Langford v. United States

• Citation: 178 F.2d 48
• Decision Date: 28 November 1949
• Docket Number: No. 12156.,12156.
• Parties: LANGFORD v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)

178 F.2d 48 (1949)

LANGFORD v. UNITED STATES.

No. 12156.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

October 27, 1949.

Rehearing Denied November 28, 1949.

Henry G. Bodkin, Jr., William K. Stewart, Los Angeles, Cal., for appellant.

James M. Carter, U. S. Attorney, Ernest A. Tolin, Chief Asst., Norman Neukom and Ray M. Steele, Asst. U. S. Attorneys, Los Angeles, Cal., for appellee.

Before DENMAN, BONE and POPE, Circuit Judges.

POPE, Circuit Judge.

Langford, the appellant, was convicted of violation of the Mann Act, 18 U.S.C.A. § 398 now § 2421. The indictment was in two counts. Count One charged the transportation of a woman, one Carol Jones, in foreign commerce, from Los Angeles County, California, to Tiajuana, Mexico, for purposes of prostitution, debauchery and other immoral practices. The second count charged transportation of the same woman, for the same purposes, from Tiajuana to Los Angeles County. Conviction was on Count Two only.

The evidence showed that at the time of the transportation mentioned in Count One, the parties went to Mexico to be married there, and that the transportation charged in Count Two was their return trip. It is urged upon this appeal that notwithstanding the evidence of prior and subsequent prostitution, the entire trip, both going and returning, was an innocent one under the rule of Mortensen v. United States, 322 U.S. 369, 64 S.Ct. 1037, 88 L.Ed. 1331. Therefore, it is said, the verdict is against law, and not supported by the evidence.

It is also contended that the judgment must be reversed because of certain remarks made by the prosecutor including comment upon failure of the defendant to testify, and because of the admission of certain evidence claimed to be irrelevant and prejudicial.

A consideration of the question of the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction requires a rather complete review of the testimony.

Jones, the prosecuting witness, was white and a college graduate, with a degree in sociology and applied psychology. She had been employed as a case worker in Los Angeles. She testified that she met Langford, a Negro, at a Los Angeles night club and that she voluntarily went to his home to live with him in January, 1948. A week or so later, Langford brought four sailors home with him and asked her to perform acts of sexual intercourse with them. She refused at first, but consented when Langford slapped her. At this time there was another girl present whom Jones described as a prostitute for herself and Langford. Over objection, Jones testified that she had seen this other girl give Langford money on several occasions.

She turned the money received from the sailors over to Langford. Although she had not been a prostitute until this time she then became one. She testified that she entertained between three and seven men a day and that she never received less than $10 per man. Langford brought customers to her as did other men, whom she termed "trick hustlers" and who received a fee for these services. Jones soon built up a large "call list" of steady customers. All money was turned over to Langford.

Jones testified that, although she was in love with Langford, she left him twice in March. The first time, he saw her in a car with some men and dragged her out of it so she returned to his home. She left him the second time, because he had slapped her and beaten her with a belt. On this occasion she took a room in a private home and did not engage in prostitution for several days. On the evening of April 5, Langford telephoned her and asked permission to come to see her. He came very humbly, protesting his love for her, and proposed marriage, a subject Jones had previously broached to him. Jones accepted this proposal although Langford told her she would still have to engage in prostitution for a month or two until his car was paid for. However, at this time there was an anti-miscegenation statute in effect in California¹ so the parties decided to drive to Tiajuana, Mexico, where the law permitted marriage between the races.

That night Jones and a man named Bryant, a friend of Langford, were driven by Langford in his automobile to Tiajuana. When they arrived they found that it was too late to have the marriage performed. Both Jones and Bryant testified that the purpose of the trip to Tiajuana was to have the marriage performed.

