“ The fact that a prisoner is assaulted, injured, or even murdered by state officials does not necessarily mean that he is deprived of any right protected or secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States. ”

“ Since the majority of the Court do not share this conviction that the action of the Georgia peace officers was not perpetrated under color of law, we, too, must consider the constitutionality of § 20. All but two members of the Court apparently agree that in so far as § 20 purports to subject men to punishment for crime it fails to define what conduct is made criminal. As misuse of the criminal machinery is one of the most potent and familiar instruments of arbitrary government, proper regard for the rational requirement of definiteness in criminal statutes is basic to civil liberties. ”

“ He violates the statute not merely because he has a bad purpose but because he acts in defiance of announced rules of law. He who defies a decision interpreting the Constitution knows precisely what he is doing. If sane, he hardly may be heard to say that he knew not what he did. Of course, willful conduct cannot make definite that which is undefined. But willful violators of constitutional requirements, which have been defined, certainly are in no position to say that they had no adequate advance notice that they would be visited with punishment. ”

“ Hence those cases do not supply an authoritative guide to the problems under § 20 which seeks to afford protection against officers who possess authority to act and who exercise their powers in such a way as to deprive a person of rights secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States. It is one thing to deprive state courts of their authority to enforce their own laws. It is quite another to emasculate an Act of Congress designed to secure individuals their constitutional rights by finely spun distinctions concerning the precise scope of the authority of officers of the law. ”

“ Our attention here is directed solely to three state officials who, in the course of their official duties, have unjustifiably beaten and crushed the body of a human being, thereby depriving him of trial by jury and of life itself. The only pertinent inquiry is whether Section 20, by its reference to the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee that no state shall deprive any person of life without due process of law, gives fair warning of state officials that they are criminally liable for violating this right to life. ”

“ To strike from the statute the rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, but at the same time to leave within its coverage the vast area bounded by other constitutional provisions, would contradict both reason and history. No logic but one which nullifies the historic foundations of the Amendment and the section could support such an emasculation. There should be no judicial hack work cutting out some of the great rights the Amendment secures but leaving in others. ”

“ Therefore, to subject to criminal punishment conduct that the court may eventually find to have been within the scope or the limitations of a legal doctrine underlying a decision is to satisfy the vital requirement for definiteness through an appearance of definiteness in the process of constitutional adjudication which every student of law knows not to comport with actuality. What the Constitution requires is a definiteness defined by the legislature, not one argumentatively spelled out through the judicial process which, precisely because it is a process can not avoid incompleteness. ”

“ An analysis of the cases in which 'willfully' has been held to connote more than an act which is voluntary or intentional would not prove helpful as each turns on its own peculiar facts. Those cases, however, make clear that if we construe 'willfully' in § 20 as connoting a purpose to deprive a person of a specific constitutional right, we would introduce no innovation. The Court, indeed, has recognized that the requirement of a specific intent to do a prohibited act may avoid those consequences to the accused which may otherwise render a vague or indefinite statute invalid. ”

“ Since a State can act only through its officers, Congress provided for the prosecution of any officer who deprives others of their guaranteed rights and denied such an officer the right to defend by claiming the authority of the State for his action. In short, Congress said that no State can empower an officer to commit acts which the Constitution forbade the State from authorizing, whether such unauthorized command be given for the State by its legislative or judicial voice, or by a custom contradicting the written law. ”

“ Surely each is among the 'rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution', deprivation of which is a crime under § 20. In any event, what are the criteria by which to determine what express provisions of the Constitution are 'specific' and what provisions are not 'specific'? And if the terms of § 20 in and of themselves are lacking in sufficient definiteness for a criminal statute, restriction within the framework of 'decisions interpreting' the Constitution cannot show the necessary definiteness. ”

“ Three law enforcement officers of Georgia, a county sheriff, a special deputy and a city policeman, arrested a young Negro charged with a local crime, that of stealing a tire. While he was in their custody and handcuffed, they so severely beat the lad that he died. This brutal misconduct rendered these lawless law officers guilty of manslaughter, if not of murder, under Georgia law. Instead of leaving this misdeed to vindication by Georgia law, the United States deflected Georgia's responsibility by instituting a federal prosecution. But this was a criminal homicide only under Georgia law. ”

“ Section 19 strikes at conspiracies, Section 20 at substantive offenses. The former protects 'citizens,' that latter 'inhabitants.' There are, however, no differences in the basic rights guarded. Each protects in a different way the rights and privileges secured to individuals by the Constitution. If one falls for vagueness in pointing to these, the other also must fall for the same reason. If one stands, so must both. It is not one statute therefore which we sustain or nullify. ”

