has no relevance to the legal
consequences of two incontestably distinctive offenses, conspiracy
and the completed crime
Page 364 U. S. 596
that is its object. In the
American Tobacco litigation,
it was decided that the attempt to monopolize, described in § 2 of
the Sherman Act, merged with the completed monopolization, but this
result did not qualify the holding that cumulative sentences for
the conspiracy and the substantive crime, also contained within §
2, were demanded by the governing precepts of our law.
Petitioner invokes the rule of lenity for decision in this case.
But that "rule," as is true of any guide to statutory construction,
only serves as an aid for resolving an ambiguity; it is not to be
used to beget one. [
Footnote 9]
"To rest upon a formula is a slumber that, prolonged, means death."
Mr. Justice Holmes, in Collected Legal Papers, p. 306. The rule
comes into operation at the end of the process of construing what
Congress has expressed, not at the beginning as an overriding
consideration of being lenient to wrongdoers. That is not the
function of the judiciary. In
United States v. Universal C.I.T.
Credit Corp., 344 U. S. 218;
Bell v. United States, 349 U. S. 81, and
Ladner v. United States, 358 U. S. 169, the
applicable statutory provisions were found to be unclear as to the
appropriate unit of prosecution; accordingly, the rule of lenity
was utilized,
in favorem libertatis, to resolve the
ambiguity. In
Price v. United States, 352 U.
S. 322, and
Heflin v. United States,
358 U. S. 415, the
Court had to meet the problem whether various subsidiary provisions
of the Federal Bank Robbery Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2113, which punished
entering with intent to commit robbery and possessing stolen
property merged when applied to a defendant who was also being
prosecuted for the robbery itself. Again, the rule of lenity served
to resolve the doubt with which Congress faced the Court.
Page 364 U. S. 597
Here we have no such dubieties within the statute itself. Unlike
all of these cases, the problem before us does not involve the
appropriate unit of prosecution -- whether conduct constitutes one
or several violations of a single statutory provision -- nor is it
an open question whether conspiracy and its substantive aim merge
into a single offense. This is an ordinary case of a defendant
convicted of violating two separate provisions of a statute,
whereby Congress defined two historically distinctive crimes
composed of differing components. If petitioner had committed two
separate acts of extortion, no one would question that the crimes
could be punished by consecutive sentences; the result seems no
less clear in the present case. It was therefore within the
discretion of the trial judge to fix separate sentences, even
though Congress has seen fit to authorize for each of these two
offenses what may seem to some to be harsh punishment.
Affirmed.
[
Footnote 1]
Section 1951(a) is as follows:
"Whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects
commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce,
by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspires so to do, or
commits or threatens physical violence to any person or property in
furtherance of a plan or purpose to do anything in violation of
this section shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not
more than twenty years, or both."
The pertinent parts of the Hobbs Act Amendments of 1946, 60
Stat. 420, from which the 1948 codification was compiled, were as
follows:
"Sec. 2. Whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or
affects commerce, or the movement of any article or commodity in
commerce, by robbery or extortion, shall be guilty of a
felony."
"Sec. 3. Whoever conspires with another or with others, or acts
in concert with another or with others to do anything in violation
of section 2 shall be guilty of a felony."
"Sec. 4. Whoever attempts or participates in an attempt to do
anything in violation of section 2 shall be guilty of a
felony."
"Sec. 5. Whoever commits or threatens physical violence to any
person or property in furtherance of a plan or purpose to do
anything in violation of section 2 shall be guilty of a
felony."
"Sec. 6. Whoever violates any section of this title shall, upon
conviction thereof, be punished by imprisonment for not more than
twenty years or by a fine of not more than $10,000, or both."
The Reviser's Note to the 1948 Code states that "The words
"attempts or conspires so to do" were substituted for sections 3
and 4 of the 1946 act . . . "
[
Footnote 2]
Petitioner was released from imprisonment in April, 1960, and
currently is on parole. Both parties and the courts below
apparently have interpreted the probationary period for Count II to
commence at the expiration of petitioner's parole for Count I.
