“The man who buys liquor is just as guilty as the man who sells it” – so spoke Judge Stack in a North Carolina court, according to the Raleigh News and Observer, and translated his edict into action by imposing a fine of $25 on a patron of a bootlegger.
In this decree and action Judge Stack wipes out the imaginary distinction between the two parties to such criminal transactions—a discrimination which the courts in general are likely to practice, thus weakening enforcement of the Volstead law just about 50 per cent. That the purchaser of the unlawful liquor is just as guilty in fact as the vendor, there can be no question in any intelligent and honest lay mind; the statement of Judge Stack indicates that it is “sound law,” also. In cases of larceny, a person who purchases stolen goods, knowing them to have been stolen, is guilty under the law of receiving stolen goods; the purchaser of unlawful liquor is equally guilty of violating the law—in all events, it might seem to a layman, he is at least subject to prosecution under that “conspiracy” charge which now seems so popular with prosecuting officials.
Describing the particular case in point, L.J. Hampton, writing to the Winston-Salem Journal, said:
“Raymond Gregory was the lad who was fined $25 for buying blockade liquor. That was a sad blow to blockaders and rum-runners. It was something unusual and therefore unique in the annals of illicit liquor decisions in the county, and to day that it made a deep impression is to state the case mildly. Raymond got a 90-day suspended sentence for possession of the illicit fluid. Judge Stack’s straightforward way of handling the case made the throngs sit up and take notice.”
Several points of great significance and importance are raised in this brief news item.
“This was a sad blow to blockaders and rum-runners” – well it might have been. Throughout the land bootlegging fraternity is supported largely through the community granted by prosecuting officials and the courts to bootleggers’ partners in crime. As a bootlegger is convicted and, possibly, removed from his field of activity for a brief period, his place in the ranks is immediately filled by another criminal, but the ranks of the purchaser are not thinned by even one member—both the source of supply and the purchasing market remain numerically and psychologically unaffected. If the purchaser in each instance were convicted and punished, also, it is highly probable that the purchasing element would become discouraged and at least frightened into law observance.
“It was something unusual and therefore unique in the annals of illicit liquor decisions in the county, and to say that it made a deep impression is to state the case mildly,” says the news item. This is a fearful indictment of the prosecuting agencies—Federal, state and municipal—of the entire land. So general is their acquiescence in law violation that they permit at least half of the criminal element in such cases to go free and unpunished. In this case the Court stepped into the breach and wiped out the discrimination. No wonder his policy and action “made a deep impression.”
“Judge Stack’s straightforward way of handling the case made the throngs sit up and take notice” – it is to be hoped that it will make throngs throughout the country sit up and take notice—throngs of Federal, state and municipal police; throngs of Federal, state and municipal prosecutors; throngs of Federal, state and municipal judges. It is high time. These men, all of them, are sworn to enforce the law without discrimination and without favor. In the face of this oath a large percentage do not attempt to enforce it; a larger percentage only make a pretense of enforcing it; a tremendous majority practice discrimination between two parties to a criminal transaction, in favor of the purchaser of illicit liquor, in contrast with the vendor. The law-respecting public already is “sitting up and taking notice”; it is high time that the police, the prosecuting officials and the courts remember their sworn obligations.
The buyer of illicit liquor regards himself—and is justified by sworn law officials in regarding himself—as in a different class from the seller. He considers himself immune, as in a glorified criminal case that is above prosecution. It is time that prosecuting officials and judges make him “sit up and take notice.”
--Manufacturers Record
From the front page of the Smithfield Herald, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073982/1925-09-22/ed-1/seq-1/
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