PER CURIAM.
A 14-year-old girl bought a button inscribed "Copulation Not Masturbation" at the Head Shop in Manchester, New Hampshire. In consequence, appellant, operator of the shop, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $100 after conviction upon a charge of "wilfully" contributing to the delinquency of a minor in violation of New Hampshire's Rev. Stat. Ann. § 169:32 (Supp. 1972).
Our independent examination of the trial record discloses that evidence is completely lacking that appellant personally sold the girl the button or even that he was aware of the sale or present in the store at the time. The girl was the State's only witness to the sale. She testified that she and a girl friend entered the store and looked around until they saw "a velvet display card on a counter" from which they "picked out [the] pin." She went to some person in the store with the button "cupped in [her] hand" and paid that person 25 cents for the button. She did not say that appellant was that person,
In these circumstances, the conviction must be reversed. "It is beyond question, of course, that a conviction based on a record lacking any relevant evidence as to a crucial element of the offense charged . . . violate[s] due process." Harris v. United States, 404 U.S. 1232, 1233 (1971). (DOUGLAS, J., in chambers); Thompson v. Louisville, 362 U.S. 199 (1960); Johnson v. Florida, 391 U.S. 596 (1968); see also Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39, 44 (1966).
The judgment is reversed and the case is remanded to the New Hampshire Supreme Court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE WHITE join, dissenting.
Appellant Denis M. Vachon operates the Head Shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he sells various beads, dresses, posters, and the like. In July 1969, a 14-year-old girl, accompanied by her girl friend, went to the shop seeking to purchase a button or pin like the
The Supreme Court of New Hampshire affirmed appellant's conviction. 113 N.H. 239, 306 A.2d 781 (1973).
The Court decides that appellant's conviction under this statute violates rights secured to him by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, concluding on the basis of its "independent examination of the trial record" that "evidence is completely lacking that appellant personally sold the girl the button or even that he was aware of the sale or present in the store at the time."
I
In one sense there can be no doubt that the Court's conclusion is based upon an "independent examination of the trial record," since the claim sustained here was neither made in constitutional form to the Supreme Court of New Hampshire, nor even presented by appellant in his jurisdictional statement in this Court.
The Court purports to decide the scienter question on the basis of Rule 40 (1) (d) (2) of the Rules of this Court, which provides:
The very language of this rule makes it clear that it applies to this Court's review of cases in which it has previously either noted probable jurisdiction or granted certiorari. The cases cited by the Court in support of what it does here are therefore necessarily cases in which review had been granted and which had been orally argued; in addition, each of those cases arose in the federal courts. See Columbia Heights Realty Co. v. Rudolph, 217 U.S. 547 (1910); Sibbach v. Wilson & Co., 312 U.S. 1 (1941); Blonder-Tongue Laboratories, Inc. v. University of Illinois Foundation, 402 U.S. 313 (1971).
Whatever the import of Rule 40 (1) (d) (2) in cases arising in the federal courts, it surely does not give this Court the power to simply ignore the limitations placed by 28 U. S. C. § 1257 on our jurisdiction to review final judgments of the highest court of a State. That jurisdiction permits review in this Court by appeal where a state statute has been upheld against a federal constitutional challenge, or by writ of certiorari where a federal constitutional challenge is "specifically set up or claimed" in state court. Our prior cases establish that we will "not decide federal constitutional issues raised here for the first time on review of state court decisions." Cardinale v. Louisiana, 394 U.S. 437, 438 (1969). See Crowell v. Randell, 10 Pet. 368 (1836). Since the Supreme Court of New Hampshire was not presented with a federal constitutional challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, resolution of this question by the Court is inconsistent with the congressional limitation on our
II
Even if appellant's sufficiency-of-the-evidence contention in the Supreme Court of New Hampshire could be said to have been presented as a federal constitutional claim based on Thompson v. Louisville, 362 U.S. 199 (1960), I would nonetheless be unable to join in the Court's disposition of it. In Thompson, the only state court proceedings reaching the merits of the case were in the Louisville Police Court from which there was no right of appeal to any higher state court, and there was therefore no state court opinion written which construed the statute under which Thompson was convicted. This Court therefore had no choice but to engage in its own construction of the statute and upon doing so it concluded that the record was "entirely lacking in evidence to support any of the charges." Id., at 204. Thompson was obviously an extraordinary case, and up until now has been saved for extraordinary situations; it has not heretofore been broadened so as to make lack of evidentiary support for only one of several elements of an offense a constitutional infirmity in a state conviction.
Here, however, the Supreme Court of New Hampshire construed the state statute defining contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and held that the evidence adduced at the trial was sufficient to support a finding on each element of that offense. While the Supreme Court of New Hampshire did say, as the Court indicates, that the State was required to prove that the accused acted " `voluntarily and intentionally and not because of mistake or accident or other innocent reason,' " 113 N. H., at 242, 306 A. 2d, at 784, it said this in a context of several paragraphs of treatment of the elements of the offense. Just as those reading and relying upon our opinions would
The Court simply casts aside this authoritative construction of New Hampshire law, seizes one phrase out
This may seem to us a somewhat broad construction of the language "wilfully" or "knowingly," though our own cases make it clear that we are dealing with words which may be given a variety of meanings by their context:
But since our authority to review state court convictions is limited to the vindication of claims of federal rights, we must take the meaning of the statute, and of the words "wilfully" and "knowingly" which it uses, as given to us by the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. I would have thought such a proposition well settled by our prior decisions:
We do have constitutional authority in appropriate cases to hold that the State's construction of its statute is such that the statutory language did not give a criminal defendant fair warning of the conduct which is construed to be embraced within it. Cole v. Arkansas, 333 U.S. 196 (1948); Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964). But this is a far cry from our own rewriting of a state statute in order to make it require a highly specific intent, and then turning around and saying that there was no evidence before the state courts to prove the kind of intent which we have said the statute requires. I would at least note probable jurisdiction over the appeal and set the case for oral argument. Since the Court instead chooses, without ever having heard argument, to rewrite the New Hampshire statute and substitute its interpretation for that of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. I dissent.
FootNotes
"[A]nyone . . . who . . . has knowingly or wilfully done any act to . . . contribute to the delinquency of [a] child, may be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year or both."
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