[
Footnote 3]
Both courts below ruled that 28 U.S.C. § 2255 was not available,
since it would be premature to claim the "right to be released"
from a sentence not yet served. Since, as the Government concedes,
Rule 35 is available to correct an illegal sentence when the claim
is based on the face of the indictment even if such claim had not
been raised on direct appeal,
Heflin v. United States,
358 U. S. 415,
358 U. S. 418,
358 U. S. 422,
the applicability of § 2255 need not be considered.
[
Footnote 4]
The original bill, S. 2248, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., did not contain
any provision concerning conspiracy. (Of course, the general
conspiracy statute, R.S. § 5440, now 18 U.S.C. § 371, which then
provided for a maximum two-year sentence, was available.) The bill
made punishable by imprisonment from one to ninety-nine years acts
of violence, extortion, and coercion which interfered with
interstate commerce. 78 Cong.Rec. 11403. The purpose of the
legislation was to provide for direct prosecution of large-scale
racketeering, which formerly had been ineffectively attempted
through the Sherman Act, which had a maximum penalty of one-year
imprisonment or $5,000 fine. S.Rep. No. 532, 73d Cong., 2d Sess. p.
1. After the bill had passed the Senate, 78 Cong.Rec. 5735, some
question was raised as to whether legitimate labor activity was not
threatened by the statutory phraseology, 78 Cong.Rec. 5859, 10867,
and provisos were suggested by the House Judiciary Committee in
reporting the measure to the full body. H.R.Rep. No. 1833, 73d
Cong., 2d Sess. The Committee, upon the suggestion of the Attorney
General, further added a section making conspiracy to commit any of
the designated substantive violations punishable.
Ibid.
The amended bill was passed by the House substantially as reported
except that the penalty was decreased to ten years or $10,000. 78
Cong.Rec. 11403. The House bill was summarily approved by the
Senate. 78 Cong.Rec. 11482.
[
Footnote 5]
A little over two months after the decision, H.R. 7067 was
introduced by Representative Hobbs in the House of Representatives,
88 Cong.Rec. 4080, following Hearings before a Subcommittee of the
Committee on the Judiciary, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. The bill was
reported favorably out of committee, the only major change being
the reduction of the proposed twenty-year maximum sentence to ten
years. In discussing the various provisions, the report stated:
"The objective of Title I is to prevent anyone from obstructing,
delaying, or affecting commerce, or the movement of any article or
commodity in commerce by robbery or extortion as defined in the
bill. A conspiracy or attempt to do anything in violation of
section 2 is likewise made punishable. . . ."
H.R.Rep. No. 2176, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 9. No further
congressional action was taken on the bill.
The following year, Representative Hobbs introduced H.R. 653,
which was identical with his prior bill. This time, the Committee
did not amend the twenty-year penalty. H.R.Rep. No. 66, 78th Cong.,
1st Sess. The measure passed the House, 89 Cong.Rec. 3230, but no
action was taken in the Senate.
In 1945, Representative Hobbs again introduced his amendment.
H.R. 32, 79th Cong., 1st Sess. The measure was passed by both
bodies, 91 Cong.Rec. 11922, 92 Cong.Rec. 7308. Both Committee
reports again stated that "A conspiracy or attempt to do anything
in violation of section 2 is likewise made punishable." S.Rep. No.
1516, 79th Cong., 2d Sess.; H.R.Rep. No. 238, 79th Cong., 1st
Sess., p. 9.
The pertinent parts of the amendment, 60 Stat. 420, are set out
in
note 1 supra.
[
Footnote 6]
Typical excerpts on which petitioner relies are:
"Mr. DELANEY. The fact of the matter is that this committee
report was not unanimous. Also, in the committee, it was indicated
by those who favor this legislation that the legislation is too
drastic, that the $10,000 fine and 20 years in jail is too drastic.