“ It is as novel as it is an inadmissible principle that a criminal statute of indefinite scope can be rendered definite by requiring that a person 'willfully' commit what Congress has not defined but which, if Congress had defined, could constitutionally be outlawed. Of course Congress can prohibit the deprivation of enumerated constitutional rights. ”

“ When, as here, a state official abuses his place consciously or grossly in abnegation of its rightful obligation, and thereby tramples underfoot the established constitutional rights of men or citizens, his conviction should stand when he has had the fair trial and full defense the petitioners have been given in this case. ”

“ When a criminal statute prohibits something from being 'willfully' done, 'willfully' never defines the physical conduct or the result the bringing of which to pass is proscribed. 'Willfully' merely adds a certain state of mind as a prerequisite to criminal responsibility for the otherwise proscribed act. ”

“ One lies in the character of the criminal act and the intent which must be proved. A strong case must be made to show abuse of official function, and therefore to secure indictment or conviction. Trial must be 'by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.' Const., Amend. VI; cf. Art. III, § 2. For all practical purposes this means within the state of which the accused is an officer. Citizens of the state have not been, and will not be, ready to indict or convict their local officers on groundless charges or in doubtful cases. ”

“ In the absence of clear direction by Congress we should leave to the States the enforcement of their criminal law, and not relieve States of the responsibility for vindicating wrongdoing that is essentially local or weaken the habits of local law enforcement by tempting reliance on federal authority for an occasional unpleasant task of local enforcement. ”

“ When due account is taken of the considerations that have heretofore controlled the political and legal relations between the States and the National Government, there is not the slightest warrant in the reason of things for torturing language plainly designed for nullifying a claim of acting under a State law that conflicts with the Constitution so as to apply to situations where State law is in conformity with the Constitution and local misconduct is in undisputed violation of that State law. ”

“ In the instant case the decisions of the courts are, to be sure, a source of reference for ascertaining the specific content of the concept of due process. But even so the Act would incorporate by reference a large body of changing and uncertain law. That law is not always reducible to specific rules, is expressible only in general terms, and turns many times on the facts of a particular case. Accordingly, it is argued that such a body of legal principles lacks the basic specificity necessary for criminal statutes under our system of government. ”

“ The significant question, rather, is whether law enforcement officers and those entrusted with authority shall be allowed to violate with impunity the clear constitutional rights of the inarticulate and the friendless. Too often unpopular minorities, such as Negroes, are unable to find effective refuge from the cruelties of bigoted and ruthless authority. ”

“ It is too late now, if there were better reason than exists for doing so, to question that in these matters abuse binds the state and is its act, when done by one to whom it has given power to make the abuse effective to achieve the forbidden ends. ”

“ It could hardly be doubted that they who 'under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom' act with that evil motive violate § 20. Those who decide to take the law into their own hands and act as prosecutor, jury, judge, and executioner plainly act to deprive a prisoner of the trial which due process of law guarantees him. ”

“ It is axiomatic, of course, that a criminal statute must give a clear and unmistakable war ing as to the acts which will subject one to criminal punishment. And courts are without power to supply that which Congress has left vague. ”

“ Justice Brandeis also brought to its support § 6314 of Revised Codes of Idaho which provided that 'In every crime or public offense there must exist a union, or joint operation, of act and intent, or criminal negligence.' But this is merely an Idaho phrasing of the conventional saw in text-books and decisions dealing with criminal law that there must be a mens rea for every offense. In other words, a guilty state of mind is usually required before one can be punished for an outlawed act. ”

“ The instances where 'an act denounced as a crime by both national and state sovereignties' may be punished by each without violation of the double jeopardy provision of the Fifth Amendment are common. ”

“ It is reflected also in the idea that the statute can protect the victim in his many procedural rights encompassed in the right to a fair trial before condemnation, but cannot protect him in the right which comprehends all others, the right to life itself. ”

“ But such a 'policy of strict self-limitation' is not accompanied by assurance of permanent tenure and immortality of those who make it the policy. Evil men are rarely given power; they take it over from better men to whom it had been entrusted. ”

“ The story would be too long, to trace in more than outline the history of Section 20 and companion provisions, in particular Section 19, [24] with which it must be considered on any suggestion of fatal ambiguity. But this history cannot be ignored, unless we would risk throwing overboard what the nation's greatest internal conflict created and eight decades have confirmed, in protection of individual rights against impairment by the states.
Sections 19 and 20 are twin sections in all respects that concern any question of vagueness in defining the crimes. There are important differences. ”

“ The case comes here established in fact as a gross abuse of authority by state officers. Entrusted with the state's power and using it, without a warrant or with one of only doubtful legality [13] they invaded a citizen's home, arrested him for alleged theft of a tire, forcibly took him in handcuffs to the courthouse yard, and there beat him to death. Previously they had threatened to kill him, fortified themselves at a near-by bar, and resisted the bartender's importunities not to carry out the arrest. ”