Issues
Three separate but interconnected issues were addressed:
First, there was contention over the issue of what exactly made a crime (or its punishment) infamous: the location (a penitentiary), or the inclusion of hard labor in the sentence.
Crimes in which only a fine was faced are not considered infamous, and crimes where a convict must serve at a penitentiary had previously been found to be infamous. But Moreland argued crimes where a convict must spend time in confinement (penitentiary or not) and carry out hard labor should also be considered infamous. Merely the addition of hard labor to a sentence was enough to make it infamous. The United States contended that hard labor was not in and of itself an infamous punishment, and that time in a penitentiary was a necessity.
Second, because the Act gave the option of either a fine, imprisonment, or both, the United States maintained that the Act was not unconstitutional because the threat of imprisonment was severable from the threat of fine (which would not be infamous). Because the court could decide to impose only a fine, the United States argued the Act as a whole should not be struck down.
Third, the United States in its arguments attacked the legality of Wong Wing v. United States and its application to this case, arguing that other Supreme Court cases modified or overruled Wong Wing. Wong Wing was the primary case cited by the Court of Appeals in finding the Act of March 23, 1908 unconstitutional, so in arguing this, the United States argued for the entirety of the Court of Appeals' decision to be set down.
Read more about this topic: United States V. Moreland
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