They think a modified bill might be more in consonance with
present-day thinking."
(89 Cong.Rec. 3162.)
"
* * * *"
"Mr. FISH. . . . I want to refer likewise to some of the
excessive penalties. The penalties in this bill in my opinion are
too severe -- 20 years and $10,000 fine. When we reach this section
of the bill, there should be very careful consideration given to
reducing both the extent of the imprisonment and fines."
(89 Cong. Rec. 3194.)
"
* * * *"
"Mr. SPRINGER. May I ask my distinguished colleague on the
Committee on the Judiciary if it is not a fact that, under the
provisions of this bill, the question of penalty is left entirely
discretionary with the court trying the case? Under the provisions
of this bill, a person could be penalized to the extent of 1 year
or less than 1 year or up to 20 years, all in the discretion of the
court."
"
* * * *"
"Mr. CELLER. Or his sentence might be suspended. I agree with
the gentleman. But why do we single out labor and impose even a
possible penalty of 20 years?"
(89 Cong.Rec. 3201.)
"
* * * *"
"Mr. ROBSION. . . . There is some objection to the penalties
prescribed in this bill for robbery and extortion. It has gone
forth to the country that the penalty is 20 years. That is not a
correct statement. The penalties range from 1 hour up to 20 years,
according to the offense, and fines of $1 to $10,000. In other
words, the 20 years and the $10,000 fine are the maximum."
(89 Cong.Rec. 3226.)
"
* * * *"
"Mr. FISH. . . . When the bill was before the Rules Committee,
it seemed to me at that time that these penalties were excessive.
Twenty years is just about as bad as a life sentence, and I want to
give the House the opportunity to reduce it by cutting it in half.
This applies to threats. A man may be sent to jail for 20 years
merely for threatening extortion."
(89 Cong.Rec. 3229.)
[
Footnote 7]
For a discussion of these problems of the law of conspiracy,
see Developments in the Law -- Criminal Conspiracy, 72
Harv.L.Rev. 920, 922-925, 968-971.
[
Footnote 8]
The Senate Report which accompanied the original 1934
legislation described the purpose of the Act by setting forth a
memorandum received from the Justice Department:
". . . The nearest approach to prosecution of racketeers as such
has been under the Sherman Antitrust Act. This act, however, was
designed primarily to prevent and punish capitalistic combinations
and monopolies, and, because of the many limitations engrafted upon
the act by interpretations of the courts, the act is not well
suited for prosecution of persons who commit acts of violence,
intimidation, and extortion. . . . Moreover, a violation of the
Sherman Act is merely a misdemeanor, punishable by 1 year in jail
plus $5,000 fine, which is not a sufficient penalty for the usual
acts of violence and intimidation affecting interstate
commerce."
S.Rep. No. 532, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 1.
Representative Celler, in arguing for a less severe penalty
during the 1945 debates, said:
"If you look at the antitrust penalties against employers, you
find that they are only $5,000 or 1 year in jail. This bill has
direct relation to the antitrust laws, the Clayton Act."
91 Cong.Rec. 11902.
See also Representative Celler's
remarks during the 1943 debates, 89 Cong.Rec. 3201.
[
Footnote 9]
"When Congress leaves to the Judiciary the task of imputing to
Congress an undeclared will, the ambiguity should be resolved in
favor of lenity."
Bell v. United States, 349 U. S.
81,
349 U. S.
83.
MR. JUSTICE STEWART, whom The CHIEF JUSTICE, MR. JUSTICE BLACK,
and MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS join, dissenting.
To be sure, it is now a commonplace of our law that the
commission of a substantive crime and a conspiracy to commit it may
be treated by Congress as separate offenses, cumulatively
punishable.
Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.
