Von Moltke v. Gillies, Superintendent of the Detroit House of Correction (332 U.S. 708)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 19, 1948 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 332 U.S. 708 · 68 S. Ct. 316
- Docket
- No. 73
- Argued
- November 20, 1947
- Decided
- January 19, 1948
- Term
- October Term 1947
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Black
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
How the Justices voted
- Majority
- Justice Douglas, Justice Black (wrote), Justice Rutledge, Justice Murphy
- Concurring in the judgment
- Justice R. H. Jackson, Justice Frankfurter (wrote)
- Dissenting
- Chief Justice Vinson, Justice Burton (wrote), Justice Reed
Opinion excerpt
Mr. Justice Black announced the judgment of the Court and an opinion in which Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. Justice Rutledge concur. The petitioner was indicted for conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act of 1917. The specific charge was that, in order to injure the United States and to aid the German Reich, she and twenty-three others had conspired during the second World War to collect and deliver vital military information to German agents. With no money to hire a lawyer and without the benefit of counsel the petitioner appeared before a federal district judge, told him that the indictment had been explained to her, signed a paper stating that she waived the “right to be represented by counsel at the trial of this cause,” and then pleaded guilty. Under her plea she could have been sentenced to death or to imprisonment for not more than thirty years. After thirteen months in jail following her plea, the court sentenced her to four years in prison. In this habeas corpus proceeding she charged that the sentence, resting as it did solely on her plea of guilty, was invalid for two reasons: First, she alleged that the plea was entered by reason of the coercion, intimidation, and deception of federal officers in violation of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Second, she alleged that she neither understandingly waived the benefit of the advice of…
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