United States v. Press Publishing Co.

Citations

• 219 U.S. 1
• 31 S. Ct. 212
• 55 L. Ed. 65
• 1911 U.S. LEXIS 1617

Syllabus

<p>The effect of § 2 of the act of July. 7, 1898, c. 576, 30 Stat. 717, was to incorporate the criminal laws of the several States in force July 1, 1898, into the statute and make such criminal laws, to the extent of such incorporation, laws of the United States and applicable to the United States reservations within the States (Franklin v. United States, 216 U. S. 559); but the history of the act demonstrates that in its adoption, Congress sedulously considered the two-fold character of our constitutional government with the purpose of interfering as little as might be with the authority of the States, as to the subject-matter of the statute, over territory situated, except for the existence of a United States reservation, within state jurisdiction.</p> <p>The purpose and intent leading to the adoption of an act affords a means fot discerning the intent of a subsequent act relating to the same subject and superseding the earlier act.</p> <p>Proceedings in Congress in the course of adoption of a statute and amending its form as originally proposed considered, in this case, in determining the purpose and scope of the act and the intent of Congress in adopting it.</p> <p>The assimilative crimes act of 1898 cannot be used as a means for frustrating the laws of the State, within which a reservation of the United States is situated; and one accused of a crime consisting of several elements treated as a unit by the state law so that there can be but one trial and conviction thereunder cannot be indicted and tried in the United States court for a single separate element committed on such reservation, the other elements of the crime being committed in other portions of the State.</p> <p>As the law of New York results in the unity as one criminal act of the publication of a libel and its circulation, allows but a single conviction for the combined act, arid affords adequate means for punishing such circulation on a reservation of the United States within that State; resort c