Flannagan v. Jepson
| Decision Date | 07 July 1916 |
| Docket Number | 30853 |
| Citation | 158 N.W. 641,177 Iowa 393 |
| Parties | MIKE FLANNAGAN, Plaintiff, v. GEORGE JEPSON, Judge, et al., Defendants |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Certiorari to Woodbury District Court.--GEORGE JEPSON, Judge.
ORIGINAL proceeding in certiorari to test the validity of the judgment of the district court in committing the plaintiff therein to the penitentiary for one year at hard labor, upon proof of the violation of the decree heretofore rendered, enjoining plaintiff from maintaining a liquor nuisance.--Annulled.
Judgment Annulled.
Geo. G Yeaman and Oliver, Harding & Oliver, for plaintiff.
John F Joseph, for defendants.
A decree was entered in November, 1911, enjoining the plaintiff herein from maintaining a liquor nuisance. In December, 1914, an information was filed accusing him of violating the terms of said decree, and after hearing he was found guilty and punished for contempt. Thereafter, in October, 1915, a second information accusing him of violating the said decree was filed and a trial had and the defendant found guilty. The judgment previously referred to was introduced in evidence, and the defendant sentenced to serve a period of one year in the penitentiary at Fort Madison at hard labor. This sentence was in pursuance of Section 2461-m of the Supplemental Supplement to the Code, 1915, which provides that a person who, after one conviction upon a criminal charge for violation of the liquor law, shall be again indicted, tried and convicted for a subsequent offense against the same statute, shall be classed as a persistent violator and be imprisoned in the state penitentiary or reformatory for not more than one year; and Section 2407 thereof, which provides that a person who has once been found guilty of contempt for violating a liquor injunction shall, for each subsequent violation, be punished by a fine of not less than $ 500 or more than $ 1,000, or by imprisonment in the state penitentiary or state reformatory at hard labor for not more than one year. In other words, when these enactments are read in the light of the repeated holdings of this court that contempt is not a crime, and that punishment imposed and suffered for contempt in no manner relieves a party from his liability to prosecution and punishment under an indictment for the same act, it follows that this defendant, having once been convicted and once enjoined, may, upon a second conviction, be committed to the penitentiary at hard labor for one year, and, having served his time, may emerge from prison to be met at the door by the sheriff armed with a writ for his arrest for contempt, and upon order of the court, without trial by jury, be condemned to return to the penitentiary for another full year at hard labor.
The objections raised by the petitioner direct our attention to the following provisions of the Constitution of Iowa:
The petitioner also invokes the protection of the provision found in both the Constitution of the state and the Constitution of the United States, providing that excessive fines shall not be imposed and cruel and inhuman punishments shall not be inflicted. (Constitution of Iowa, Article 1, Section 17; Constitution of the United States, 8th Amendment; also the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.) Defendant contends that the right to invoke the protection of the provision of the Constitution of the United States prohibiting involuntary servitude, except for crimes of which the person has been duly convicted, and the similar provision of our state Constitution, has been decided by us adversely to the petitioner's claims, but this is clearly beside the mark, as will be seen by reference to Martin v. Blattner, 68 Iowa 286, 25 N.W. 131. The question here raised was neither considered nor decided in that case. The defendant, Blattner, had been enjoined, and appealed from the decree rendered against him. Among other defenses argued by him was that the statute providing for an injunction was void because it provided a penalty of jail imprisonment, and was, therefore, in conflict with the constitutional prohibition of involuntary servitude. In overruling the point, the court well said:
"It is impossible to discover reasons for holding that an imprisonment for a contempt is a servitude."
No such claim is made in the instant case. It is not here argued, that mere imprisonment for contempt constitutes "involuntary servitude." The objection is directed against the judgment by which the contemner has been adjudged to imprisonment in the penitentiary at hard labor.
Imprisonment is not servitude. Labor enforced as a punishment is "involuntary servitude." If not, what is the involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime which the Constitution excepts from its otherwise sweeping prohibition? The very language of the Constitution which prohibits involuntary servitude, and then excepts therefrom involuntary servitude imposed as a punishment for crime, demonstrates that, in the minds of the framers of that instrument, enforced labor as punishment for crime is such servitude, and that the exception was necessary to the continued right of legislatures and courts to impose it. But we are not without judicial precedents for this holding. In State v. West, 42 Minn. 147, 153, 43 N.W. 845, the court, speaking upon this subject, says:
"There is nothing better settled than that enforced labor is 'involuntary servitude' within the meaning of such constitutional provisions."
So, also, it has been said by the Supreme Court of the United States that, "Imprisonment at hard labor . . . is, in the strongest sense of the words, 'involuntary servitude for crime.'" Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 29 L.Ed. 89, 5 S.Ct. 935.
This definition of the phrase being established--that imprisonment at hard labor by the judgment or sentence of a court is involuntary servitude within the meaning of the Constitution--it follows, of necessity, that the sentence pronounced upon the petitioner and the statutory provision which authorizes it are both invalid, unless we are able to say that such penalty was imposed as a punishment for crime. This we cannot say without repudiating and overruling a long line of our precedents, extending from earliest history of this state to the present day, declaring contempt of court, in the disobeying of its decree, to be in the nature of, but not, a crime. See Littleton v. Fritz, 65 Iowa 488, 22 N.W. 641; Martin v. Blattner, 68 Iowa 286, 25 N.W. 131; State v. Stevenson, 104 Iowa 50, 73 N.W. 360; Jones v. Mould, 151 Iowa 599, 132 N.W. 45; Eilenbecker v. District Court, 134 U.S. 31, 10 S.Ct. 424, 33 L.Ed. 801.
That a party charged with contempt is not entitled to a trial by jury is founded on the fact that a contempt proceeding is not a prosecution for crime. Were it otherwise, and if the punishment to which he is so exposed were for an alleged crime, there would then come into activity that other constitutional provision guaranteeing him a trial by an impartial jury. It is true that a contempt proceeding partakes, in some degree, of a criminal character, in that it is punishable by fine or imprisonment, and in the further fact that, while its primary purpose is to protect the dignity and authority of the court, it doubtless also contemplates incidental benefit to the public in promoting general obedience to the law. The power to punish for contempt, though subject to regulation by statute, is inherent in every court of record and is essential to the efficient discharge of judicial functions and duties. Generally speaking, it is limited to the maintenance of order and decorum in court proceedings, to the enforcement of its writs and orders, and the...
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