Quinones v. United States

161 F.2d 79, 1947 U.S. App. LEXIS 2732
CourtCourt of Appeals for the First Circuit
DecidedMarch 18, 1947
DocketNo. 4208
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 161 F.2d 79 (Quinones v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the First Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Quinones v. United States, 161 F.2d 79, 1947 U.S. App. LEXIS 2732 (1st Cir. 1947).

Opinion

WOODBURY, Circuit Judge.

The appellant was tried by jury, convicted, and sentenced to consecutive terms of imprisonment on two counts of an indictment drawn under § 2(e) of the Federal Firearms Act, 52 Stat. 1251, 15 U.S.C.A. § 902(e), charging him respectively with transporting a firearm and ammunition within the Territory of Puerto Rico at a time (May 15, 1943) when he was under indictment in an Insular Court for a crime of violence, to wit, murder in the first degree. There are three principal grounds for this appeal. These are (1) that the appellant’s alleged transportation of a firearm and ammunition was not within the prohibition of the Federal Firearms Act for the reason that at the time thereof the appellant was not “under indictment’’ for the crime of violence alleged but had merely been charged with the commission of that crime by information filed in an Insular Court in accordance with Puerto Rican procedure; (2) that the petit jury selected to try the appellant was not legally constituted in that wage' earners, negroes and women had been systematically and intentionally excluded from the panel from which it was drawn; and (3) that the district court gave the jury erroneous instructions as to the meaning of the words “to * * * transport’’ as used in § 2(e) of the Act. We shall consider these contentions in the order enumerated.

The provisions of the Federal Firearms Act pertinent here are expressly made applicable to three categories of persons only. These are (1) persons who are “under indictment” for a crime of violence, as such crimes are defined; (2) persons who have been convicted of such a crime, and (3) fugitives from justice. There is nothing to indicate that the appellant belongs in either the second or third category. The question is whether he falls into the first. He says that he does not for the reason that “under indictment” as used in the Act must be construed to mean under a charge preferred by a grand jury and therefore the Act cannot be applied to him since he was only under a charge laid in an information filed by a prosecuting attorney. We do not agree.

The word “indictment” has two well' recognized meanings. It is used in a broad general sense to indicate a charge of an offense by some undefined legal proceeding, and it is used in a narrow technical sense to indicate a written accusation of an offense presented in due form of law by a grand jury. Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition 1941; Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, Rawle’s Third Revision; Grin v. Shine, 187 U.S. 181, 192, 23 S.Ct. 98, 47 L.Ed. 130. The question is which of these meanings Congress intended the word to have in the Federal Firearms Act. We think Congress must have intended to use the word therein in its general rather than in its technical sense.

It is obvious as already pointed out that 'Congress did not intend' the Act to apply indiscriminately to everyone. It saw fit to impose its prohibitions upon the receipt and transportation of firearms and ammunition only on persons who might logically be presumed because of their past conduct to have a predilection for the use [81]*81of arms and ammunition in the pursuit of a criminal career. And it saw fit to classify in this group, in addition to fugitives from justice, not only those who had actually been convicted of a crime of violence but also those, at least a certain class of those, who had legally been charged with having committed such a crime. With the object in mind of grouping the legally suspect and the proven guilty together in a class of potentially dangerous persons it seems hardly likely that Congress intended to differentiate between those legally suspect because under indictment by a grand jury and those legally suspect because an information had been filed against them by a prosecuting attorney. Instead it seems much more reasonable to assume that Congress intended to make inclusion in the interdicted class depend upon whether a charge of a crime of violence had formally been made rather than upon the precise method or technique by which such a charge when made comes before a court for trial.

Furthermore, the Act can never achieve its full scope in Puerto Rico, to which territory it clearly applies (Cases v. United States, 1 Cir., 131 F.2d 916, 923, certiorari denied sub nom Velazquez v. United States, 319 U.S. 770, 63 S.Ct. 1431, 87 L.Ed. 1718) unless the word “indictment” therein is construed to include an information, for the reason that grand juries have no place in Puerto Rican procedure, all charges of crime in the Insular Courts being by information filed by a prosecuting attorney only. Code of Criminal Procedure of Puerto Rico 1935 § 67. Hence if the technical^ meaning of “indictment” is adopted the Act can only apply in Puerto Rico to fugitives from justice and to persons who have actually been convicted of a crime of violence; it can never apply to persons legally charged with having committed such a crime. It seems hardly reasonable to suppose that Congress in the same breath exercised all the powers it had to control the receipt and transportation of firearms and ammunition in Puerto Rico (Cases v. United States, supra) and exempted in Puerto Rico one of the categories of the general class of persons to whom it obviously intended its Act to apply.

These considerations lead us to the conclusion that Congress must have intended the word “indictment” in the Federal Firearms Act to be construed as it was in Grin v. Shine, supra [187 U.S. 181, 23 S.Ct. 102], that is, “in the general sense of charged or accused by legal proceedings, and not in the technical sense of an indictment as here understood”, i. e. in its sense “peculiar to Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence.”

The appellant’s contention that wage earners and negroes are “deliberately and systematically” excluded from the jury lists used in the District Court of the United States for Puerto Rico is not supported by any evidence in the record. On the contrary the evidence therein definitely indicates that no color line is drawn in selecting federal jurors in Puerto Rico, and that although few wage earners are selected for federal jury service, the reason is that few in that class have sufficient knowledge of the English language to meet the statutory requirement for such service. See 48 U.S.C.A. § 867. This lack of evidence is obviously fatal to the appellant’s charge that wage earners and negroes are studiously excluded from federal juries in Puerto Rico. Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 87, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L.Ed. 680.

It does appear, however, in fact it is conceded, that women are and always have been deliberately, purposefully and systematically omitted from the jury lists used in the court below. The question of the legality of this practice therefore arises.

In spite of the comment in Ballard v. United States, 329 U.S. 187, 67 S.Ct.

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Bluebook (online)
161 F.2d 79, 1947 U.S. App. LEXIS 2732, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/quinones-v-united-states-ca1-1947.