Santos v. United States

• Decision Date: 19 August 1969
• Docket Number: No. 16985.,16985.
• Citation: 417 F.2d 340
• Parties: Efrain SANTOS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

417 F.2d 340 (1969)

Efrain SANTOS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 16985.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

August 19, 1969.

Julius Lucius Echeles, Jo Anne Wolfson, Chicago, Ill., for petitioner-appellant.

Alfred W. Moellering, Fort Wayne, Ind., Joseph F. Eichhorn, Bluffton, Ind., for respondent-appellee.

Before MAJOR and HASTINGS, Senior Circuit Judges and CUMMINGS, Circuit Judge.

HASTINGS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Efrain Santos appeals from the district court's denial of his motion, filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C.A. § 2255, for collateral relief from a judgment of conviction entered by that court following a jury trial.

The record before us establishes that appellant was charged in five counts of a six-count indictment with violating federal marihuana and conspiracy statutes. Two of such counts charged a conspiracy while the other three charged substantive offenses. On November 15, 1966, appellant was found guilty by a jury verdict and was convicted of violating 26 U.S.C.A. §§ 4742(a), 4744(a) (1) and 18 U.S.C.A. § 371. His conviction was affirmed by this court on November 13, 1967 in United States v. Santos, 7 Cir., 385 F.2d 43 (1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 954, 88 S.Ct. 1048, 19 L.Ed.2d 1148.

Seeking collateral relief from his conviction, appellant claimed that he was deprived of the effective assistance of counsel at the trial level¹ and that the marihuana statutes under which he was convicted contravene the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.²

In denying appellant's § 2255 petition for relief on May 15, 1968, the trial court, with deference to then existing precedent, did not find the challenged marihuana statutes unconstitutional and stated that if such laws should be held unconstitutional "* * * it should be done by the Supreme and Appellate Courts which have previously upheld the statutes against constitutional attacks." The reasoning espoused in the recent Supreme Court decisions of Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6, 89 S.Ct. 1532, 23 L.Ed.2d 57 (May 19, 1969), and United States v. Covington, 395 U.S. 57, 89 S.Ct. 1559, 23 L.Ed.2d 94 (May 19, 1969), compels us to reverse the trial court's order in dismissing appellant's § 2255 petition for relief.

The privilege against self-incrimination as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment provides a full defense to the substantive counts charged against Santos. Further, the conspiracy counts must fall with the underlying substantive counts. See Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62, 70, 88 S.Ct. 709, 19 L.Ed.2d 906 (1968).

It appears clear that Leary requires a reversal of Santos' conviction under § 4744(a) (1).³ In Leary, the Supreme Court reversed the petitioner's conviction under 26 U.S.C.A. § 4744(a) (2) holding that the "petitioner's invocation of the privilege against self-incrimination was proper and * * * should have provided a full defense" to the count alleging a violation of § 4744 (a) (2). The necessary implication of Leary is that the substantive violations under § 4744(a) (1) in the instant case can not be sustained. No reasonable grounds exist for distinguishing between a conviction premised on § 4744(a) (1) and a conviction obtained under § 4744 (a) (2). Both provisions of § 4744 share identical constitutional infirmities and are equally subject to the privilege against self-incrimination, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. These provisions of § 4744, when viewed within the context of the comprehensive statutory scheme of the Marihuana Tax Act,⁴ expose a person to a "real and appreciable" risk of self-incrimination, within the rationale of Leary v. United States, supra, Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 88 S.Ct. 697, 19 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62, 88 S.Ct. 709, 19 L.Ed.2d 906 (1968), and Haynes v. United States, 390 U.S. 85, 88 S.Ct. 722, 19 L.Ed.2d 923 (1968).

We are also of the view that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination may be invoked as a defense to a charge premised upon § 4742 (a)⁵ and find that Santos' conviction under this section must fall under the weight of Leary and the related cases of Marchetti v. United States, supra, Grosso v. United States, supra, and Haynes v. United States, supra. As noted in Leary, "§ 4742 makes it unlawful for any person, `whether or not required to pay a special tax and register under sections 4751 to 4753,' to transfer marijuana except pursuant to a written order form to be obtained by the transferee." Thus, before a legal transfer of marihuana can be made, the transferor is statutorily obliged, under pain of criminal prosecution, to have the transferee obtain the required order form. To secure the order form, the transferee, pursuant to § 4742(c), supra, must disclose the name and address of the proposed transferor.

