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Bell v. United States

U.S.
May 9, 1955
349 U.S. 81 (1955)

Summary

holding only one Mann Act charge could result from the single transport of two women

Summary of this case from United States v. Rentz

Opinion

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT.

No. 468.

Argued April 21, 1955. Decided May 9, 1955.

Petitioner was indicted and pleaded guilty on two counts for violation of the Mann Act, each count referring to a different woman. Petitioner had transported the two women on the same trip and in the same vehicle. Held: Petitioner committed but a single offense, and was not subject to cumulative punishment under the two counts. Pp. 81-84.

(a) Congress has not made the simultaneous transportation of more than one woman in violation of the Mann Act clearly liable to cumulative punishment for each woman so transported. Pp. 82-83.

(b) Where Congress has not fixed the punishment for a federal offense, clearly, doubt will be resolved against turning a single transaction into multiple offenses. Pp. 83-84.

213 F.2d 629, reversed.

James R. Browning, acting under appointment by the Court, 348 U.S. 924, argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioner.

Charles F. Barber argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Sobeloff, Assistant Attorney General Olney, Beatrice Rosenberg and Carl H. Imlay.


Once more it becomes necessary to determine "What Congress has made the allowable unit of prosecution," United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 344 U.S. 218, 221, under a statute which does not explicitly give the answer. This recurring problem now arises under what is familiarly known as the Mann Act. The relevant provisions of the Act in its present form are:

"Whoever knowingly transports in interstate or foreign commerce . . . any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose . . . .

"Shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both." § 2 of the Act of June 25, 1910, 36 Stat. 825, now 18 U.S.C. § 2421.

The facts need not detain us long. Petitioner pleaded guilty to violations laid in two counts, each referring to a different woman. Concededly, the petitioner transported the two women on the same trip and in the same vehicle. This was the basis of his claim that he committed only a single offense and could not be subjected to cumulative punishment under the two counts. The District Court rejected this conception of the statute and sentenced the petitioner to consecutive terms of two years and six months on each of the two counts. On appeal from denial of a motion to correct the sentence, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court. "While the act of transportation was a single one," it ruled, "the unlawful purpose must of necessity have been selective and personal as to each of the women involved. . . . We therefore believe that two separate offenses were committed in this case." 213 F.2d 629, 630. This decision was in accord with decisions of other lower federal courts, but a contrary holding by the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in Robinson v. United States, 143 F.2d 276, raised a square conflict for settlement by this Court. This led us to bring the case here. 348 U.S. 895.

The punishment appropriate for the diverse federal offenses is a matter for the discretion of Congress, subject only to constitutional limitations, more particularly the Eighth Amendment. Congress could no doubt make the simultaneous transportation of more than one woman in violation of the Mann Act liable to cumulative punishment for each woman so transported. The question is: did it do so? It has not done so in words in the provisions defining the crime and fixing its punishment. Nor is guiding light afforded by the statute in its entirety or by any controlling gloss. The constitutional basis of the statute is the withdrawal of "the facility of interstate transportation," Hoke v. United States, 227 U.S. 308, 322, though, to be sure, the power was exercised in aid of social morality. Again, it will not promote guiding analysis to indulge in what might be called the color-matching of prior decisions concerned with "the unit of prosecution" in order to determine how near to, or how far from, the problem under this statute the answers are that have been given under other statutes.

It is not to be denied that argumentative skill, as was shown at the Bar, could persuasively and not unreasonably reach either of the conflicting constructions. About only one aspect of the problem can one be dogmatic. When Congress has the will it has no difficulty in expressing it — when it has the will, that is, of defining what it desires to make the unit of prosecution and, more particularly, to make each stick in a faggot a single criminal unit. When Congress leaves to the Judiciary the task of imputing to Congress an undeclared will, the ambiguity should be resolved in favor of lenity. And this not out of any sentimental consideration, or for want of sympathy with the purpose of Congress in proscribing evil or antisocial conduct. It may fairly be said to be a presupposition of our law to resolve doubts in the enforcement of a penal code against the imposition of a harsher punishment. This in no wise implies that language used in criminal statutes should not be read with the saving grace of common sense with which other enactments, not cast in technical language, are to be read. Nor does it assume that offenders against the law carefully read the penal code before they embark on crime. It merely means that if Congress does not fix the punishment for a federal offense clearly and without ambiguity, doubt will be resolved against turning a single transaction into multiple offenses, when we have no more to go on than the present case furnishes.

Reversed.


The statute does not seem ambiguous to me. Congress made it clear enough for me to understand that it was trying to help the States as far as it could to stamp out the degradation and debauchery of women by punishing those who engaged in using them for prostitution. The only way Congress could do that was to make it unlawful to use the channels of commerce to transport them. The statute provides that,

"Whoever knowingly transports in interstate or foreign commerce . . . any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution . . . .

"Shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both." 36 Stat. 825, 18 U.S.C. § 2421.

