United States v. Wheeler, 68

• Decision Date: 13 December 1920
• Docket Number: No. 68,68
• Citation: 65 L.Ed. 270,41 S.Ct. 133,254 U.S. 281
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. WHEELER et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

254 U.S. 281

41 S.Ct. 133

65 L.Ed. 270

UNITED STATES

v WHEELER et al.

No. 68.

Argued April 28, 1920.

Decided Dec. 13, 1920.

The Attorney General and W. C. Herron of Washington, D. C., for the United States.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 282-289 intentionally omitted] Messrs. Charles E. Hughes, of New York City, E. E. Ellinwood and John Mason Ross, both of Bisbee, Ariz., and Clifton Mathews, of Globe, Ariz., for defendants in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 289-292 intentionally omitted] Mr. Chief Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.

The case is here under the Criminal Appeals Act (Comp. St. § 1704) to directly review a judgment quashing an indictment against the 25 persons who are defendants in error. The indictment contained four counts, but as the fourth is now abandoned by the government we need not consider it.

The first count charged the accused with conspiring, in violation of section 19 of the Criminal Code (Comp. St. § 10183), to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate 221 named persons, alleged to be citizens of the United States residing in Arizona, of rights or privileges secured to them by the Constitution or laws of the United States; that is to say, the right and privilege pertaining to citizens of said state peacefully to reside and remain therein and to be immune from unlawful deportation from that state to another. And th overt acts alleged were: The arming of the conspirators; the seizure and holding of the persons named until by means of a railway train procured for that purpose they were forcibly transported into New Mexico, and in that state released under threat of death or great bodily harm should they ever return to the state of Arizona.

The second count was the same as the first, except that only 25 of the persons alleged in the first count to have been injured were named, and they were stated to be citizens of the United States residing in, but not citizens of, the state of Arizona.

The third count was also identical with the first, except that it embraced only 196 of the injured persons named in the first count and 1 additional person not therein named, all being declared to be citizens of the United States and of the state of Arizona, residing in that state.

The court quashed the indictment, on the ground that no power had been delegated by the Constitution to the United States to forbid and punish the wrongful acts complained of, as the right to do so was exclusively within the authority reserved by that instrument to the several states. As the entire case will be disposed of by testing the accuracy of this view, we come immediately to consider that subject.

In argument, the asserted error in the conclusion is based, not upon the direct result of any particular provision of the Constitution, but upon implications arising from that instrument as a whole, the conditions existing at the time of its adoption, and the consequences inevitably produced from the creation by it of the government of the United States. A wide field of inquiry common to all the contentions is thus opened. In order, therefore, to afford a common basis by which to measure the correctness of the various implications insisted upon, we state under separate headings doctrines which are applicable to all the contentions, and which are in reason so well founded and so conclusively sustained by authority as to be indisputable.

(a) In all the states, from the beginning down to the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, the citizens thereof possessed the fundamental right, inherent in citizens of all free governments, peacefully to dwell within the limits of their respective states, to move at will from place to place therein, and to have free ingress thereto and egress therefrom, with a consequent authority in the states to forbid and punish violations of this fundamental right. Corfield v. Coryell, 4 Wash. C. C. 371, 380, 381, Fed. Cas. No. 3,230; Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 76, 21 L. Ed. 394.

(b) Whether, in disregard of the principles of comity, any of the states recognized in their own citizens rights on this subject which they refused to grant to citizens of other states, we need not consider, in view of the provision of the Articles of Confederation on the subject. By that provision uniformity was secured, not by lodging power in Congress to deal with the subject, but, while reserving in the several states the authority which they had theretofore enjoyed, yet subjecting such authority to a limitation inhibiting the power from being used to discriminate. The text of article 4 which provides for this subject is as follows:

'The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different states in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each state shall have free ingress and egress to and from any other state, * * *'

Thus, while power remained in the several states, the boundaries demarking them became, at least for the purpose of the enjoyment of the right here in question, negligible, and the frontiers of the Confederation became the measure of the equal right secured to the inhabitants of each and all the states.

(c) That the Constitution plainly intended to preserve and enforce the limitation as to discrimination imposed upon the states by article 4 of the Confederation, and thus necessarily assumed the continued possession by the states of the reserved power to deal with free residence, ingress and egress, cannot be denied for the following reasons: (1) Because the text of article 4, § 2, of the Constitution, makes manifest that it was drawn with reference to the corresponding clause of the Articles of Confederation and was intended to perpetuate its limitations; and (2) because that view has been so conclusively settled as to leave no room for controversy. Thus in Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168, 180, 19 L. Ed. 357, considering the operation and effect of article 4, § 2, of the Constitution, it was said:

'It was undoubtedly the object of the clause in question to place the citizens of each state upon the same footing with citizens of other states, so far as the advantages resulting from citizenship in those states are concerned. It relieves them from the disabilities of alienage in other states; it inhibits discriminating legislation against them by other states; it gives them the right of free ingress into other states, and egress from them; it insures to them in other states the same freedom possessed by the citizens of those states in the acquisition and enjoyment of property and in the pursuit of happiness; and it secures them in other estates the equal protection of their laws. It has been justly said that no provision in the Constitution has tended so...