Ex post facto law

“ They only prescribed remedies to be pursued in the administration of the law, making no change that could materially affect the rights of one accused of crime theretofore committed. The inhibition upon the passage of ex post facto laws does not give a criminal a right to be tried, in all respects, by the law in force when the crime charged was committed. ”

“ The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows. Its inhibition was levelled at the thing, not the name. It intended that the rights of the citizen should be secure against deprivation for past conduct by legislative enactment, under any form, however disguised. If the inhibition can be evaded by the form of the enactment, its insertion in the fundamental law was a vain and futile proceeding.
We proceed to consider the second clause of what Mr. Chief Justice Marshall terms a bill of rights for the people of each State-the clause which inhibits the passage of an ex post facto law. ”

“ The act imposes no punishment upon an alien who has previously procured a certificate of citizenship by fraud or other illegal conduct. It simply deprives him of his ill-gotten privileges. We do not question that an act of legislation having the effect to deprive a citizen of his right to vote because of something in his past conduct which was not an offense at the time it was committed would be void as an ex post facto law. ”

“ But it is now well settled that statutory changes in the mode of trial or the rules of evidence, which do not deprive the accused of a defense and which operate only in a limited and unsubstantial manner to his disadvantage, are not prohibited. A statute which, after indictment, enlarges the class of persons who may be witnesses at the trial, by removing the disqualification of persons convicted of felony, is not an ex post facto law. ”

“ It is only when its inhibited acts affect the rights of individuals, that the judicial power of the union can be interposed.
If a state legislature pass an ex post facto law, or a law impairing the obligation of contracts; it remains a harmless enactment on the statute book, until it is brought to bear, injuriously, on individual rights. So, if a state coin money or admit bills of credit, the question of right must be raised before this tribunal, in the same manner. ”

“ It is settled, by decisions of this Court so well known that their citation may be dispensed with, that any statute which punishes as a crime an act previously committed, which was innocent when done; which makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission, or which deprives one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed, is prohibited as ex post facto. ”

“ They are bound to receive the law from the court, and be governed thereby;' and, as in this instance, the trial judge read a charge to the jury which did not treat of murder in the second degree, a new law was thereby promulgated and enforced in violation of the constitution of the United States prohibiting the making or enforcing of any ex post facto law, and inhibiting any state from denying the equal protection of the laws ”

“ In doing so it reads due process as affording only minimal protection, and under this reading it will protect all future groups from destruction of their rights only if Congress 'manifests a patently arbitrary classification, utterly lacking in rational justification.' The Due Process Clause so defined provides little protection indeed compared with the specific safeguards of the Constitution such as its prohibitions against taking private property for a public use without just compensation, passing ex post facto laws, and imposing bills of attainder. ”

“ Conceivably an Act prescribing exile for prior innocent conduct does not violate the constitutional prohibition of ex post facto laws. Cf. American Communications Ass'n v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 412-415, 70 S.Ct. ”

“ Here the meaning annexed to the terms ex post facto laws, unquestionably refers to crimes, and nothing else. The historic page abundantly evinces, that the power of passing such laws should be withheld from legislators; as it is a dangerous instrument in the hands of bold, unprincipled, aspiring, and party men, and has been too often used to effect the most detestable purposes. ”

“ There is absolute prohibition against them when their purpose is punitive; they then being denominated ex post facto laws. It is the sense of the situation that that which impels prohibition in such case exacts clearness of declaration when burdens are imposed upon completed and remote transactions, or consequences given to them of which there could have been no foresight or contemplation when they were designed and consummated. ”

“ These are regulations which the legislature, in its wisdom, and for the public good, could legally prescribe in respect to executions occurring after the passage of the act, and cannot, even when applied to offenses previously committed, be regarded as ex post facto within the meaning of the constitution. ”

“ There is still a more unreasonable method than this, which is called making of laws ex post facto; when after an action is committed, the legislator then for the first time declares it to have been a crime, and inflicts a punishment upon the person who has committed it ”

