Haupt v. United States

• Decision Date: 31 March 1947
• Docket Number: No. 49,49
• Parties: HAUPT v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

330 U.S. 631

67 S.Ct. 874

91 L.Ed. 1145

HAUPT

v UNITED STATES.

No. 49.

Argued Nov. 21, 22, 1943.

Decided March 31, 1947.

Rehearing Denied April 28, 1947.

See 331 U.S. 864, 67 S.Ct. 1195.

Mr. Paul A. F. Warnholtz, of Chicago, Ill. (Frederick J. Bertram, of Chicago, of counsel), for petitioner.

Mr. Frederick Bernays Wiener, of Providence, R.I., for respondent.

Mr. Justice JACKSON delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner, Hans Max Haupt was indicted for treason, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment and to pay a fine of $10,000. From this judgment of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois he appealed to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which by a divided court affirmed. 152 F.2d 771. A previous conviction of the same offense predicated on the same acts had been reversed. United States v. Haupt, 7 Cir., 136 F.2d 661.

Petitioner is the father of Herber Haupt, one of the eight saboteurs convicted by a military tribunal. See Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 63 S.Ct. 1, 2, 87 L.Ed. 3. Sheltering his son, assisting him in getting a job, and in acquiring an automobile, all alleged to be with knowledge of the son's mission, involved defendant in the treason charge.

The background facts are not in dispute. The defendant is a naturalized citizen, born in Germany. He came to this country in 1923 and lived in or near Chicago. In 1939 the son, Herbert, who had also been born in Germany, worked for the Simpson Optical Company in Chicago which manufactured lenses for instruments, including parts for the Norden bomb sight. In the spring of 1941 Herbert went to Mexico and, with the aid of the German Consul, from there to Japan and thence to Germany where he entered the employ of the German Government and was trained in sabotage work.

On the 17th of June 1942, Herbert returned to the United States by submarine. His mission was to act as a secret agent, spy and saboteur for the German Reich. He was instructed to proceed to Chicago, to procure an automobile for the use of himself and his confederates in their work of sabotage and espionage, to obtain reemployment with the Simpson Optical Company where he was to gather information, particularly as to the vital parts and bottlenecks of the plant, to be communicated to his coconspirators to guide their attack. He came with various other instructions, equipped with large sums of money, and went to Chicago.

After some six days there, Herbert was arrested on June 27, 1942, having been under surveillance by Government agents during his entire stay in Chicago. This petitioner was thereafter taken into custody and was arraigned on July 21, 1942. He later asked to talk to an F.B.I. agent, two of whom were summoned, and he appears to have volunteered considerable information and to have given more in answer to their questions. He blamed certain others for the predicament of his son and wanted to testify against them. For this purpose, he disclosed that he had been present when Herbert had told the complete story of his trip to Mexico, Japan, his return to the United States by submarine, and his bringing large sums of money with him. During his confinement in the Cook County jail he also talked with two fellow prisoners concerning his case and they testified as to damaging admissions made to them.

The indictment alleged twenty-nine overt acts of treason. Its sufficiency ws challenged by demurrer which was overruled and by a motion to quash which was denied. The defendant, at the close of the Government's case and again at the close of all the evidence, made motions for a directed verdict generally and also specifically as to each overt act charged, all of which were denied. Seventeen of the overt acts were withdrawn before submission and twelve were submitted to the jury. Generally stated, the overt acts submitted fall into three groups of charges: First, the charge that this defendant accompanied his son to assist him in obtaining employment in a plant engaged in manufacturing the Norden bomb sight; second, the charge of harboring and sheltering Herbert Haupt; and third, the charge of accompanying Herbert to an automobile sales agency, arranging, making payment for and purchasing an automobile for Herbert. Each of these was alleged to be in aid of Herbert's known purpose of sabotage.

