Shelton v. United States

• Decision Date: 22 December 1947
• Docket Number: No. 9515.,9515.
• Parties: SHELTON v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

83 US App. DC 32, 165 F.2d 241 (1947)

SHELTON v. UNITED STATES.

No. 9515.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia.

Argued November 17, 1947.

Decided December 22, 1947.

Mr. Jay Paul Shelton, appellant, pro se.

Mr. John D. Lane, Assistant United States Attorney, of Washington, D. C., with whom Mr. George Morris Fay, United States Attorney, and Mr. John P. Burke, Assistant United States Attorney, both of Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellee. Mr. Sidney S. Sachs, Assistant United States Attorney, of Washington, D. C., also entered an appearance for appellee.

Mr. John H. Burnett, of Washington, D. C., appointed by this court as amicus curiae, urged reversal.

Before GRONER, Chief Justice, and WILBUR K. MILLER and PRETTYMAN, Associate Justices.

PRETTYMAN, Associate Justice.

Appellant was indicted, tried by a jury, convicted, and sentenced to serve one to three years, for perjury.¹ The prosecution was in the name of the United States by the United States Attorney, and the trial was by the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia. The indictment was in two counts. The facts alleged were that the defendant had secured from the Department of Vehicles and Traffic of the District of Columbia a certificate of title for a Chevrolet automobile; that later he surrendered the original certificate as burned and mutilated and secured a duplicate certificate; that still later he filed, on a form furnished by the Director of Vehicles and Traffic, an application for a second duplicate certificate of title; that this application was under oath; that the defendant answered "Lost" to the requirement on the application that he "State reason for requiring duplicate"; and that defendant entered "No" on the line requiring information as to "Existing liens, chattel mortgages, unpaid balances, etc." The first count of the indictment was that the first of these two statements was false, and known by defendant to have been false, because the first duplicate certificate had not been lost. The second count of the indictment was that the second of these two statements was false, and known by defendant to have been false, because there were liens, chattel mortgages, and unpaid bills existing on the automobile. Both counts, as we have said, were for perjury.

The defendant moved to merge the two counts. At first the United States Attorney agreed to the merger, saying that the various matters charged might be considered alternate ways of committing one offense. But when the case was called for trial, he withdrew his consent, suggesting that different questions of law might arise as to the two alleged false statements, and saying that he wanted a verdict on each statement, because he foresaw that if there were one verdict of guilty, this court upon appeal could not tell which statement the jury had found to be false. Nevertheless, the counts were merged, and upon the trial there was one verdict of "guilty in manner and form as charged in the indictment", and one sentence of one to three years.

Appellant-defendant's first point is that the offenses described in the indictment did not constitute the crime of perjury but at most were misdemeanors to be prosecuted by the Corporation Counsel in the Municipal Court for the District of Columbia.

Three statutes are involved. The pertinent words² of the District of Columbia perjury statute are:

"Every person who, having taken an oath, in any case in which the law authorized such oath, that any written declaration by him subscribed is true, wilfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true, shall be guilty of perjury; and any person convicted of perjury shall be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for not less than two nor more than ten years."³

Four subsections under Section 6⁴ of the District of Columbia Traffic Act⁵ are pertinent. Subsection (c) provides: "The Commissioners of the District of Columbia are authorized to make reasonable regulations in respect to titling, retitling, etc., of motor vehicles." Subsection (d) provides:

"The commissioners shall not register any motor vehicle unless and until the owner thereof shall make application in the form prescribed by the commissioners, under oath, and be granted an official certificate of title for such vehicle. Any individual violating any provision of this subsection or any regulations promulgated thereunder shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."

Subsection (e) provides: "The commissioners may in the administration of any provision of the Traffic Acts, exercise any power or perform any duty conferred on them by the Traffic Acts through such officers and agents of the District as the commissioners may designate." Subsection (i) provides: "All prosecutions for violations of provisions of the Traffic Acts, excepting section 11 thereof, or regulations made and promulgated under the authority of said Acts shall be in the police court of the District of Columbia upon information filed by the corporation counsel of the District of Columbia or any of his assistants."

