United States v. Charles Munday

• Decision Date: 04 December 1911
• Docket Number: No. 593,593
• Citation: 222 U.S. 175,56 L.Ed. 149,32 S.Ct. 53
• Parties: UNITED STATES, Plff. in Err., v. CHARLES F. MUNDAY and Archie W. Shiels
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

222 U.S. 175

32 S.Ct. 53

56 L.Ed. 149

UNITED STATES, Plff. in Err.,

v CHARLES F. MUNDAY and Archie W. Shiels.

No. 593.

Argued October 25, 1911.

Decided December 4, 1911.

Solicitor General Lehmann for plaintiff in error.

Messrs. Charles W. Dorr, E. C. Hughes, Hiram E. Hadley, and Wilmon Tucker for defendants in error.

Mr. Justice Lurton delivered the opinion of the court:

This writ of error is prosecuted by the United States from a judgment sustaining a motion to quash an indictment.

The indictment is founded upon § 5440, Revised Statutes (U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3676), and charges a conspiracy to defraud the United States by illegally obtaining title to 40 contiguous tracts of coal lands in the district of Alaska, aggregating 6,087 acres, collectively known as the Stracey group, and averred to be of the value of $10,000,000.

The indictment is too long to be set out, even in an abbreviated form. The gravamen of the conspiracy charged is that the defendants induced or procured divers qualified persons to take the several steps required by law to make locations of Alaska coal lands, not for themselves, but as the mere agents or representatives of the defendants, for the purpose of securing to two named corporations a larger area of coal land than such corporations could lawfully locate for themselves.

For the defendants in error it has been very ably urged that since the concededly applicable coal-land law gives to every individual who is of age and a citizen of the United States, the right to make a coal-land location for himself, and to assign his location when made, that there can be no fraud if he makes such location in the first instance for the benefit of another competent to buy the location when made. But if the provisions of the general coal-land entry law, found in § 2350, Revised Statutes (U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 1441), apply to the entry of coal lands in Alaska, the contention is now no longer an open one under the repeated interpretations of that section found in the cases of United States v. Trinidad Coal & Coking Co. 137 U. S. 160, 34 L. ed. 640, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep. 57; United States v. Keitel, 211 U. S. 370, 53 L. ed. 230, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 123; and United States v. Forrester, 211 U. S. 399, 53 L. ed. 245, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 132.

The corporations by whose procurement the forty locations by forty different persons were made, under the express terms of the statute referred to, were disqualified from making more than one location each, and being thus disqualified could not make a second location through an agent acting for their use and benefit. Any construction which would permit one prohibited by express command of the law from making more than one entry or location to make other entries or locations through the agency of a third person, qualified to make an entry for himself, would be to sanction a device which would nullify the purpose of the restriction.

The result must turn upon whether the restrictive features of § 2350, Revised Statutes, are applicable to the sale of coal lands in Alaska. The ruling of the court below and the contention made by the defendants in error is that the act of April 28, 1904 (33 Stat. at L. p. 525, chap. 1772, U. S. Comp. Stat. Supp. 1909, p. 556), is the only act applicable to the unsurveyed coal lands of Alaska. That act will be found set out in the margin.

It purports to be an amendment of the act of June 6,

That any person or association of persons qualified to make entry under the coalland laws of the United States, who shall have opened or improved a coal mine or coal mines on any of the unsurveyed public lands of the United States in the district of Alaska, may locate the lands upon which such mine or mines are situated, in rectangular tracts containing forty, eighty, or one hundred and sixty acres, with north and south boundary lines run according to the true meridian, by marking the four corners thereof with permanent monuments, so that the boundaries thereof may be readily and easily traced. And all such locators shall, within one year from the passage of this act, or within one year from making such location, file for record in the recording district, and with the register and receiver of the land district in which the lands are located or situated, a notice containing the name or names of the locator or locators, the date of the location, the description of the lands located, and a reference to such natural objects or permanent monuments as will readily identify the same.

Sec. 2. That such locator or locators, or their assigns, who are citizens of the United States, shall receive a patent to the lands located by presenting, at any time within three years from the date of such notice, to the register and receiver of the land district in which the lands so located are situated, an application therefor, accompanied by a certified copy of a plat of survey and field notes thereof, made by a United States deputy surveyor or a United States mineral surveyor, duly approved by the surveyor general for the district of Alaska and a payment of the sum of ten dollars per acre for the lands applied for; but no such application shall be allowed until after the applicant has caused a notice of the presentation thereof, embracing a description of the lands, to have been published in a newspaper in the district of Alaska published nearest the location of the premises, for a period of sixty days, and shall have caused copies of such notice, together with a certified copy of the official plat or survey, to have been kept posted in a conspicuous place upon the land applied for and in the land office for the district in which the lands are located for a like period, and until after he shall have furnished proof of such publication and posting, and such other proof as is required by the coal-land laws: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be so construed as to authorize entries to be made or title to be acquired to the shore of any navigable waters within said district.

Sec. 3. That during such period of posting and publication, or within six months thereafter, any person or association of persons having or asserting any adverse interest or claim to the tract of land, or any part thereof, sought to be purchased, shall file in the land office where such application is pending, under oath, and adverse claim, setting forth the nature and extent thereof, and such adverse claimant shall, within sixty days after the filing of such adverse claim, begin an action to quiet title in a court of competent jurisdiction within the district of Alaska, and thereafter no patent shall issue for such claim until the final adjudication of the rights of the parties, and such patent shall then be issued in conformity with the final decree of such court therein.

Sec. 4. That all the provisions of the coal-land laws of the United States not in conflict with the provisions of this act shall continue and be in full force in the district of Alaska. 1900 (31 Stat. at L. p. 658, chap. 796, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 1441), which extended to Alaska 'so much of the public land laws of the United States . . . as relate to coal lands, namely, §§ 2347 to 2352, inclusive, of the Revised Statutes (U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, pp. 1440, 1441):' The sections of the general law thus extended to Alaska are set out in the margin.

These sections came from the act of March 3, 1873 (17

Sec 2347. Every person above the age of twenty-one years, who is a citizen of the United States, or who has declared his intention to become such, or any association of persons severally qualified as above, shall, upon application to the register of the proper land office, have the right to enter, by legal subdivisions, any quantity of vacant coal lands of the United States not otherwise appropriated or reserved by competent authority, not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres to such individual person, or three hundred and twenty acres to such association, upon payment to the receiver of not less than ten dollars per acre for such lands, where the same shall be situated more than fifteen miles from any completed railroad, and not less than twenty dollars per acre for such lands as shall be within fifteen miles of such road.

Sec. 2348. Any person or association of persons severally qualified, as above provided, who have opened and improved, or shall hereafter open and improve, any coal mine or mines upon the public lands, and shall be...