Robinson v. United States

Delivered the opinion of the Court.

The petitioner was indicted and convicted in a District Court for violating the Federal Kidnapping Act, 47 Stat. 326, 48 Stat. 781, by transporting in interstate commerce a person whom he had kidnapped and held for a reward. The jury recommended and the court imposed the death penalty. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, 144 F. 2d 392. We granted certiorari limited to the sole question of the court’s statutory authority to impose the death sentence.

The Act authorizes the death sentence when recommended by a jury “provided that the sentence of death shall not be imposed by the court if, prior to its imposition, the kidnapped person has been liberated unharmed.” The indictment charged, and there was evidence before the jury, to the effect that the kidnapping victim yielded to capture only after the petitioner had twice violently struck her on the head with an iron bar; that while held in custody her lips were abrased and made swollen by repeated applications of tape on her mouth; and that wounds resulting from these assaults were not healed when she was liberated after six days’ captivity. No evidence was introduced, nor did the indictment charge, that the injuries inflicted were permanent, or that the victim still suffered from them when the petitioner was sentenced, nine years after commission of the offense. The trial court charged the jury that in determining whether the victim had been “liberated unharmed” they were limited to a consideration of her condition at the time she was liberated, and that they were not authorized to recommend the death penalty if at the time of her liberation she had recovered from her injuries. Petitioner took no exception to the charge, and asked no other. Its correctness is before us only to the extent that we are asked to say that the injuries inflicted must be permanent or they must be in existence at the time of sentence in order to authorize the infliction of the death sentence.

The scant legislative history of the Act is of little assistance to us in interpreting this proviso. Two possible reasons suggest themselves, however, as to the motivation of Congress in making the severity of a kidnapper’s punishment depend upon whether his victim has been injured. The first reason is the old belief that the severity of the injury should measure the rigor of the punishment. If this be the reasoning implicit in the statute, it would appear that Congress intended that for a kidnapper to obtain the benefit of the proviso he must both liberate and refrain from injuring his victim. Congress may equally have intended this provision as a deterrent, on the theory that kidnappers would be less likely to inflict violence upon their victims if they knew that such abstention would save them from the death penalty. This assumption finds some slight support in the legislative history, is not contested by the government, has been accepted in one case and is the chief prop for the interpretation which the petitioner urges. He argues upon this assumption that the wider the scope of the exemption from the death penalty, the greater the inducement for the kidnapper to release the victim. To magnify the inducement, we are asked to interpret the proviso as granting immunity from the death sentence to any kidnapper who does not permanently injure his victim. We cannot expand the meaning of the statute on such a hypothesis and we turn to its language.

We accept the word “unharmed” appearing in the proviso as meaning uninjured. Neither the word “permanent” nor any other word susceptible of that meaning was used by Congress. The quality of the injury to which Congress referred is not defined. It may be possible that some types of injury would be of such trifling nature as to be excluded from the category of injuries which Congress had in mind. We need indulge in no speculation in regard to such a category. The injuries inflicted upon this victim were of such degree that they can not be read out of the Act’s scope without contracting it to the point where almost all injuries would be excluded. We find no justification whatever for grafting the word “permanent” onto the language which Congress adopted.

Nor can we construe the proviso as precluding the death sentence where the kidnapped person’s injuries have been healed at the time sentence is imposed. It is not to be assumed that Congress intended a matter of such grave consequence to defendants and the public to turn on the fortuitous circumstance of the length of time that a case is pending in the courts. Ear too many contingencies are involved, for example, the time it takes to apprehend a criminal, the condition of the trial docket, and the uncertainties of appeals. We would long hesitate before interpreting the Act so as to make the severity of sentence turn upon the date sentence is ultimately imposed, even if the language of the Act more readily lent itself to such a construction than this one does. At the very least, the proviso’s language must mean that the kidnapped person shall not be suffering from injuries when liberated; the kidnapped person here was still suffering from her injuries when liberated.

Nevertheless it is argued that the death penalty proviso should be held invalid on the ground that there is uncertainty as to the precise meaning and scope of the word “unharmed” and the phrase “liberated unharmed.” In most English words and phrases there lurk uncertainties. The language Congress used in this Act presents no exception to this general truth. One thing about this Act is not uncertain, and that is the clear purpose of Congress to authorize juries to recommend and judges to inflict the death penalty, under certain circumstances, for kidnappers who harmed their victims. And we cannot doubt that a kidnapper who violently struck the head of his victim with an iron bar, as evidence showed that this petitioner did, comes within the group Congress had in mind. This purpose to authorize a death penalty is clear even though Congress did not unmistakably mark some boundary between a pin prick and a permanently mutilated body. It is for Congress and not for us to decide whether it is wise public policy to inflict the death penalty at all. We do not know what provision of law, Constitutional or statutory, gives us power wholly to nullify the clearly expressed purpose of Congress to authorize the death penalty because of a doubt as to the precise congressional purpose in regard to hypothetical cases that may never arise.

The trial court committed no error of which this petitioner can complain.

Affirmed.

Petitioner pleaded guilty to the offense in 1936. In August, 1943, a district court held his plea of guilty invalid on the ground that he had been denied counsel. This appeal is from a trial which took place in October, 1943. See Robinson v. Johnston, 118 F. 2d 998; 316 U. S. 649; 130 F. 2d 202; 50 F. Supp. 774.

When the original kidnapping bill was passed by the Senate it did not provide for a death penalty. The House Committee on the Judiciary reported it to the floor with an amendment which authorized a death penalty unless the jury recommended mercy. 75 Cong. Rec., Part 12, 13294. Considerable opposition to the death sentence developed in the ensuing debate. Ib. pp. 13282-13304. Some of the opposition rested on the argument that the death penalty would cause kidnappers to kill their victims rather than release them because of fear that a liberated victim could send a kidnapper to the electric chair, lb. pp. 13285, 13304. The bill as passed did not authorize the death penalty, 47 Stat. 326. Two years later an amendment was passed containing the present proviso. 48 Stat. 781. Its legislative history throws no additional light on its purpose.

United States v. Parker, 19 F. Supp. 450, 103 F. 2d 857.