United States v. Kelly

• Decision Date: 18 January 1932
• Docket Number: No. 135.,135.
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. KELLY.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

55 F.2d 67 (1932)

UNITED STATES v. KELLY.

No. 135.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

January 18, 1932.

Howard W. Ameli, U. S. Atty., of Brooklyn, N. Y. (Emanuel Bublick, Asst. U. S. Atty., of Brooklyn, N. Y. and Norman J. Morrison, Special Asst. to Atty. Gen., of counsel), for the United States.

Arthur A. Kestler, of Brooklyn, N. Y. (Anthony A. Marcell, of Brooklyn, N. Y., of counsel), for appellee.

Before L. HAND, SWAN, and AUGUSTUS N. HAND, Circuit Judges.

AUGUSTUS N. HAND, Circuit Judge.

One Mortimer Kelly was arrested by prohibition agents in the Eastern district of New York upon a charge of having sold to the agents one quart of gin. On the day of the arrest, and before arraignment before a United States commissioner, he was told by the agents that his finger prints must be taken for the use of the Bureau of Prohibition, and that, if he did not permit the finger prints to be taken, they would be taken by force. Kelly submitted and permitted his finger prints to be taken; whereupon he filed a petition in the District Court setting forth the foregoing facts and praying that the finger prints should be returned. The District Court ordered the United States attorney, the prohibition administrator, and whoever should have possession of the finger prints to return them. From that order the United States took the present appeal.

The District Judge delivered an opinion in which he stated that the right to take finger prints in the case at bar did not exist because of the absence of a state or federal statute providing for it and because finger printing subjected "a possible misdemeanant before trial and conviction" to "unnecessary indignity."

The government contends that there is ample authority supporting finger printing upon arrest irrespective of statute, that finger printing is necessary to ascertain whether a defendant has been previously convicted so as to plead the prior conviction as provided in section 29, title 2, of the National Prohibition Act (27 USCA § 46), and that finger printing is not an infringement of constitutional rights.

Such means for the identification of prisoners so that they may be apprehended in the event of escape, so that second offenders may be detected for purposes of proper sentence where conviction is had, and so that the government may be able to ascertain, as required by section 29, title 2, of the National Prohibition Act, whether the defendant has been previously convicted, are most important adjuncts of the enforcement of the criminal laws.

Any restraint of the person may be burdensome. But some burdens must be borne for the good of the community. Crowley v. Christensen, 137 U. S. at page 89, 11 S. Ct. 13, 34 L. Ed. 620; Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. at page 26, 25 S. Ct. 358, 49 L. Ed. 643, 3 Ann. Cas. 765; Molineux v. Collins, 177 N. Y. at page 399, 69 N. E. 727, 65 L. R. A. 104. The slight interference with the person involved in finger printing seems to us one which must be borne in the common interest.

Arrest upon probable cause and search of the person in connection with the arrest and seizure of evidences of crime have long been allowed. Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 34 S. Ct. 341, 58 L. Ed. 652, L. R. A. 1915B, 834, Ann. Cas. 1915C, 1177; Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298, 41 S. Ct. 261, 65 L. Ed. 647; Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 45 S. Ct. 280, 69 L. Ed. 543, 39 A. L. R. 790; Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20, 46 S. Ct. 4, 70 L. Ed. 145, 51 A. L. R. 409; Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192, 48 S. Ct. 74, 72 L. Ed. 231; People v. Chiagles, 237 N. Y. 193, 142 N. E. 583, 32 A. L. R. 676. Yet the person arrested and thus humiliated may be entirely innocent. The New York Court of Appeals in People v. Gardner, 144 N. Y. 119, 38 N. E. 1003, 28 L. R. A. 699, 43 Am. St. Rep. 741, held it lawful to take a prisoner accused of murder before his dying victim to be identified. The same court in People v. Van Wormer, 175 N. Y. 188, 67 N. E. 299, sustained the action of the public authorities in taking the shoes from the defendants, after their arrest on a charge of murder, and placing them in the foot marks which led to the house of the deceased in new fallen snow. And in Holt v. United States, 218 U. S. at page 252, 31 S. Ct. 2, 6, 54 L. Ed. 1021, 20 Ann. Cas. 1138, the Supreme Court regarded testimony that a prisoner had been compelled to put on a blouse which was found to fit him as competent evidence that the blouse belonged to him. Justice Holmes said that "* * * the prohibition of compelling a man in a criminal court to be witness against himself is a prohibition of the use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications from him, not an exclusion of his body as evidence when it may be material. The objection in principle would forbid a jury to look at a prisoner and compare his features with a photograph in proof."

Finger printing seems to be no more than an extension of methods of identification long used in dealing with persons under arrest for real or supposed violations of the criminal laws. It is known to be a very certain means devised by modern science to reach the desired end, and has become especially important in a time when increased population and vast aggregations of people in urban centers have rendered the notoriety of the individual in the community no longer a ready means of identification.

The Maryland Court of Appeals held that it was lawful, though before conviction, to photograph and measure under the Bertillon system a person arrested on a felony charge. Downs v. Swann, 111 Md. 53, 73 A. 653, 23 L. R. A. (N. S.) 739, 134 Am. St. Rep. 586. In Maryland no statute existed authorizing such means of identification. The Supreme Court of Indiana reached a similar conclusion in State ex rel. Bruns v. Clausmeier, 154 Ind. 599, 57 N. E. 541, 50 L. R. A. 73, 77 Am. St. Rep. 511, and O'Brien v. State, 125 Ind. 38, 25 N. E. 137, 9 L. R. A. 323, and so did the Supreme Court of Arkansas in Mabry v. Kettering, 92 Ark. 81, 122 S. W. 115. The Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia is in accord. Shaffer v. U. S., 24 App. D. C. 417. The Court of Chancery of New Jersey in Bartletta v. McFeeley, 107 N. J. Eq. 141, 152 A. 17, held only a year ago, and in the absence of a statute, that a prisoner who had been arrested for possessing papers pertaining to a lottery was lawfully subjected to photographing, finger printing, and measurement under the Bertillon system. To the same effect is the opinion of the New York Court of General Sessions in People v. Sallow, 100 Misc. Rep. 447, 165 N. Y. S. 915, and of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia in United States v. Cross, 9 Mackey (20 D. C.) at page 382.

It is true that the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court in Hawkins v. Kuhne, 153 App. Div. 216, 137 N. Y. S. 1090, affirmed 208 N. Y. 555, 101 N. E. 1104, may be thought to have held that photographing and measuring a prisoner before conviction were unlawful in the absence of a statute. But the opinion was in a case where the arresting officers refused to take the prisoner before a magistrate for a hearing prior to being photographed and measured. After photographing and measurement he was taken to court and held only for vagrancy and admitted to bail. Thereupon he was rearrested on the original charge of embezzlement based upon a cable from the Governor of Porto Rico under which the magistrate had refused to hold him after the first arrest. The photographing and measuring in...