Soto v. United States
| Decision Date | 07 June 1921 |
| Docket Number | No. 2660,2660 |
| Citation | 1 V.I. 536 |
| Parties | SOTO, et al. v. UNITED STATES |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
See, also, 273 Fed. 628
Appeal from District Court of St. Thomas and St. John. Defendants, Jose Soto and Jose Lopez, were tried together in that court before Judge Thiele and four co-judges or lay-judges. Defendant Lopez was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, and defendant Soto was found guilty of being an accomplice and sentenced to imprisonment for six years (1 V.I. 8). Defendants appealed. The Circuit Court of Appeals held that constitutional guaranties of a natural or personal nature applied to the Virgin Islands, and that trial of defendants had not conformed to requirement of due process of law and other constitutional requirements.
Judgment reversed and new trial ordered.LEO. F. S. HORAN, St. Thomas, V.I. (Dallas S. Townsend, New York City, of counsel), for appellants
GEORGE A. KEYSER, Government Attorney, St. Croix, V.I., for the United States
Before BUFFINGTON, WOOLLEY, and DAVIS, Circuit Judges
This is a criminal appeal from a judgment of the District Court of St. Thomas and St. John in the VirginIslands, formerly the Danish West Indies. It is brought here under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1917 (ch. 171, § 2, 39 Stat. 1132; 48 U.S.C., 1946 Ed., § 1392), which conferred on this court appellate jurisdiction in all cases arising in those islands. By the judgment appealed from, Lopez was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death; Soto was found guilty of being an accomplice and was sentenced to imprisonment for six years. The appeal brings the case here for review on both the facts and the law after the manner of appeals to the courts of Denmark, as provided by the cited Act, construed by this court in Clen v. Jorgensen (1920) 1 V.I. 497,165 Fed. 120.
The main question in the case is whether constitutional guarantees (especially those contained in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments) extend to inhabitants of the Virgin Islands.
The facts out of which this important question has arisen are briefly these:
On the night of September 9, 1920, the American Steamship Polar Star was lying in the Harbor of St. Thomas. Upon the sounding of her distress signal the local police hurried aboard and found a man lying dead in the mess-room and another man on the deck badly wounded. Two of the crew, Soto, a Chilean, and Lopez, a Spaniard, were missing. These men were captured in the bush, one a day, and the other two days, after the homicide. On the day following the homicide a Police Investigation was instituted in the Police Court of St. Thomas and St. John. The investigation was begun before Soto and Lopez had been apprehended and was continued after their capture and production in court by repeating before them the testimony given, or "reports" made, in their absence and by introducing additional testimony, the substance of which was as follows:
There was a quarrel in the crew's quarters below deckbetween Soto and Lopez on one side and William Dougherty and Patrick Donahue on the other. The four men were members of the crew. All were more or less under the influence of liquor. In the course of the quarrel it was proposed that they go on deck and fight it out. Thereupon the men started for the deck. Soto, gaining possession of a large knife, handed it to Lopez. When on a stairway, or in a narrow passage, Lopez stabbed Donahue, who was above him or ahead of him, and then stabbed Dougherty, who was below him or behind him, with the result that Donahue suffered the loss of an eye and Dougherty was instantly killed.
While these were the main facts, there was much testimony bearing on the grade of the crime. The investigation continued almost daily from September 10 to September 22. Twenty-three witnesses for the government were examined; the prisoners alone spoke for themselves.
The proceeding before the Police Court has an important bearing on the case. The best that we can make out of the record is that it was purely an investigation looking toward discovering and committing the culprits. No charge of crime was made against anyone. As to the procedure, a witness on being called gave his testimony, which afterwards was reduced to writing and read to him, and, if satisfactory, was verified by his oath. The testimony of witnesses was at times read by an interpreter to the prisoners, both of whom spoke and understood nothing but the Spanish language; and at times, as the record shows, the testimony was not read to them at all. The investigation was prosecuted mainly in the presence of the prisoners, though, undoubtedly, the record shows that it continued at times during their absence. (Testimony of Patrolman Anduze and Director of Police Morningstar on September 13.)
At the conclusion of the proceeding in the Police Court,that is, at the conclusion of the "Policy Investigation," for that is what it was entitled, the judge made the following entry:
"The two accused (sic) were informed that in case they have no further statement to give the investigation will be closed now and the records of it sent to the Government with the request that they be tried for murder."
The case was then transferred from the Police Court to the District Court by the appearance in the latter court of the Government Attorney, who had conducted the police investigation, and by the filing of "a summons, a plea, a transcript of the police investigation in the case and the order for prosecution." Judge Thiele (who was Judge of the District Court as well as of the Police Court) thereupon issued a summons to Soto and Lopez to appear on a named day "to answer the charge made against (them) and show cause why (they) should not be punished as recommended to the court by the prosecution in the plea filed with this Court." The "plea" which the Government Attorney filed in the District Court recited the facts of the homicide and charged Lopez with "intentional murder" in killing Dougherty and Soto with being an accomplice. The plea charging these crimes was later amended by adding the charge of assault and battery. The two prisoners were then brought to the bar and "made acquainted" with the charges against them. Counsel for their defense, having but recently been appointed by the Government, appeared for the first time and requested a postponement of the trial in order that he might familiarize himself with the transcript of the proceeding in the Police Court and prepare a plea by way of answer. Thereafter the trial proceeded by both counsel filing pleas made up entirely of discussions on the evidence taken in the police investigation. In other words, the pleas were arguments in the nature of briefs.
At the trial in the District Court no witnesses were produced by the Government and no testimony was given. Similarly, no witnesses were produced by the prisoners, although at the trial (as well as at the police investigation) the defendants were afforded an opportunity of calling witnesses in their defense. This offer at the trial was of no value to them as the Polar Star had by that time sailed away with all the witnesses to the homicide.
This appeal followed.
[1] While it is our duty on an appeal of this character to review the case on both the law and the facts, Clen v. Jorgensen, supra, we desire to say that, if a question of law were not involved, we should not disturb the judgment of the District Court on the facts. The facts, as they stand are of a character on which equally fair-minded men might come to the one conclusion that Lopez killed Dougherty, and yet are such that equally fair-minded men might come to different conclusions as to the grade of the crime, whether, as in our law, it be manslaughter, murder in the second degree, or murder in the first degree. Therefore, we cannot say that, on the evidence before them, the trial judge and the co-judges erred in rendering against Lopez a judgment of "intentional murder" — in effect a verdict of murder in the first degree.
This brings us to the question of law involved in the appeal. Before discussing this very important questionwe shall state, with some repetition, the salient parts of the two separate and distinct proceedings below which bear on the question.
The first proceeding was, as its title denotes, a "Police Investigation." It was instituted before one judge who alone had no power to convict, and was begun before the prisoners were apprehended. It was conducted mainly in their presence but at times during their absence. The prisoners were without counsel, and it is not clear that they were given an opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses, though called upon at the conclusion of the testimony of each witness to make "explanation," indicating apparently an opportunity for them to explain or deny what the witness had just said, and affording them, perhaps — as the Government Attorney maintains — an opportunity of cross-examination. As the proceeding was in every sense an investigation and in no sense a trial, the prisoners were inclined to remain silent, thereby imposing upon the Government, as they had a right to do, the burden of establishing a prima facie case of guilt. The investigation was concluded by a finding, not of their guilt, but that "the records be sent to the Government with the request that they be tried for murder." This, obviously, was nothing more than a formal commitment.
Thereafter, the Government Attorney appeared in the District Court and filed a transcript of the Police Investigation...
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