Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/207

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 46 (1991)

49

Opinion of the Court

Process Clause and also the various case precedents relied upon by petitioner. II The rule of criminal procedure applied by the Seventh Circuit here is not an innovation. It was settled law in England before the Declaration of Independence, and in this country long afterwards, that a general jury verdict was valid so long as it was legally supportable on one of the submitted grounds—even though that gave no assurance that a valid ground, rather than an invalid one, was actually the basis for the jury’s action. As Wharton wrote in 1889: “For years it was the prevailing practice in England and this country, where there was a general verdict of guilty on an indictment containing several counts, some bad and some good, to pass judgment on the counts that were good, on the presumption that it was to them that the verdict of the jury attached, and upon the withdrawal by the prosecution of the bad counts. . . . [I]n the United States, with but few exceptions, the courts have united in sustaining general judgments on an indictment in which there are several counts stating cognate offences, irrespective of the question whether one of these counts is bad.” F. Wharton, Criminal Pleading and Practice § 771, pp. 533–536 (9th ed. 1889) (footnotes omitted). And as this Court has observed: “In criminal cases, the general rule, as stated by Lord Mansfield before the Declaration of Independence, is ‘that if there is any one count to support the verdict, it shall stand good, notwithstanding all the rest are bad.’ And it is settled law in this court, and in this country generally, that in any criminal case a general verdict and judgment on an indictment or information containing several counts cannot be reversed on error, if any one of the counts is good and warrants the judgment, because,