In Re Parr

The petitioner seeks release after conviction and sentence to imprisonment hy the municipal court of the city of Los Angeles upon a charge of having committed a misdemeanor in that on the seventh day of October, 1929, he unlawfully possessed intoxicating liquors. It appears without contradiction that intoxicating liquors of various kinds, containing more than one-half of one per centum by volume of alcohol, were found in a cabinet in the dining-room of petitioner’s residence, and that he “stated it was his own liquor and that he had had it in the house for a long time. ’ ’

It is contended that mere naked possession'of intoxicating liquors is not sufficient to sustain a conviction in such cases, and that since the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States does not so declare, no power was conferred upon the Congress to make possession unlawful. With the constitutionality of federal statutes which have been upheld by federal courts, we need not deal further than to observe that it is fundamental that their decisions are final and authoritative declarations of the proper construction to be placed upon the Constitution and laws of the United States. (Elmendorf v.…