The defendant argues here that the overt acts submitted do not constitute acts of treason, but that each is commonplace, insignificant and colorless, and not sufficient even if properly proved to support a conviction. We have held that the minimum function of the overt act in a treason prosecution is that it show action by the accused which really was aid and comfort to the enemy. Cramer v. United States, 325 U.S. 1, 34, 65 S.Ct. 918, 934, 89 L.Ed. 1441. This is a separate inquiry from that as to whether the acts were done because of adherence to the enemy, for cts helpful to the enemy may nevertheless be innocent of treasonable character.

Cramer's case held that what must be proved by the testimony of two witnesses is a 'sufficient' overt act. There the only proof by two witnesses of two of the three overt acts submitted to the jury was that the defendant had met and talked with enemy agents. We did not set aside Cramer's conviction because two witnesses did not testify to the treasonable character of his meeting with the enemy agents. It was reversed because the Court found that the act which two witnesses saw could not on their testimony be said to have given assistance or comfort to anyone, whether it was done treacherously or not. To make a sufficient overt act, the Court thought it would have been necessary to assume that the meeting or talk was of assistance to the enemy, or to rely on other than two-witness proof. Here, on the contrary, such assumption or reliance is unnecessary—there can be no question that sheltering, or helping to buy a car, or helping to get employment is helpful to an enemy agent, that they were of aid and comfort to Herbert Haupt in his mission of sabotage. They have the unmistakable quality which was found lacking in the Cramer case of forwarding the saboteur in his mission. We pointed out that Cramer furnished no shelter, sustenance or supplies. 325 U.S. 1, 37, 65 S.Ct. 918, 936, 89 L.Ed. 1441. The overt acts charged here, on the contrary, may be generalized as furnishing harbor and shelter for a period of six days, assisting in obtaining employment in the lens plant and helping to buy an automobile. No matter whether young Haupt's mission was benign or traitorous, known or unknown to defendant, these acts were aid and comfort to him. In the light of his mission and his instructions, they were more than casually useful; they were aid in steps essential to his design for treason. If proof be added that the defendant knew of his son's instructions, preparation and plans, the purpose to aid and comfort the enemy becomes clear. All of this, of course, assumes that the prosecution's evidence properly in the case is credited, as the jury had a right to do. We hold, therefore, that the overt acts laid in the indictment and submitted to the jury do perform the functions assigned to overt acts in treason cases and are sufficient to support the indictment and to sustain the convictions if they were proved with the exactitude required by the Constitution.

The most difficult issue in this case is whether the overt acts have been proved as the Constitution requires, and several grounds of attack on the conviction disappear if there has been compliance with the constitutional standard of proof. The Constitution requires that 'No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act * * *.' Art. III, § 3. We considered the application of this provision to the problems of proof in the Cramer case. Defendant claims this case in two respects falls short of the requirements there laid down as to all the overt acts which comprise harboring and sheltering the saboteur: First, that there was no direct proof that the saboteur was actually in the defendant's apartment, and second, that there is no direct proof that the defendant was in the apartment at any time when the saboteur was there. Both of these we find to be without merit.

The act to be proved is harboring and sheltering in the house at No. 2234 North Fremont Street. The defendant and his wife lived there in a third floor front apartment, which had but one bedroom. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, never less than two, had the place under continuous surveillance from 10:30 a.m., June 22 to the arrest of the saboteur on June 27, and at least two testified in minute detail to each of repeated arrivals and departures of the saboteur, in some occasions accompanied by the defendant, on others by the defendant's wife, and on some by both. He entered each night and left each day. On so e occasions he came out wearing different clothes from those he wore when he went in. When he went in at night the lights in the defendant's apartment were turned on and after a time extinguished. Two witnesses who were callers at the apartment testified that on one occasion defendant and Herbert were there together at supper time, the three Haupts being together in the kitchen, Herbert later coming into the parlor and one of the guests going into the kitchen. The defendant contends that this does not constitute the required two witnesses' direct proof that the saboteur was harbored and sheltered in the defendant's apartment. It is true that the front entrance, where all of this testimony shows the saboteur to have entered, connected with two other apartments. The occupants of each of the other apartments, two witnesses as to each, testified that the saboteur did not at any time occupy their respective apartments.

It is sufficiently proved by direct testimony of two witnesses that the saboteur stayed in the house where the father lived...