U.S. v. Baucum

• Decision Date: 09 April 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-3040,94-3040
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee v. Patrick BAUCUM, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 539

80 F.3d 539

317 U.S.App.D.C. 63

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee v. Patrick BAUCUM, Appellant.

No. 94-3040.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

April 9, 1996.

Thomas G. Corcoran, Jr., appointed by the court, Washington, DC, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant.

Molly A. Meegan, Assistant United States Attorney, argued the cause for appellee, with whom Eric H. Holder, Jr., United States Attorney, John R. Fisher and Steven J. McCool, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief. Roy W. McLeese, III, Assistant United States Attorney, entered an appearance.

Before: WALD, SILBERMAN and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM.

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING

PER CURIAM:

In his petition for rehearing, Patrick Baucum for the first time argues that his commerce clause challenge to the constitutionality of the "schoolyard statute" ¹ goes to the court's subject matter jurisdiction and therefore cannot be deemed to have been waived by his failure to raise it in the trial court. On direct appeal we rejected his argument that the Supreme Court's supervening decision in United States v. Lopez, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995), made it necessary for this court to address the constitutional claim he had failed to preserve at trial.

The district court in this case exercised subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3231, which gives the federal courts original jurisdiction "of all offenses against the laws of the United States." Baucum claims, however, that if the statute under which he was convicted and sentenced is unconstitutional, then there is no valid "law of the United States" authorizing his prosecution.

Our research surprisingly finds no universally accepted answer to the question his petition poses: Is a facial challenge to the constitutionality of a criminal statute a jurisdictional question which can be raised at any time? There appears to be precedent on both sides of the issue, compare Glasgow v. Moyer, 225 U.S. 420, 429, 32 S.Ct. 753, 756, 56 L.Ed. 1147 (1912) ("The principle [that habeas corpus addresses only the power and authority of the court to act] is not the less applicable because the law which was the foundation of the indictment and trial is asserted to be unconstitutional.... Th[at] question[ ], like others, the court is invested with jurisdiction to try if raised....") and United States v. Ryan, 41 F.3d 361, 363 (8th Cir.1994) ("The interstate commerce aspect of this case arises merely as an element of the section 844(i) offense. If that element is not satisfied, then Ryan is not guilty; but the court is not by the failure of proof on that element deprived of judicial jurisdiction.") with Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651, 654, 4 S.Ct. 152, 153, 28 L.Ed. 274 (1884) ("If the law which defines the offense and prescribes its punishment is void, the court was without jurisdiction and the prisoner must be discharged."). On balance, however, we find that the weight of the precedent, as well as prudential considerations, counsel toward treating facial constitutional challenges to presumptively valid statutes as nonjurisdictional.

Subject-matter jurisdiction presents a threshold question in any federal prosecution. Federal courts of limited jurisdiction have only the power to hear those cases over which Congress has conferred subject-matter jurisdiction upon them. In this case, the district court had jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3231. At the time of Baucum's indictment (and still today), the federal law he was charged with violating, having never been declared unconstitutional, enjoyed a presumption of validity. When a federal court exercises its power under a presumptively valid federal statute, it acts within its subject-matter jurisdiction pursuant to § 3231. It is true that once a statute has been declared unconstitutional, the federal courts thereafter have no jurisdiction over alleged violations (since there is no valid "law of the United States" to enforce), but Baucum's belated assertion of a constitutional defect does not work to divest that court of its original jurisdiction to try him for a violation of the law at issue.

The contrary rule, which Baucum advocates, does not seem to us in keeping with Supreme Court precedent. If a challenge to the constitutionality of an underlying criminal statute always implicated subject-matter jurisdiction, then federal courts, having an obligation to address jurisdictional questions sua sponte, would have to assure themselves of a statute's validity as a threshold matter in any case. This requirement would run afoul of established Supreme Court precedent declining to address constitutional questions not put in issue by the parties. See, e.g., Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 206 n. 5, 74 S.Ct. 460, 464 n. 5, 98 L.Ed. 630 (1954) ("We do not reach for constitutional questions not raised by the parties."); see also Andrews v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co., 406 U.S. 320, 324-25, 92 S.Ct. 1562, 1565, 32 L.Ed.2d 95 (1972) ("The constitutional issue discussed in the dissent was not set forth as a 'question presented for review' in the petition for certiorari, and therefore our [rule] precludes our consideration of it."); Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 43, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 1635, 10 L.Ed.2d 726 (1963) (citing Mazer); New York v. Kleinert, 268 U.S. 646, 650-51, 45 S.Ct. 618, 619, 69 L.Ed. 1135 (1925) ("The writ of error in the present case ... does not bring up for our determination the question as to the constitutionality of the substantive provision of [the Act].").

