United States v. Morelli

55 F. Supp. 181, 1943 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1717
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedNovember 24, 1943
DocketNo. 22578
StatusPublished

This text of 55 F. Supp. 181 (United States v. Morelli) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Morelli, 55 F. Supp. 181, 1943 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1717 (N.D. Cal. 1943).

Opinion

ST. SURE, District Judge

(orally).

The Government sues .to cancel a certificate of naturalization issued to the defendant on the 21st day of June, 1938. The complaint is filed pursuant to section 338 of the Nationality Act of 1940, 8 U.S. C.A. § 738, and charges, briefly, that the certificate of naturalization was obtained through fraud. Defendant is an intelligent and educated woman, a native of Italy, who came to this country with her husband about 1906. She engaged in literary and educational work, devoting much of her time to the cultural enlightenment of American children born of Italian parents, and voluntary contribution of articles to newspapers devoted to the dissemination of Fascist propaganda.

Defendant was enthusiastic and tireless in her newspaper attacks upon Communism, England and France at the beginning of World War II; was an ardent isolationist so far as the United States was concerned, and consistently attacked the President of .the United States and his foreign policy. Articles from defendant’s trenchant pen were published as leaders in a newspaper called “II Grido Della Stirpe,” printed in New York in the Italian language. This newspaper was the organ of Fascist propaganda in the United States. It carried at its masthead a streamer announcing that fact.

There are in evidence more than twenty articles, beginning in 1937 and ending in 1940, whose authorship is admitted by defendant. These articles, according to their translations, are sensational in tone and bitterly critical of democracy, but all show an ardent love of Mussolini and Fascism, and an admiration of Hitler and Nazism, and a hatred of anything and everybody opposed.

In passing upon the question of whether the defendant was guilty of fraud when she took oath that she was “attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the order and happiness of the same,” and also when she solemnly swore, before receiving a certificate of citizenship, that she renounced all foreign allegiance, I shall depend in the main upon the undisputed written words of defendant, published and uttered immediately before and after the issuance to her of the certificate of naturalization on June 21, 1938.

Counsel for the defendant calls the court’s attention to the Schneiderman case (Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U.S. 118, 63 S.Ct. 1333, 87 L.Ed. 1796), decided by the Supreme Court on June 21, 1943. The facts in the Schneiderman case and the facts in the case now before the court are different. Each case must be decided upon its own facts and circumstances. In the Schneiderman case there was an entire absence of the claim of fraud, and as I understand it in that case the Government relied wholly upon a charge of illegal procurement of the certificate of citizenship.

In that case, on page 158 of 320 U.S., on page 1352 of 63 S.Ct. of the opinion, the Court says:

“We conclude that the Government has not carried its burden of proving by ‘clear, unequivocal, and convincing’ evidence which does not leave ‘the issue in doubt’, that petitioner obtained his citizenship illegally.”

And in his concurring opinion, Mr. Justice Douglas says in the concluding paragraph :

“We should adhere to the view that the judgment of naturalization is final and conclusive except for fraud.”

It also appears from that opinion that the general principles of law applicable to cases of this character were recognized, namely, that naturalization is a privilege which Congress may allow or disallow on such conditions as it may see fit to impose; that Congress did not intend by the act of naturalization and denaturalization to circumscribe liberty of political thought, but that to entitle a person to naturalization under the rules prescribed by Congress he must not only behave as one attached to the principles of the Constitution, but he must in fact be so attached at the time of naturalization. So I think it proper to say that we should first observe some of the guiding posts of the law relating to these matters.

[183]*183In United States v. Kramer, 5 Cir., 262 F. 395, 397, the court said:

“American citizenship is a priceless possession, and one who seeks it by naturalization must do so in entire good faith, without any mental reservation whatever, and with the complete intention of yielding his absolute loyalty and allegiance to the country of his adoption. If he does not, he is guilty of fraud in obtaining his certificate of citizenship.”

In the case of United States v. Krause, Cir., 136 F.2d 935, 938, the court said:

“The oath of allegiance and the renunciation of former allegiance must be made without mental reservation. If it appear subsequently that the maker fails in allegiance, fidelity or faith, it may be fairly presumed that he did not absolutely and entirely renounce his former allegiance, and this presumption is all the stronger when the period which has elapsed since the oath is longer. United States v. Kuhn, D.C., 49 Fed.Supp. 407. It is well settled that intent at the time of naturalization may be shown by subsequent acts and declarations.”

In Luria v. United States, 231 U.S. 9, 34 S.Ct. 10, 13, 58 L.Ed. 101, the court said, in speaking of the requirements for naturalization :

“These requirements plainly content plated that the applicant, if admitted, should be a citizen in fact as well as in name, — that he should assume and bear the obligations and duties of that status as well as enjoy its rights and privileges. In other words, it was contemplated that his admission should be mutually beneficial to the government and himself, the proof in respect of his established residence, moral character, and attachment to the principles of the Constitution being exacted because of what they promised for the future, rather than for what they told -of the past.”

With these legal admonishments in mind, I now turn to the writings of defendant.

Plaintiff’s Exhibit No. 2 is a translation of an article which appears in II Grido Della Stirpe on April 3, 1937. The .title of the article is, “Groping In .the Dark.” This is an article of considerable length, extolling Fascism and denouncing Communism. I will read several paragraphs of it:

“Full-fledged Communist organizations pullulate in the large cities, they move around, they work in the shadows, .they plot in the full light of day, they have tickets of recognition, secret signs, meetings in designated places where the Communistic word is law.

“And * * * nobody bothers them * * * .they have, instead, a police escort of honor. The illuded ones think that they have already taken possession of Spain — of being before long, the masters Of France and America.

“And they do not know, they do not want to understand, that as in Spain, .thus in France and the other countries like America, where they have the absolute freedom to prepare the destruction of it, Fascism, only Fascism, will be the salvation of the people. And even if there is every desire to suffocate the preparation of it here, a Holy Crusade in which the greater part of the American people are interested, will give the order in due time and place, ,to save the country from an irreparable catastrophe.

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Related

Luria v. United States
231 U.S. 9 (Supreme Court, 1913)
Schneiderman v. United States
320 U.S. 118 (Supreme Court, 1943)
United States Ex Rel. Harrington v. Schlotfeldt
136 F.2d 935 (Seventh Circuit, 1943)
United States v. Kramer
262 F. 395 (Fifth Circuit, 1919)

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Bluebook (online)
55 F. Supp. 181, 1943 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1717, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-morelli-cand-1943.