S. 640,
328 U. S. 643.
It is also true that Congress has often chosen to exercise its
power to make separate offenses of the two. [
Footnote 2/1] But neither of these generalities provides
an answer to the question now before us. The question here is the
meaning of
this law, the Hobbs Anti-Racketeering Act. I do
not agree that, under this statute, a man can be separately
convicted and cumulatively punished
Page 364 U. S. 598
for obstructing commerce by extorting money, and for conspiring
to obstruct commerce by the same extortion. My view is based both
upon the language of the statute and upon its history, considered
in the light of principles that have consistently guided this
Court's decisions in related areas of federal criminal law.
The relevant section of the Act, repeated for convenience in the
margin, [
Footnote 2/2] is not a
model of precise verbal structure. Purely as a matter of syntax,
the section could be read as creating separate offenses for
obstructing commerce, for delaying commerce, and for affecting
commerce by any one of the proscribed means. It could be read,
again merely as a matter of grammar, as creating distinct offenses
for obstructing commerce by robbery, for threatening physical
violence to property in connection with the same robbery, for
committing the physical violence which had been threatened, for
attempting to do so, and for conspiring to do so. Read in such a
way, the Act could be made to justify the imposition upon one man
of separate sentences totalling more than a hundred years for one
basic criminal transaction. To construe this statute that way would
obviously be absurd, and I do not understand that the Court today
even remotely suggests any such construction.
The Act, then, must mean something else. I think its language
can fairly be read as imposing a maximum twenty-year sentence for
each actual or threatened interference with interstate commerce
accomplished by any one or more of the proscribed means. Such a
reading of
Page 364 U. S. 599
the Act does violence neither to semantics nor to common sense.
It is fully justified by the legislative history, and it is
consistent with settled principles governing the construction of
ambiguous criminal statutes. If this is what the Act means, then
the indictment in the present case charged but a single offense,
and it was wrong to impose two separate sentences upon the
petitioner.
The antecedent of the present Act was the Anti-Racketeering Act
of 1934. That legislation was originally introduced after extensive
hearings before a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Commerce,
popularly known as the Committee on Racketeering. The original bill
did not contain any reference to conspiracy. S. 2248, 73d Cong., 2d
Sess. The Committee Report consisted of a memorandum from the
Department of Justice, stating that the purpose of the bill was to
permit prosecution of so-called "racketeers" for acts constituting
racketeering. Significantly, the memorandum stated
"The accompanying proposed statute is designed to avoid many of
the embarrassing limitations in the wording and interpretation of
the Sherman Act, and to extend Federal jurisdiction over all
restraints of any commerce within the scope of the Federal
Government's constitutional powers. Such restraints if accompanied
by extortion, violence, coercion, or intimidation, are made
felonies,
whether the restraints are in form of conspiracies or
not."
(Emphasis added.) S.Rep. No. 532, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 1.
After the bill had passed the Senate, fear was expressed that
some of the provisions of the proposed legislation might endanger
legitimate activities of organized labor. In response to these
fears, the bill was revised by the House Judiciary Committee along
lines suggested by the Attorney General, and it was then that the
statutory reference to conspiracy was added, without explanation.
H.R.Rep. No. 1833, 73d Cong., 2d Sess. The bill was passed by the
House after adoption of an amendment
Page 364 U. S. 600
reducing the maximum punishment provision to "10 years or by a
fine of $10,000 or both." 78 Cong.Rec. 11403. Thereafter, the
Senate approved the House bill without debate. 78 Cong.Rec.
11482.
In 1942, this Court considered the 1934 Act in
United States
v. Local 807, 315 U. S. 521,
holding that, under the statute's labor exemption, the petitioners
there had been wrongly convicted. Within a few weeks after that
decision, Representative Hobbs introduced a bill in the House
designed to eliminate the labor exemption from the statute. Similar
amendatory bills were introduced in succeeding sessions of
Congress, and in 1946, the Act was finally amended by deletion of
the provision exempting wages paid by an employer to an employee,
the exemption upon which the decision in the
Local 837
case had been based.