Baucum's argument is premised on the theory that if an Act of Congress is unconstitutional, it is void ab initio, and any action taken pursuant to it is thus invalid. The Supreme Court, however, has rejected such a broad-sweeping proposition, in a case holding that a district court decree enjoyed res judicata effect even after the jurisdictional statute under which the court had acted was subsequently declared unconstitutional. Chicot Cty. Drainage Dist. v. Baxter State Bank, 308 U.S. 371, 60 S.Ct. 317, 84 L.Ed. 329 (1940). In Chicot, the Court wrote:

The courts below have proceeded on the theory that the Act of Congress, having been found to be unconstitutional, was not a law; that it was inoperative, conferring no rights and imposing no duties, and hence affording no basis for the challenged decree. It is quite clear, however, that such broad statements as to the effect of a determination of unconstitutionality must be taken with qualifications. The actual existence of a statute, prior to such a determination, is an operative fact and may have consequences which cannot justly be ignored. The past cannot always be erased by a new judicial declaration.

Id. at 374, 60 S.Ct. at 318 (citations omitted); see also Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 415, 44 S.Ct. 149, 150, 68 L.Ed. 362 (1923) ("Unless and until ... reversed or modified" on appeal, an erroneous constitutional decision is "an effective and conclusive adjudication.").

The weight of the caselaw in the courts of appeals also undermines the approach advocated by Baucum. Although a jurisdictional claim can never be waived (through forfeiture or even through purposeful waiver), virtually all circuits in recent years have addressed constitutional challenges to criminal statutes and have either refused to address them because the defendants had neglected to raise them below, or decided to reach them only upon determining that the lower court's failure to address them constituted "plain error." ²

We also find support for our position in Walker v. Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307, 315, 87 S.Ct. 1824, 1829, 18 L.Ed.2d 1210 (1967), in which the Supreme Court affirmed a state court's refusal to consider a challenge to a conviction based on the violation of an injunction of concededly questionable constitutionality. Even though both the injunction and the underlying ordinance were "subject to substantial constitutional question," id. at 317, 87 S.Ct. at 1830, the Court held that "[w]ithout question the state court that issued the injunction had, as a court of equity, jurisdiction over the petitioners and over the subject matter of the controversy. And this is not a case where the injunction was transparently invalid or had only a frivolous pretense to validity." Id. at 315, 87 S.Ct. at 1829 (emphasis added). Similarly, in this case, the district court, as a federal court empowered by Congress to hear questions of federal law, unquestionably had subject-matter jurisdiction over a controversy stemming from a violation of a federal law that was presumptively valid. See United States v. Lopez, 2 F.3d at 1366 n. 50 (5th Cir.1993) (distinguishing the unconstitutional gun law from the constitutional "schoolyard statute").

Although we ultimately reject Baucum's argument that his claim is jurisdictional and nonwaivable, we recognize that his approach has some support in the caselaw. Several courts have referred to facial constitutional claims as jurisdictional, see, e.g., United States v. Walker, 59 F.3d 1196, 1198 (11th Cir.1995), and the Supreme Court has decided cases in the guilty plea context which arguably lend support to his view.

In Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974) and Menna v. New York, 423 U.S. 61, 96 S.Ct. 241, 46 L.Ed.2d 195 (1975), the Court held that the defendants' guilty pleas did not bar their subsequent collateral attacks against their convictions on double jeopardy grounds. In both cases, the Court found that the defendants had not waived their double jeopardy claims, because "[w]here the State is precluded by the United States Constitution from haling a defendant into court on a charge, federal law requires that a conviction on that charge be set aside even if the conviction was entered pursuant to a counseled plea of guilty." Menna, 423 U.S. at 62, 96 S.Ct. at 242 (citing...