The third pertinent statute is the Act of July 2, 1940, known as the Motor Vehicle Lien Law,⁶ Section 6 of which provides: "Applications for certificates, in addition to all other matters which may be required by law, shall show under oath whether or not there are any liens against the motor vehicle". Section 14 of the same Act provides:

"Any person intentionally making a false statement with respect to liens in an application for a certificate, or willfully violating any of the provisions of this Act, shall upon conviction be punished by a fine of not more than $500 or be imprisoned for not more than one year, or both. Prosecutions for violations of this Act shall be by the corporation counsel of the District of Columbia or any of his assistants, in the name of the District of Columbia."

If an application for a duplicate certificate is an application for a certificate, within the meaning of the last-quoted section of the Lien Act, there is no escape from the conclusion that in so far as the defendant's false statement as to liens is concerned, the maximum sentence was a fine of $500 and imprisonment for one year, and the prosecution was required to be by the Corporation Counsel in the name of the District of Columbia.

The Lien Act, generally throughout its provisions, speaks only of a "certificate", which it defines as a certificate of title, but in at least two places it specifically mentions a duplicate; in Section 6 appears "an application for a certificate * * *, or on the application for a duplicate", and in Section 11 appears "where the certificate * * * has been lost or destroyed and a duplicate certificate issued". This circumstance gives rise to some question whether a "certificate" and a "duplicate certificate" were deemed by Congress to be two different things, and whether "duplicate certificate" was used whenever a duplicate was meant. But careful reading of the whole Act shows that it cannot be construed that way. Only the word "certificate" appears in the provisions as to unentered liens (Section 2), the entry of liens on certificates (Section 7), the delivery of certificates (Section 6), the assignment of liens (Section 8), the surrender of certificates for liens (Section 9), the possession of the certificate (Section 10), and the recordation of satisfied liens (Section 11). But obviously those provisions must necessarily apply to duplicates as well as to original certificates. The purpose of the Act is a current one, the recording, releasing, etc., of liens being a current, changing matter, and not merely an initial static one. This purpose obviously applies to duplicates as it does to originals. It would be ridiculous to conclude that these elaborate provisions apply so long as the original certificate is preserved but not thereafter when a duplicate is the outstanding authentic evidence of title. We think that the above-quoted provisions of Sections 6 and 14 of the Lien Act apply to applications for duplicate certificates just as do the provisions of all the other sections of the Act.

The foregoing being true, the next question is whether the defendant's false oath as to liens may be prosecuted and punished under the general perjury statute. It is clearly within the statutory definition of perjury in that statute, quoted above. But there can be no question about the general rule that, absent extraordinary results of such construction, a specific later statute, rather than an earlier general one, applies to a given transaction described by both acts,⁷ i. e., generally by the earlier act and specifically by the later.

There is no room in the present problem for the application of the rule of the Noveck case,⁸ urged upon us here. In that decision, as in a line of cases before and since, it was held that the making of a false oath and the using of it in an attempt to defeat an income tax are two separate offenses. Hence, under those two statutes, when a person both makes a false oath and then uses it in an attempt to defeat the income tax, he may be indicted, convicted, and punished for either or both of the two offenses. It is argued that under that rule, when the present defendant made the false oath he violated the perjury statute and not the Lien Law. But the local statute in respect to false statements as to liens specifically applies to the making of the false statement. The making is the offense, and the making is required to be under oath. Thus, the prescriptions in Section 14 necessarily apply to the making of false statements under oath. Congress certainly did not require that applications be under oath and at the same time provide severe penalties for making false applications not under oath.

The offense thus described in the Lien Act is a particular kind of perjury.⁹ Congress has...