To me the statute means that to transport one or more women or girls in commerce constitutes a separate offense as to each one. Congress had as its purpose the protection of the individual woman or girl from exploitation, and the transportation of each female was to be punished. It was not concerned with protection of the means of transportation. Surely it did not intend to make it easier if one transported females by the bus load. A construction of the statute that reaches that result does violence to its plain wording. That is what the District Court thought, that is what the Court of Appeals thought, and with that I agree, and would affirm.


Summaries of

Bell v. United States

U.S.
May 9, 1955
349 U.S. 81 (1955)

holding only one Mann Act charge could result from the single transport of two women

Summary of this case from United States v. Rentz

holding that transportation of two women on the same trip and in the same vehicle in violation of the Mann Act constituted a single offense

Summary of this case from U.S. v. Kerley

holding that if "Congress does not fix the punishment for a federal offense clearly and without ambiguity, doubt will be resolved against turning a single transaction into multiple offenses"

Summary of this case from United States v. Moye

holding that interstate transportation of two women on same trip in same vehicle constitutes single violation of Mann Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2421

Summary of this case from U.S. v. Weathers

holding that interstate transportation of two women on same trip in same vehicle constitutes single violation of Mann Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2421

Summary of this case from U.S. v. Clark

holding "if Congress does not fix the punishment for a federal offense clearly and without ambiguity, doubt will be resolved against turning a single transaction into multiple offenses"

Summary of this case from U.S. v. Kimbrough

holding that transportation of "two women on the same trip and in the same vehicle" constitutes a single violation of the Mann act

Summary of this case from Giso v. Ryan

holding that absent clear Congressional intent, a defendant charged with transporting two women in interstate commerce at the same time could be charged with only one violation of the Mann Act, which criminalized transporting any woman in interstate commerce "for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose"

Summary of this case from Powell v. Kelly

holding that the simultaneous transportation of two women across state lines constituted one, not two, violations of the Mann Act, which made it a crime to knowingly transport "any woman or girl" across state lines for immoral purposes; "any" left the unit of prosecution ambiguous, so the rule of lenity applied

Summary of this case from State v. Fourth Judicial Dist. Court

holding that transporting two women across state lines for immoral purposes in a single transaction constituted the same offense, i.e., one violation of the Mann Act, not two

Summary of this case from State v. Watkins

holding "ambiguity should be resolved in favor of lenity"

Summary of this case from Discipline of Haley

holding simultaneous transportation of two women constituted only one offense of statute prohibiting knowing transportation of "any woman or girl" for purpose of prostitution

Summary of this case from Commonwealth v. Constantino

holding that transporting two women in interstate commerce for an immoral purpose in violation of the Mann Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2421, was a single offense

Summary of this case from Heard v. U.S.

finding the unit of prosecution in the Mann Act to be ambiguous and thus applying the rule of lenity to hold only one violation of the Act could be charged

Summary of this case from United States v. Rentz

reversing conviction of two violations of the Mann Act based on transportation of two women across state lines in same trip in same vehicle

Summary of this case from United States v. Borello

reversing conviction for two violations of Mann Act based on transportation of two women across state lines in same trip in same vehicle

Summary of this case from United States v. Israelski

In Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81 (1955), the issue was similar: whether transporting two women, for the purpose of prostitution, in the same vehicle and on the same trip, constituted one or two violations of the Mann Act.

Summary of this case from Holloway v. United States

In Bell v. United States, supra, this Court considered a question wholly different from that considered in Ex parte Lange and its progeny: the proper units into which a statutory offense was to be divided.

Summary of this case from Whalen v. United States

In Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81 (1955), this Court held that in criminal cases "[w]hen Congress leaves to the Judiciary the task of imputing to Congress an undeclared will, the ambiguity should be resolved in favor of lenity."

Summary of this case from Iannelli v. United States

In Bell, the defendant pleaded guilty to an indictment under the Mann Act which charged him in two counts with transporting two women, respectively, for immoral purposes on one trip.

Summary of this case from Milanovich v. United States

In Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, we described the approach to be taken in a case such as this. "When Congress has the will it has no difficulty in expressing it.... When Congress leaves to the Judiciary the task of imputing to Congress an undeclared will, the ambiguity should be resolved in favor of lenity."

Summary of this case from Callanan v. United States

In Bell v. United States, supra, a case on all fours with the present case, the Court reached the question of statutory construction over objection in the Government's brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari that the question could not be raised on motion under § 2255.

Summary of this case from Ladner v. United States

In Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 75 S.Ct. 620, 99 L.Ed. 905 (1955), the illegal transport of “any woman or girl” under the Mann Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2421, was deemed sufficiently ambiguous such that lenity applied.

Summary of this case from United States v. Jackson

describing the “unit of prosecution” issue as a matter of statutory construction

Summary of this case from United States v. Rentz

observing that “[w]hen Congress has the will ... of defining what it desires to make the unit of prosecution,” it has no difficulty expressing it

Summary of this case from United States v. Chiaradio
Case details for

Bell v. United States

Case Details

Full title:BELL v . UNITED STATES

Court:U.S.

Date published: May 9, 1955

Citations

349 U.S. 81 (1955)
75 S. Ct. 620

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