Norton v. United States
| Decision Date | 04 December 1923 |
| Docket Number | 4147. |
| Citation | 295 F. 136 |
| Parties | NORTON et al. v. UNITED STATES. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Rehearing Denied January 30, 1924.
Leonard Brown and W. C. Linden, both of San Antonio, Tex., for plaintiffs in error.
John D Hartman, U.S. Atty., of San Antonio, Tex. (W. C. Williams Asst. U.S. atty., of San Antonio, Tex., on the brief), for the United States.
Before WALKER and BRYAN, Circuit Judges, and GRUBB, District Judge.
The plaintiffs in error (named defendants hereafter) were convicted in the District Court, at San Antonio, for a conspiracy to violate the National Prohibition Act (Comp. St Ann. Supp. 1923, Sec. 10138 1/4 et seq.), by agreeing to have possession of beverage intoxicating liquor for purposes of sale. The defendants, who were convicted, complain of the conviction because (1) of the insufficiency of the indictment; and (2) of the insufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction.
1. The indictment contained a single count. The defendants criticize it because of uncertainty as to the time when the conspiracy was entered into by the various parties, and as to its duration; because the alleged co-conspirators, not indicted are not named, or their names alleged to be unknown to the grand jury; because the indictment is duplicitous, in alleging more than one offense in one count. The time is alleged as having extended from April 1 until November 1, 1922. It is alleged that the defendants joined it at various dates during that time. By so doing, they became parties to it from its inception, and the legal effect of the indictment was to charge a continuing conspiracy between all the defendants from April until November, 1922. An indictment so framed is subject to a charge of neither undue uncertainty nor duplicity, as charging a new conspiracy, upon each occasion when a defendant joined it. The joining of each relates to the original formation, and there is in the eye of the law but one continuing, and not many successive, conspiracies. The names of the parties, other than those indicted, who are charged to have been co-conspirators, were not descriptive of the offense, and need not to have been set out.
The fact that the conspiracy contemplated numerous violations of law as its object does not make the indictment duplicitous. The gist of the offense is the conspiracy, and it is single though its object is to commit a number of...
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Short v. United States
...of several statutes. As said by Judge Grubb, speaking for the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Fifth Circuit in Norton v. United States (C.C.A.5th) 295 F. 136, 137: "The fact that the conspiracy contemplated numerous violations of law as its object does not make the indictment duplicitous. T......
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Dowdy v. United States
...S., 249 U. S. 204, 209, 210, 39 S. Ct. 249, 63 L. Ed. 561; Ford v. U. S., 273 U. S. 593, 602, 47 S. Ct. 531, 71 L. Ed. 793; Norton v. U. S. (C. C. A. 5th) 295 F. 136; Rudner v. U. S. (C. C. A. 6th) 281 F. 516; Remus v. U. S. (C. C. A. 6th) 291 F. 501; Anderson v. U. S. (C. C. A. 8th) 273 F.......
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...up one conspiracy and make several conspiracies out of it, citing In re Snow, 120 U.S. 274, 7 S.Ct. 556, 30 L.Ed. 658; and Norton v. United States, 5 Cir., 295 F. 136. These principles are enunciated also in Ex parte Rose, D.C., 33 F.Supp. 941; Short v. United States, 4 Cir., 91 F.2d 614, 1......
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Weinstein v. United States, 1936.
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