Wellman v. United States
| Citation | 227 F.2d 757 |
| Decision Date | 18 November 1955 |
| Docket Number | No. 12237.,12237. |
| Parties | Saul Laurence WELLMAN, Nathan Kaplan, a/k/a Nat Ganley, Thomas De Witt Dennis, Jr., Philip Schatz, Helen Mary Winter, and William Allan, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellees. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit) |
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Ernest Goodman, Detroit, Mich., George W. Crockett, Jr., Goodman, Crockett, Eden & Robb, Detroit, Mich., on brief, for appellants.
William G. Hundley, Department of Justice, Washington, D. C., Fred W. Kaess, U. S. Atty., Detroit, Mich., John J. Keating, Jr., Lawrence K. Bailey, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., on brief, for appellee.
Before McALLISTER, MILLER and STEWART, Circuit Judges.
Following a trial by jury, which commenced on October 29, 1953 and ended on February 19, 1954, the appellants were convicted of conspiring to violate the Smith Act, which prohibits the advocacy of the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force or violence. Secs. 2385 and 371, Title 18, U.S.Code. Each received a sentence of a fine of $10,000 and imprisonment ranging from four to five years.
The Smith Act, enacted June 28, 1940, 54 Stat. 670, defined the substantive offenses in Section 2, Title I, and by Section 3 thereof made it unlawful for any person to conspire to commit any of the acts so prohibited. This was carried in the 1940 edition of the U.S.Code as Title 18, Sections 10 and 11. In the 1948 revision of the Federal Criminal Code the wording of the substantive offenses was changed in some respects, not material to this case, and the conspiracy provision contained in Section 3 of the original Act was omitted. The offense of conspiring to violate the provisions of the Smith Act is covered by the general conspiracy statute, Section 371, Title 18, U.S.Code. The revised wording of the Smith Act is carried as Section 2385, Title 18, U.S. Code, 1948 Edition, and reads as follows:
The indictment refers to Sections 2 and 3 of the Act as originally drafted and to Sections 371 and 2385 of Title 18, U.S. Code as being the applicable law during the respective periods of their existence.
The indictment consisting of a single count was returned on September 22, 1952. It charged that from on or about April 1, 1945 and continuously thereafter up to and including the date of the filing of the indictment, the appellants conspired in Michigan and elsewhere with other named conspirators, not defendants herein, and with other persons to the Grand Jury unknown, to violate the Smith Act by (1) wilfully advocating and teaching the duty and necessity of overthrowing the Government of the United States by force and violence, with the intent of causing said overthrow as speedily as circumstances would permit, and by (2) wilfully organizing and helping to organize as the Communist Party of the United States a society, group, and assembly of persons who teach and advocate the overthrow and destruction of the Government of the United States by force and violence with the intent of causing said overthrow as speedily as circumstances would permit.
The indictment also alleged that it was part of said conspiracy that the appellants and their co-conspirators would become members and officers of the Communist Party, knowing its purposes, and assume leadership in the Party; that they would cause to be organized groups and various units of the Communist Party and would recruit members therein, concentrating activity in basic industries and plants; that they would publish and circulate books and articles, issue directives and conduct schools and classes, teaching and advocating the duty and necessity of overthrowing the Government of the United States by force and violence as speedily as circumstances would permit; that they would agree upon and carry into effect detailed plans to go underground in event of emergency and from said underground positions continue the conspiracy; and that they would use false names and documents in order to conceal their identities and activities as members of said Communist Party. The indictment set out overt acts detailing meetings held in Detroit, Michigan and the issuance and circulation of an article on Marxism-Leninism and directives of the Communist Party of Michigan. Motions by appellants to dismiss the indictment and for judgments of acquittal made at the close of the Government's evidence and at the close of all the evidence were overruled by the trial judge.
The following history of the Communist movement and of the Communist Party, as shown by the evidence, is necessary to correctly understand appellants' position on this appeal. For some time prior to January 20, 1944 Earl Browder was the National Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States, which based its political philosophy on the teaching of socialism and political economy embodied in the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, V. I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin. The Communist Party for approximately 20 years had proposed candidates for national and local public office. Following the Teheran agreement in 1943 between the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and the Premier of the Soviet Union, which Browder interpreted as foreshadowing an indefinite period of all class peaceful collaboration for a long term of years, Browder proposed that the Communist Party of the United States should cease to function as a political party and should be organized as a political association, which, while continuing to educate the working masses concerning socialism and pressing for political action on their social and economic problems, would no longer propose candidates for public office. He anticipated a willingness on the part of capital to grant labor a more equitable share of the national economy and to collaborate with labor in achieving the national unity necessary to carry out the decisions of the Teheran conference in a democratic and progressive spirit. The Communist Party's President, William Z. Foster, opposed Browder's proposal. However, at the national convention of the Communist Party held in May 1944, the convention approved Browder's recommendation, voted the dissolution of the Communist Party of the United States and formed the Communist Political Association of the United States.
In April 1945, Jacques Duclos, an official of the Communist Party of France, publicly criticised Browder's position and his perspective of post-war collaboration between Labor and Capital and expressed the view that Communist Parties of most countries had not approved Browder's position. This caused considerable discussion and expression of opinion by the leadership and membership of the Communist Political Association, generally approving the views of Foster and Duclos. At the Convention of the Communist Political Association held in New York on July 26-28, 1945, the dissolution of the Association was voted. It then reconvened as the reconstituted Communist Party of the United States and adopted a constitution. Appellants Ganley, Wellman and Winter attended this 1945 convention.
The preamble of the Constitution stated that the Communist Party of the United States was the political party of the American working class, basing itself upon the principles of scientific socialism, Marxism-Leninism, and that "The Communist Party recognizes that the final abolition of exploitation and repression of economic crises and unemployment, reaction and war, will be achieved only by the socialist reorganization of society — by the common ownership and operation of a national economy under a government of the people led by the working class," and "The Communist Party, therefore, educates the working class in the course of its day to day struggles, for its historic mission, the establishment of socialism." Article IX, Section 2 of the Party's Constitution read — "Adherents to or participation in the activities of any clique, group, circle, faction or party which conspires or acts to subvert, undermine, weaken or overthrow any or all institutions of American democracy, whereby the majority of the American people can maintain their right to determine their destinies in any degree, shall be punished by immediate expulsion."
The main question involved in this appeal is the interpretation to be placed upon the documents and events associated with the dissolution of the Communist Political Association and the reconstitution of the Communist Party in 1945. The Government presented its case through the testimony of nine witnesses, who included former members of the...
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