UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE,
v.
LUCILLE S. MILLER, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT

2d Cir. | 1956-05-03
Nos. 281, Docket 23942
Before CLARK, Chief Judge, and HINCKS and LUMBARD, Circuit Judges.
233 F.2d 171 United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (1956) Positive Treatment
Cited by 2 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.


Holding

The court held that the defendant's conviction for counseling violations of the Universal Military Training and Service Act is constitutional and affirmed.


Facts & Procedural History

The defendant was convicted on eighteen counts for counseling individuals to refuse compliance with the Universal Military Training and Service Act. S…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
PER CURIAM.

PER CURIAM.

Defendant,. Lucille S. Miller, was convicted in July, 1955, on all eighteen counts of an indictment charging her with knowingly counseling nine named persons to refuse to comply with certain provisions of the Universal Military Training and Service Act, in violation of 50 U.S.C.App. § 462(a). Judge Gibson imposed a sentence of a year and a day on each count to run concurrently, but suspended sentence and placed the defendant on probation for a term of five years.

The defendant has at no time denied or disavowed the acts charged; on the contrary she committed them deliberately and invited prosecution. Her argument is directed to an attack upon the constitutionality of the peacetime draft law, 50 U.S.C.App. § 451 et seq., and to the asserted conflict between the provision prohibiting the counseling of violations of that law and the right of' freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. But her constitutional objections have been met by the overwhelming weight of well-settled and unanimous authority. See United States v. Nugent, 346 U.S. 1, 73 S.Ct. 991, 97 L.Ed. 1417; Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 39 S.Ct. 247, 63 L.Ed. 470; United States v. Bolton, 2 Cir., 192 F. 2d 805; Gara v. United States, 6 Cir., 178 F. 2d 38, affirmed Per Curiam without opinion 340 U.S. 857, 71 S.Ct. 87, 95 L.Ed. 628; United States v. Henderson, 7 Cir., 180 F. 2d 711, 715, certiorari denied 339 U.S. 963, 70 S.Ct. 997, 94 L.Ed.

1372. Congress in fulfillment of its constitutional duty has enacted this legislation to provide for the national security; that defendant disapproves the Congressional action and has frequently and vehemently stated her position on this and other matters of public importance lends no weight to the validity of her arguments, which are without legal merit. Like the conviction of her husband this day affirmed, United States v. Miller, 2 Cir., 233 F. 2d 173, this is a sad case where self-delusion has carried defendant to the point where she apparently believes her own warped ideas of patriotism, interlarded with distressing racial, religious, and political biases, can justify her in the crudest of law violations. At any rate the processes of the law, exemplified in a wholly fair trial, at which she was represented by three attorneys, must go forward to their invited and inevitable conclusion.1

The judgment of conviction must therefore be affirmed.

. A brief of a Western attorney and purported “friend of the court,” being a curious compound of scurrility and irrelevanee, the filing of which is not objected to by the United States Attorney, may remain lodged in the files of the court as an example of how lawyers should not act.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

Authorities Cited (11 total)

View all 11 cited authorities →

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw