Ex parte Grossman

Petitioner
Philip Grossman
Respondent
District of Illinois
Petitioner's Claim
That the president's pardon covers all offenses in the case of the petitioner, and the courts may not convict the petitioner of crimes that have been pardoned.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Louis J. Behan
Chief Lawyers for Respondent
Amos C. Miller, F. Bruce Johnstone
Justices for the Court
Louis D. Brandeis, Pierce Butler, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Joseph McKenna, James Clark McReynolds, Edward Terry Sanford, George Sutherland, William Howard Taft (writing for the Court), Willis Van Devanter
Justices Dissenting
None
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
2 March 1925
Decision
The Supreme Court ruled that the president could pardon all offenses except in cases of impeachment.
Significance
The Supreme Court affirmed the president's power to grant reprieves and pardons for all offenses.
Philip Grossman was found guilty by the district court of having disobeyed atemporary injunction, issued under the National Prohibition Enforcement Act,forbidding illicit trafficking in liquors on certain premises. He was sentenced by the district court to pay a fine and to imprisonment for one year in the Chicago House of Corrections--a judgment which was affirmed by the circuitcourt of appeals.
The president issued a pardon commuting the sentence to the fine, with the condition that the fine be paid, which Grossman did. Having been thereupon released from custody, Grossman was again committed by district court, upon the grounds that the pardon was ineffectual. He then sought a writ of habeas corpus, directed to Graham, the Superintendent of the House of Corrections.
Chief Justice Taft delivered the opinion of the Court, rebutting the respondent's argument that stated that the president's power extended only to offenses against the United States and that contempt of court was not such an offense. Criminal contempt, on the contrary, in relation to the prohibition law isan "offense against the United States," and pardonable by the president. "Offenses against the United States," in the pardon clause, include criminal contempts, and accord with ordinary meanings of the words and are not inconsistent with other parts of the Constitution where the term "offense" and the narrower terms "crimes" and "criminal prosecutions" appear. The contention that toadmit the power of the president to pardon criminal contempts would erode the independence of the judiciary and would violate the principle of separationof the three departments of the government, was considered and rejected.
Soon after Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, Prohibition endedwhen the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first, the only instance of a constitutional amendment directly nullifying a previous one.
Related Cases

• Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333 (1866).
  
• United States v. Woodley, 726 F.2d 1328 (1983).

The term "Prohibition" refers to the era from 1919 to 1933, when the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcohol was forbidden by law throughout the United States. The idea of prohibition predates the Prohibition Era, which was the culmination of efforts begun as early as the 1830s. Throughout the nineteenth century, the anti-alcohol temperance movement was tied with a strain of reform-minded progressivism. The Women's Christian Temperance Movement (WCTU),for instance, is considered an early feminist organization.
Temperance forces took advantage of the shortage of grain after World War I and pushed through the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, establishing Prohibition.The Volstead Act, passed the same year, defined an intoxicating beverage asone containing at least 0.5 percent alcohol.