Reina v. United States/Dissent Black

Mr. Justice BLACK, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE concurs, dissenting.

The Court affirms a conviction for contempt of court upon which petitioner has been sentenced to imprisonment for two years with the provision that he can purge himself of the contempt if he answers the questions propounded to him within 60 days. This is a strange kind of sentence, apparently combining in one judgment the elements of both civil and criminal contempt. This fact alone is sufficient to arouse grave doubts in my mind as to the validity of the judgment, since civil and criminal contempt procedures are quite different and call for the exercise of quite different judicial powers. Moreover, analysis of this judgment makes it clear that it rests upon the notion that petitioner has as yet committed no crime and is being sentenced for civil contempt for the sole purpose of coercing his compliance with the demand for his testimony, but that if he fails to comply with this demand within the specified period, he will have committed a criminal contempt. Thus the judgment seems to represent a present adjudication of guilt for a crime to be committed in the future. The fact that the judgment has not been challenged on this specific ground by petitioner does not, in my view, bar our consideration of it. Ordinarily, a judgment invalid on its face can be challenged at any time. I find it unnecessary, however, to reach a definite conclusion on this question because, even assuming that the judgment is not invalid as a result of its hybrid nature, I still think it should be reversed.

Petitioner contends that the decision of the Court of Appeals should be reversed because the two-year sentence is excessive. That contention is sufficient to bring into issue any ground upon which the length of the sentence may open the decision to attack. Cf. Boynton v. Com. of Virginia, 364 U.S. 454, 457, 81 S.Ct. 182, 184, 5 L.Ed.2d 206. I think the imposition of a two-year sentence was beyond the District Court's power in the summary proceedings it conducted in this case. In my dissenting opinion in Green v. United States, 356 U.S. 165, 193, 78 S.Ct. 632, 648, 2 L.Ed.2d 672, I stated in full the reasons which led me to conclude that where the object of a proceeding is to impose punishment rather than merely to coerce compliance, 'there is no justification in history, in necessity, or most important in the Constitution for trying those charged with violating a court's decree in a manner wholly different from those accused of disobeying any other mandate of the state.' Id., 356 U.S. at page 218, 78 S.Ct. at page 661. I adhere to that view and reiterate my belief that the Court's position rests solely upon the fact that 'judges and lawyers have told each other the contrary so often that they have come to accept it as the gospel truth.' Id., 356 U.S. at page 219, 78 S.Ct. at page 661. Thus, I cannot join a decision upholding a two-year sentence for contempt upon a trial in which the accused has been denied the constitutional protections of indictment by a grand jury and determination of guilt by a petit jury. I regard this case as another ominous step in the incredible transformation and growth of the contempt power and in the consequent erosion of constitutional safeguards to the protection of liberty. I see no reason why petitioner should not have been tried in accordance with the law of the land-including the Bill of Rights-and conclude, therefore, that the case should be reversed for such a trial.