Byron White

“ But in the case of § 241 (a) (4) aliens, those convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude, Congress did not make its own judgment final in every case. Although the alien might have been convicted of two such crimes and therefore would have fallen within the § 241 (a) (4) category, the sentencing judge was given the power to order that the alien not be deported. The Court's view is that deportability in every case must depend upon the opportunity to exercise the power given in § 241 (b) , as well as upon its actual exercise to forbid deportation. ”

“ Under this section petitioner was not a citizen in 1954 because he did not become a citizen in 1924. It is therefore useless to talk about whether § 241 (a) (4) makes an exception for aliens who were citizens when convicted because § 340 makes clear that in Congress' view they were always aliens. The distinction which the Court reads into § 241 is a distinction which § 340 declares nonexistent.
The Court takes the position that the relation-back provision of § 340 (a) was intended to deal only with problems of derivative citizenship, having nothing to do with deportability. ”

“ I think Costello's is another case in which Congress could not have intended the unavailability of § 241 (b) procedures to bar deportation. Under the Court's view no denaturalized alien can be deported for the commission of two or more crimes while a citizen. ”

“ Petitioner, born in Italy, entered the United States as an alien in 1895, and in 1925 became a naturalized citizen of this country. In 1954 he was convicted on two separate counts of having attempted to defeat and evade the payment of income taxes by filing false and fraudulent returns for the years 1948 and 1949. The convictions were affirmed by this Court. Costello v. United States, 350 U.S. 359, 76 S.Ct. 406, 100 L.Ed. 397. In 1959 his certificate of naturalization was canceled on the ground that it had been procured by willful misrepresentation, and this judgment was also affirmed. ”

“ The function of the dual conviction standard being to identify those individuals who are presumed to possess lawless propensities and who are therefore undesirable, the circumstance o nominal citizenship status at the time of conviction is beside the point. ”

“ And even more speculative than the question of what the petitioner might have done had conditions been different is whether the Government, with denaturalization proceedings pending against Frank Costello, woul have agreed to a nolle prosequi which would foreclose the possibility of later deportation proceedings.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105) . ”

“ The foregoing interpretation of § 241 (a) (4) is fortified by an examination of the background against which it was enacted. The same issue that is presented by the instant case was resolved by this Court in 1950, a little over two years before the final passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, in United States ex rel. ”