“ To banish them from home, family, and adopted country is punishment of the most drastic kind whether done at the time when they were convicted or later. I think that this Court should reconsider the application of the ex post facto clause with a view to applying it in a way that more effectively protects individuals from new or additional burdens, penalties, or punishments retrospectively imposed by Congress. ”

“ T.'s guilt depended upon that, he too is innocent, and there was no violation because there was no violation! But any reasoning which makes a man both right and wrong, or the constitution not violated because it is violated, must be intelligible and acceptable to those who make two persons who come to “opposite conclusions upon the same case” both right, and only infer from the difference that some one else is wrong!
Who shall be impeached—who punished under this new doctrine? Resignation is not unconstitutional, but is made criminal by an ex post facto act. ”

“ At the same time, there was a parallel development in the field of ex post facto legislation. Chief Justice Marshall in Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch 87, 138-139, 3 L.Ed. 162, refused to construe the Ex Post Facto Clause narrowly and restrict it to criminal prosecutions. The Fletcher case held that property rights that had vested could not be displaced by legislative fiat. That liberal view persisted. ”

“ We adhere to it. Upon it is founded the argument of petitioners.
If the Fourteenth Amendment forbids unreasonable searches and seizures by the States, they contend, such a search and seizure by State police officers subjects its victims to the deprivation, under color of State law, of a right, privilege or immunity secured by the Constitution for which redress is afforded by R.S. § 1979. Appropriate redress, they urge, is a suit in equity to suppress the evidence in order to bar its further use in State criminal proceedings. ”

“ A broad line of demarkation separates from such cases as the present, in which the decrees require, by affirmative official action on the part of the defendants, the performance of an obligation which belongs to the state in its political capacity, those in which actions at law or suits in equity are maintained against defendants who, while claiming to act as officers of the state, violate and invade the personal and property rights of the plaintiffs, under color of authority, unconstitutional and void. ”

“ It is very true that bills of attainder have been passed against persons by some description, when their names were unknown. But in such cases the law leaves nothing to be done to render its operation effectual, but to identify those persons. Their guilt, its nature, and its punishment are fixed by the statute, and only their personal identity remains to be made out. ”

“ The third clause in the first section of the amendment declares that no State 'shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.' It will not be contended that this clause confers upon the citizen any right to serve as a juror in the State courts. It exists in the Constitution of nearly all the States, and is only an additional security against arbitrary deprivation of life and liberty, and arbitrary spoliation of property. ”

“ Thus, as assurance against ancient evils, our country, in order to preserve 'the blessings of liberty', wrote into its basic law the requirement, among others, that the forfeiture of the lives, liberties or property of people accused of crime can only follow if procedural safeguards of due process have been obeyed. ”

“ The genius, the nature, and the spirit of our state governments amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation, and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. The legislature may enjoin, permit, forbid, and punish; they may declare new crimes, and establish rules of conduct for all its citizens in future cases; they may command what is right and prohibit what is wrong, but they cannot change innocence into guilt, or punish innocence as a crime, or violate the rights of an antecedent lawful private contract, or the right of private property. ”

“ An ex parte affidavit, made by an absent and interested party, with the certificate of an absent judge that he believes it to be true, is to be received as conclusive, in the face of any amount of oral and documentary testimony to the contrary. "Can a man take fire into his bosom and not be burned?" Can a man aid [Pg 29] in executing such a law without defiling his own conscience? Yet does this profligate statute, with impious arrogance, command "all good citizens" to assist in enforcing it, when required so to do by an official slave-catcher! ”

“ An act of the legislature which has for its object the preservation of the public interests against the illegal depredations of private individuals ought to be sustained, unless it is plainly violative of the constitution of subversive of private rights. In this case there can be no doubt of the right of the legislature to authorize judicial proceedings to be taken for the condemnation of the nets in question, and their sale or destruction by process of law. ”

“ If a person shall, in violation of the act of Congress, knowingly and willingly obstruct, or hinder the claimant in seizing the fugitive, he cannot, when sued for the penalty of five hundred dollars prescribed by the act, set up as a defence ignorance of the law, or even an honest belief that the person claimed as a fugitive did not owe service to the claimant. Such matters are unfit for the inquiry of the jury. ”