UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Bernhard DEUTCH, Appellee

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit1956-07-26No. No. 13060

235 F.2d 853

Summary · law.co

Holding. The indictment charging that Deutch unlawfully refused to answer Congressional questions is sufficient without explicitly using the word 'willfully,' because the word 'refused' itself denotes an intentional act, and the preceding word 'unlawfully' reinforces that statutory violation. The dismissal is reversed.

Deutch was indicted for unlawfully refusing to answer questions posed by a Congressional committee. The trial court dismissed the indictment on the ground that it failed to allege the defendant acted willfully, which the court believed was required following a recent Supreme Court decision. The appellate court reversed, holding that the word 'refused' in the indictment adequately conveys the intentional and deliberate character of the conduct. Because refusing to answer questions is inherently a positive, conscious act—unlike merely failing to appear, which could result from confusion or accident—Congress did not need to include 'willfully' in the statutory language addressing refusals. The word 'unlawfully' preceding 'refused' further reinforces that the refusal violated the statute.

Summary generated by law.co from the public-domain opinion. The opinion text itself is public domain.

Key issues

Whether an indictment under the Congressional contempt statute must expressly allege willfulness
Whether the word 'refused' adequately conveys the intent element required by statute
Distinction between 'willfully' applied to failure to appear versus refusal to answer

Procedural posture

The trial court dismissed the indictment as insufficient, and the Government appealed.

Authorities cited

No cited authorities resolved to law.co cases yet.

Opinion · public domain

majority opinion

PER CURIAM.

An indictment charged that Deutch “unlawfully refused to answer” five specific questions put to him by a Committee of Congress.

The District Court dismissed the indictment as insufficient because it did not charge that the defendant willfully refused. The trial court concluded that since the recent decision in Quinn v. United States, 1955, 349 U.S. 155, 75 S.Ct. 668, 99 L.Ed. 964, the word “willfully” was required in the indictment to make out a charge under the statute.

2 U.S.C.A. § 192, under which the indictment was drawn, provides:

“Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers upon any matter under inquiry before either House, * * * willfully makes default, or who, having appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, * * [Italics supplied.]

The question, narrowly, is whether the intent, essential to proof of this offense, must be spelled out by a recital in the indictment that the refusal was ivillful. After reviewing the Quinn case carefully, we think this is not required. Quinn holds that “a deliberate, intentional refusal to answer” is an element of the offense which, “like any other, must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” 349 U.S. at page 165, 75 S.Ct. at page 674. In that case the Court was not dealing with the sufficiency of the indictment but of the proof. We agree with the trial judge that the indictment must charge an intentional act, but we think that it does so by use of the word “refused.” The indictment charged that Deutch “unlawfully refused to answer” and we think that language charged Deutch with an intentional, deliberate or knowing refusal to answer.

The statute uses the word “willfully” as a word of art to define the offense of failing to appear, but it does not use the word “willfully” with respect to a person “who, having appeared, refuses to answer * * The act of refusing-(as distinguished from failing) to answer is a positive, affirmative act; the result is conscious and intended. Congress recognized that a failure to appear in response to a summons could well be due to other causes than willfulness or a deliberate purpose to disobey the summons or the statute; a witness might be confused as to the time or place of the hearing, or inadvertently overlook it or become ill. To decline or refuse to answer a question, however, is by its very nature a deliberate and willful act.

Any doubt on this is resolved by the presence of the word “unlawfully” preceding “refused” in this indictment;, that would satisfy the statute since a refusal would be unlawful only if it were willful. In other words, if “refused” standing alone were held not sufficient, because it does not connote a refusal which violates the statute, the presence of the word “unlawfully” would remedy that defect. For either reason, the decision of dismissal must, therefore, be

Reversed.

. 52 Stat. 942 (1938).

. In United States v. Lamont, D.C.S.D. N.Y.1955, 18 F.R.D. 27, the District Court reached a contrary conclusion but did not suggest any reason why the word “willful” is required to make the word “refused” charge the commission of a deliberate, intentional act.

. See Chapman v. United States, 1896, 8 App.D.C. 302, 319; In re Chapman, 1897, 166 U.S. 661, 17 S.Ct. 677, 41 L.Ed. 1154.