When considered in conjunction with other interrelated sections of the Marihuana Tax Act, the net legal effect of § 4742(a) is to place the criminal transferor in the position of being statutorily required to provide the government with information "which would surely prove a significant `link in the chain' of evidence tending to establish his guilt." Marchetti v. United States, supra 390 U.S. at 48, 88 S.Ct. at 703. This is true since the order form mandate of § 4742 (a) compels the criminal transferor to require the transferee to obtain an order form and to identify him not only as a transferor of marihuana but as a transferor who has not registered and paid the occupational tax required by §§ 4751-4753. This interplay of the sections exposes the criminal transferor to a real hazard of self-incrimination since such information becomes readily available to investigative authorities.

We see no legally significant reason for distinguishing between the Marchetti type statutory scheme, in which the defendant is required to personally incriminate himself, and the more subtle statutory scheme, as is found in the instant case, where the law requires the defendant to compel another to divulge equally incriminating information. Both statutory schemes confront the defendant with a real and substantial risk of incrimination. The privilege against self-incrimination provides a complete defense to prosecution for failure to comply with either incriminating scheme. There is a "right not to be criminally liable for one's previous failure to obey a statute which required an incriminatory act." Leary v. United States, supra, 395 U.S. at 28, 89 S.Ct. at 1544.

In the recent case of United States v. Buie, 2 Cir., 407 F.2d 905 (1969), the Second Circuit was faced with resolving the identical issue of whether the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination can be invoked by a defendant-transferor as a defense to a conviction for transferring marihuana without the written order form required by § 4742(a). On the authority of its decision in United States v. Minor, 2 Cir., 398 F.2d 511 (1968)⁶, the Buie court affirmed the defendant-transferor's conviction and concluded that under the statutory scheme of the Marihuana Tax Act the defendant did not personally reveal his own identity and thereby incriminate himself. In substance, the court held that "the privilege against self-incrimination is personal" and is not violated so long as the defendant-transferor does not have to personally provide the incriminatory information.

We respectfully disagree with the holding in Buie and feel that the Minor decision is not apposite to the resolution of this issue.

While it is manifestly clear that the interplay of § 4742(a) and 4742(c) results in the transferee providing the incriminatory information about the defendant-transferor, it is equally certain that the statutory interplay compels the defendant to cause the transferee to reveal such information. The protective boundaries of the privilege are not so narrow as to fail to encompass the situation where one is compelled, under threat of criminal prosecution, to have another incriminate him.

In determining whether an individual is entitled to the shelter of the Fifth Amendment privilege, we feel that the spirit and philosophy of the privilege against self-incrimination require us to focus our attention on the question of whether the person seeking the insulation of the shelter is compelled, either personally or through another, to provide self-incriminating information. To hold that the shelter of the privilege is contingent solely upon the question of who actually provided the incriminatory material unnecessarily restricts the boundaries of the privilege and thwarts its purpose.

With deference, in our judgment, the Minor holding is distinguishable from and is not dispositive of the issue presented by the instant case and that in Buie. Minor involved the question of whether the privilege against self-incrimination affords a defense to a conviction for selling narcotic drugs (heroin) without the mandatory written order form required by § 4705(a) of the correlative Narcotic Drugs Tax Act. Section 4705(a) makes it unlawful for any person to transfer narcotic drugs except pursuant to a written order form which is to be obtained by the transferee from the appropriate governmental authorities. In affirming the defendant-transferor's § 4705(a) conviction, the Minor court held that the defendant's "compliance with § 4705(a) would not have subjected him to the risk of self-incrimination" because the transferor "of narcotic drugs is not required to register or in any other way to incriminate himself in order to comply fully with the requirements of § 4705(a)." (Emphasis added.) United States v. Minor, supra at 514-515. Herein, in our judgment, rests the critical distinction between Minor and Buie.

As shown, § 4742(a) does have the effect of forcing the defendant-transferor to risk the hazards of self-incrimination since to comply with the section, the transferor is required to have the transferee obtain the prescribed order...