In Tiajuana they went to a nightclub. Jones testified that while they were there Bryant was asked to sing. While he was singing, she decided that she would like to have a photograph taken of Langford and herself so they left the nightclub to seek a photographer. Before they found one, however, Langford was approached by a sailor. After talking with the sailor, Langford turned to her and said that they needed some money. She thereupon got into the back seat of Langford's car with the sailor and, while Langford drove to the outskirts of town, prostituted herself to the sailor. The sailor paid Langford and they returned to the nightclub approximately twenty minutes after they had left it. Bryant's testimony conflicted at this point with that of Jones. He said that he sang only for a short time — five minutes at the most — and that Langford and Jones were in the nightclub when he left their table and were there when he came back after singing. He did not think that they had left the nightclub.

Langford then drove the party to San Diego where they spent the night in a hotel. Early on the morning of the 6th of April, they drove back to Tiajuana, where Jones and Langford signed "marriage papers". Although the certificate of marriage was not received until some days later through the mail Jones considered herself married to Langford from this time forward.

Langford then drove Jones and Bryant back to Los Angeles. Both Jones and Bryant testified that the purpose of the trip from Tiajuana to Los Angeles was to get home, to get to the place they lived. They went directly to Langford's house where Jones found another girl living whom she "kicked out". That night they went to the night club at which they had met. Jones said that Langford asked her if she wanted to take up her profession again that night but she declined in view of the fact that it was her wedding night. Bryant did not hear this conversation. Jones resumed her work the following night, April 7, and continued to prostitute herself for Langford for several weeks. Langford brought customers to her after the marriage as he had before, but not many since by this time she was well established. After some time Jones left Langford again because she got "tired of working all day and all night, there is no appreciation, nothing is ever bought for you, they gripe about it when you want a new pair of shoes". In May she went to work as a prostitute for the proprietor of a Los Angeles "callhouse".

In the Mortensen case, supra, a man and wife, proprietors of a house of ill fame in Nebraska, allowed two of their prostitutes to accompany them on a vacation trip to Salt Lake City, Utah. It was charged that they had violated the Mann Act because they had brought the girls back from Salt Lake City to Nebraska and the girls had resumed their occupation upon their return. The Supreme Court through Mr. Justice Murphy, held² that the language of the Mann Act "is conditioned upon the use of interstate transportation for the purpose of, or as a means of effecting or facilitating, the commission of the illegal acts. Here the interstate round trip had no such purpose and was in no way related to the subsequent immoralities in Grand Island."

The rule is conceded that the dominant motive for the interstate transportation of the victim must be the purpose proscribed by the statute,³ but we think the jury was justified in finding that this case fell within the rule. In its argument to the jury, the government advanced two theories: (1) that Langford had married Jones primarily for the purpose of causing her to return to him and continue to work for him as a prostitute; and (2) that the dominant purpose of Langford in bringing Jones back from Tiajuana to Los Angeles was to get her back to work immediately earning money for him. In the Mortensen case, there was no evidence justifying the inference that, had the Mortensens not taken the girls on the interstate vacation trip, the girls would have refused to perform the proscribed activities for the Mortensens. Here, however, the fact that Langford had used force and threats to keep Jones with him, that she had nevertheless left him again, and that he had put her back to work just a day after the "marriage", warrant the conclusion that the interstate journey and marriage were nothing but a device to, in the words of the statute, "induce, entice, or compel her to give herself up to the practice of prostitution". The facts here are such that the jury might well disbelieve that the reason for the marriage was the usual one.

The other cases upon which appellant relies are readily distinguishable for the same reason. In Van Pelt v. United States, 4 Cir., 240 F. 346, the object of the interstate transportation was to take defendant's mistress from Virginia to Maryland to stay in the latter state until their child was born. The trip was held to have played no part in inducing the commission of a sexual act in Maryland. In Fisher v. United States, 4 Cir., 266 F. 667, 670, the purpose of the trip was to visit the girl's mother. Although illicit relations were resumed on the return, the court held that "* * * the mere fact that a journey from one state to another is followed by such intercourse, when the journey was not for that purpose, but wholly for other reasons, to which intercourse was not related cannot be regarded as a violation of the statute." Here, in view of the unusual attitude of the appellant towards marriage, we think the jury were warranted in finding that so far as appellant was concerned his dominant motive for the marriage was to...