Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/211

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

53

Opinion of the Court

charged in one count of violating a California statute prohibiting the display of a red flag in a public place for any one of three purposes: (a) as a symbol of opposition to organized government; (b) as an invitation to anarchistic action; or (c) as an aid to seditious propaganda. Id., at 361. The jury was instructed that it could convict if it found the defendant guilty of violating any one purpose of the statute. Id., at 363–364. A conviction in the form of a general verdict followed. The California appellate court upheld the conviction on the ground that, even though it doubted the constitutionality of criminalizing the first of the three purposes, the statute (and conviction) could be saved if that provision was severed from the statute. We rejected that: “As there were three purposes set forth in the statute, and the jury were instructed that their verdict might be given with respect to any one of them, independently considered, it is impossible to say under which clause of the statute the conviction was obtained. If any one of these clauses, which the state court has held to be separable, was invalid, it cannot be determined upon this record that the appellant was not convicted under that clause. . . . It follows that instead of its being permissible to hold, with the state court, that the verdict could be sustained if any one of the clauses of the statute were found to be valid, the necessary conclusion from the manner in which the case was sent to the jury is that, if any of the clauses in question is invalid under the Federal Constitution, the conviction cannot be upheld.” Id., at 368. This language, and the holding of Stromberg, do not necessarily stand for anything more than the principle that, where a provision of the Constitution forbids conviction on a particular ground, the constitutional guarantee is violated by a general verdict that may have rested on that ground.