Term Paper on "Yates v. United States"

Term Paper 6 pages (2153 words) Sources: 6 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Yates v United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957)

Yates v. United States was a landmark case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1957, which involved the First Amendment issue of freedom of speech and the interpretation and the limits of the Smith Act of 1940 under which the petitioners were indicted by a Federal District Court for conspiring to overthrow the government. The case marked a liberal turn in U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of the Smith Act, and it became increasingly difficult thereafter for the U.S. government to convict people on sedition or treason charges.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, introduced as part of the Bill of Rights during the first session of Congress in 1789, guarantees the freedom of speech and freedom of press by declaring that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Early Freedom of Expression Cases: For more than a hundred years after the ratification of the 1st Amendment, the Supreme Court did not take up any case about free speech and free press. After World War I, however, the Court heard a number of cases arising from enforcement of wartime laws to limit freedom of expression that threatened national security. In Schenck v. United States (1919) for example the Court upheld the Espionage Act passed by the Congress in 1917 by ruling that in times of war the government may place reasonable limits on freedom of speech. In its judgment, the Court employed what came to be known as "clear and present danger" standard and allowed restrictions on freedom of speed when such danger existed. Similarly, in Abrams v. United States (1919), the Court employed the "bad tendency" test in permitting government prohibition of speech that had a tendency to encourage or cause lawless behavior ("Adoption and Common Law Background" -- Find Law).

The Smith Act: A 'Red Scare' emerged in the U.S. before the beginning of the World War II due to anxiety about the spread of Communism. It led to enactment of the Alien Registration Act of 1940, more commonly known as the Smith Act. It was the first statute since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to make mere advocacy of ideas a federal crime in the U.S. And the act's conspiracy provisions imposed criminal penalties on anyone who "advocates, abets, advises, or teaches" the violent overthrow of the federal government, publishes subversive literature, organizes a subversive group, joins such a group, or conspires to commit any of these offenses ("Yates v United States" -- Further Readings).

The Smith Act was rarely used during the war, but after the war, J. Edward Hoover, the virulently anti-Communist FBI chief suggested to President Truman that the Smith Act be used against the domestic Communists and their sympathizers. Truman readily agreed as he was anxious to rebut the Republican rivals' charge that the Democrats were "soft" on Communism (Smith, "About the Smith Act Trials"). It led to the trial and conviction of 12 leading members of the Communist Party' Central Committee in which the defendants were accused of "conspiring to organize the Communist Party and to willfully advocating the principles of Marxism-Leninism" which the government alleged was the same as conspiring to "overthrow and destroy the government of the United States by force and violence" at some unspecified future time. The convicted appealed to Supreme Court in Dennis v. United States (1951) but the Court upheld 11 of the convictions and validated the Smith Act itself. In Dennis, the Court found that leaders of the Communist Party posed a "grave and probable danger" to the government and that their words and deeds were therefore not protected by the 1st Amendment. The U.S. Department of Justice used Dennis to prosecute a number of Communists all around the country and the convictions continued until 1957 when two crucial Supreme Court decisions inYates v United States and Watkins v. United States took the teeth out of the Smith Act and put a virtual stop to such prosecutions.

Facts of the Case

The 14 petitioners in the case (leaders of the Communist Party in California), were indicted in 1951 in a Federal District Court under the Smith Act and U.S. Code, Title 18 (Crimes and Criminal Procedure) 371 for conspiring to:

1) Advocate and teach the necessity of overthrowing the Government of the United States by force and violence, and 2) to organize a society of persons (i.e., Communist Party of the United States) that advocates the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence, and as speedily as circumstances would permit. ("Syllabus" -- Yates v United States; "U.S. Code, Title I, 371")

According to the charges against the accused in the Federal Trial Court, the alleged conspiracy originated in 1940 and was still continuing as of the date of the indictment in 1951. The charges further alleged that as part of the conspiracy, the petitioners and their co-conspirators became members and leaders of the Communist Party, with the full knowledge of its unlawful purposes, and continued to carry out its illegal policies and activities. That such activity included writing and publishing of articles for advocating illegal activities; indoctrinating Party members in such views; and recruiting of new Party members, particularly from among persons employed in the key industries of the Nation. Twenty three overt acts in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy were cited against the defendants ("Syllabus" -- Yates v United States).

The accused were convicted in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California after a jury trial, and each petitioner was sentenced to five years imprisonment and a fine of $10,000. On appeal, their convictions were sustained by the Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court accepted the petitioners' appeal against the lower courts' decisions to consider certain questions arising under the Smith Act which had not been dealt with previously by the Court, and to review the convictions of the petitioners for conspiracy to violate that Smith Act ("Opinion of the Court" -- Yates v United States)

The Supreme Court Ruling

The Court reversed the convictions, directing the District Court to acquit five of the petitioners and to grant a new trial as to the others, and gave the following reasons for its decision:

The Communist Party was formed in 1945, while the indictment was not returned until 1951; hence the three-year statute of limitations had run on the "organizing" charge, and that part of the indictment should have been withdrawn from the jury's consideration. Further, since criminal statutes are to be construed strictly, the word "organize," as used in the Smith Act is construed as referring only to acts entering into the creation of a new organization, and not to acts thereafter performed in carrying on its activities.

The Smith Act does not prohibit the advocacy of forcible overthrow of the Government just as an abstract principle; it only prohibits active instigation for action to that end.

The evidence against five of the petitioners is so clearly insufficient that their acquittal should be ordered, but the others deserve a retrial rather than complete acquittal.

Determinations favorable to petitioner Schneiderman in Schneiderman v. United States, are not conclusive enough under the doctrine of collateral estoppel, and he is not entitled to a judgment of acquittal on that ground. ("Syllabus" -- Yates v United States)

Effect & Aftermath of the Yates Judgment

The major effect of the holding in Yates v United States was the clear signal to the government as well as the lower Courts that the Supreme Court now assigned a much greater importance to the upholding of the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of expression.

The Supreme Court's upholding of the conviction of 11 leaders of the Communist Party in Dennis v. United States (1951) for subversion, had been interpreted by the lower courts as a declaration that even teaching and advocacy of overthrow of the government by force was a criminal offense punishable by the provisions of the Smith Act. By making a clear distinction between mere advocacy of overthrow as an abstract doctrine and the call for active and immediate action to achieve the end, the Yates Court clarified that the Dennis decision was for the latter. It is noteworthy that Yates (1957) neither overruled Dennis nor held the Smith Act unconstitutional but no further prosecution of members of the U.S. Communist Party, their sympathisers or suspected Communists took place after 1957.

One reason for this was no doubt that Yates greatly curtailed the federal government's ability to prosecute subversives since most of the previous convictions were for the mere advocacy of 'subversive' doctrines such as Communism. The second reason was that Yates reflected the change in the public mood towards the Communists in the late 1950s and the changing liberal ideology of the Warren Supreme Court. Even the Dennis decision was marked by the ringing dissent of Justice Hugo Black who called the indictment of the accused as "a virulent form of prior censorship of speech… READ MORE

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