De La Maza v. United States. Samson v. United States

We consider herein two identical appeals.

The defendants, while engaged as bookmakers in Pasadena during December, 1951, and January and February, 1952, did not register with the Collector of Internal Revenue and did not pay their registration fee to him. Their horse bookie business seems to have been incident to the running of a restaurant, which we understand was Mrs. Samson’s.

The sections of the Internal Revenue Code requiring persons accepting wagers to register and pay a tax were new in the winter of 1951-1952, being part of a further extension of federal power decreed by the Congress under a revenue measure.

The two defendants were separately indicted in September, 1952, for the failure of each to register and to pay his license tax. By the time of the indictments herein, the act of Congress had been challenged in several federal courts, the objection raised being that something is wrong when a man has to register with the federal government and in effect admit that he intends to commit what is usually a crime under state law, or, perhaps, federal law. The Fifth and Tenth (even the Fourteenth) Amendments were relied upon by various defendants.

It appears herein that the…