With that aspect of the 1946 amendment we are not here
concerned. But the amendment made one other significant change in
the Act: it increased the maximum penalty from ten to twenty years'
imprisonment. The congressional debates over that provision throw
considerable light upon the problem now before us. For two
conclusions can be drawn from a review of the discussions in
Congress of the proposed increase in the penalty provision. First,
it is clear that many Members of Congress were seriously concerned
by the severity of a penalty of twenty years in prison for
violation of this statute. Expressions such as "too drastic," "too
severe," and "excessive" were used in describing what was referred
to by one Member as "even a possible penalty of 20 years." 89
Cong.Rec. 3162, 3194, 3201, 3229. Secondly, it is clear that there
was general agreement among both the proponents and the opponents
of the legislation that twenty years was to be the maximum penalty
that could be imposed upon a defendant convicted of violating
the
Page 364 U. S. 601
statute. 89 Cong.Rec. 3226. No one ever suggested that
cumulative penalties could be inflicted.
In sum, then, we have here a statute which, as a matter of
English language, can fairly be read as imposing a single penalty
for each interference or threatened interference with interstate
commerce by any or all of the prohibited means. We have evidence
stemming from the very origin of the legislation that the unit of
prosecution under the statute was to be each restraint of commerce,
not each means by which the restraint was accomplished. As the
original Senate Committee Report stated,
"restraints, if accompanied by extortion, violence, coercion, or
intimidation, are made felonies, whether the restraints are in form
of conspiracies or not."
Finally, we have every indication that, when the Act was amended
in 1946, Congress was agreed that but a single maximum sentence of
twenty years could be imposed upon conviction, and that many
Members of Congress considered even that penalty far too
severe.
It is said, however, that despite all this, we must attribute to
Congress a "tacit purpose" to provide cumulative punishments for
conspiracy and substantive conduct under this statute. We are told
that this presumption of a tacit purpose must prevail because there
is no "specific language to the contrary" in the Act. [
Footnote 2/3] But to indulge in such a
presumption seems to me wholly at odds with principles firmly
established by our previous decisions.
Page 364 U. S. 602
In
Bell v. United States, 349 U. S.
81, we described the approach to be taken in a case such
as this.
"When Congress has the will, it has no difficulty in expressing
it. . . . When Congress leaves to the Judiciary the task of
imputing to Congress an undeclared will, the ambiguity should be
resolved in favor of lenity."
349 U.S. at
349 U. S. 83. In
Ladner v. United States, 358 U. S. 169, we
said:
"This policy of lenity means that the Court will not interpret a
federal criminal statute so as to increase the penalty that it
places on an individual when such an interpretation can be based on
no more than a guess as to what Congress intended."
358 U.S. at
358 U. S. 178.
In
Prince v. United States, 352 U.
S. 322, we spoke of the doctrine as one
"of not attributing to Congress, in the enactment of criminal
statutes, an intention to punish more severely than the language of
its laws clearly imports in the light of pertinent legislative
history."
352 U.S. at
352 U. S. 329.
These recent expressions are but restatements in a specific context
of the ancient rule that a criminal statute is to be strictly
construed. I would not depart from that rule in the present
case.
[
Footnote 2/1]
The most notable illustration of this is the General Conspiracy
Statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371.
[
Footnote 2/2]
"Whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects
commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce,
by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspires so to do, or
commits or threatens physical violence to any person or property in
furtherance of a plan or purpose to do anything in violation of
this section shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not
more than twenty years, or both."
18 U.S.C. § 1951(a).
[
Footnote 2/3]
The Court's reliance upon
American Tobacco Co. v. United
States, 328 U. S. 781,
seems to me misplaced. The discussion of multiple punishment in
that opinion was in response to the contention that Congress could
not, because of the double jeopardy provision of the Fifth
Amendment, impose multiple punishment for substantive conduct and
conspiracy. Moreover, to decide the meaning of this Act upon the
basis of what Congress may have provided in another statute would
seem to me a dubious way to resolve the issue.
Cf. Bell v.
United States, 349 U. S. 81,
349 U. S.
83.