Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/210

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GRIFFIN v. UNITED STATES Opinion of the Court

to advocate and teach the duty and necessity of overthrowing the Government of the United States by force and violence, and (2) to organize, as the Communist Party of the United States, a society of persons who so advocate and teach.” Id., at 300. The first of these objects (the “advocacy” charge) violated § 2(a)(1) of the Smith Act of 1940 (subsequently repealed and substantially reenacted as 18 U. S. C. § 2385), and the second of them (the “organizing” charge) violated § 2(a)(3). We found that the “organizing” object was insufficient in law, since the statutory term referred to initial formation, and the Communist Party had been “organized” in that sense at a time beyond the period of the applicable statute of limitations. 354 U. S., at 304–311. We then rejected the Government’s argument that the convictions could nonetheless stand on the basis of the “advocacy” object. Our analysis made no mention of the Due Process Clause but consisted in its entirety of the following: “In these circumstances we think the proper rule to be applied is that which requires a verdict to be set aside in cases where the verdict is supportable on one ground, but not on another, and it is impossible to tell which ground the jury selected. Stromberg v. California, 283 U. S. 359, 367–368; Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 291–292; Cramer v. United States, 325 U. S. 1, 36, n. 45.” Id., at 312. None of the three authorities cited for that expansive proposition in fact establishes it. The first of them, Stromberg v. California, 283 U. S. 359 (1931), is the fountainhead of decisions departing from the common law with respect to the point at issue here. That case, however—which does not explicitly invoke the Due Process Clause—does not sanction as broad a departure as the dictum in Yates expresses, or indeed even the somewhat narrower departure that the holding in Yates adopts. The defendant in Stromberg was