In re Nagy

• Citation: 3 F.2d 77
• Decision Date: 11 December 1924
• Docket Number: No. 2788.,2788.
• Parties: In re NAGY.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Texas

3 F.2d 77 (1924)

In re NAGY.

No. 2788.

District Court, S. D. Texas, at Houston.

December 11, 1924.

Walter Wheatley, Naturalization Examiner, of Houston, Tex., for the United States.

HUTCHESON, District Judge.

This is an application for citizenship made by Joe Nagy in the usual form. His witnesses having been examined and having proved competent, the examiner presented to the attention of the court the fact that in the year 1923, within the five-year probation period fixed by law for applicants to citizenship, he had been convicted in this court of unlawful manufacture and possession of intoxicating liquor under the Volstead Act (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1923, § 10138¼ et seq.).

The examiner asserts that upon this showing it cannot be said that, during the five years immediately preceding the date of his application, the applicant has "behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same," which the law requires must appear to the satisfaction of the court, in order to sustain a favorable finding upon the application. On the part of the petitioner, it is with much reason asserted that the offense for which he has been convicted was a misdemeanor which would not carry with it, in the case of a citizen, a loss of citizenship, and that therefore it ought not to have the effect to bar the applicant. He further asserts, with some show of reason and abundant fact upon his side, that thousands of citizens of the United States are making liquor for their own use, which he claims was all that he was doing, and that in what is vulgarly denominated the "best society," meaning thereby persons of wealth and influence, home brewers and distillers, if not popularly acclaimed and rewarded for their skill, are at least not thought any the worse of for their practices.

To minds sensitive to the reproach of Pharisaism and honest enough to see ourselves as others see us, there is no doubt that this complacent attitude of many of our good citizens toward the violation of the Eighteenth Amendment makes the United States, in its prosecutions of the poor and ignorant, appear to be engaged to some extent in a piece of colossal humbuggery, nor can I avoid the feeling that it may appear to some to savor of judicial Pecksniffianism to refuse an application for citizenship for doing that which common repute declares is approved in the "best society." The fact...