Burton v. United States
1905 United States Supreme Court case / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Burton v. United States is the name of two appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States by Senator Joseph R. Burton (R-KS) following his conviction for compensated representation of a party in a proceeding in which the United States was interested: Burton v. United States, 196 U.S. 283 (1905)[1] and Burton v. United States, 202 U.S. 344 (1906).[2] Burton was convicted of acting as counsel to Rialto Grain and Securities Company in the United States Postmaster General's investigation of Rialto for mail fraud.
On Burton's first appeal, the Supreme Court reversed his convictions because venue and vicinage could not be proper in the Eastern District of Missouri on the sole ground that Burton's bank sent the check to St. Louis after he cashed it. Further, the Court cited the prejudicial refusal of jury instructions. After Burton was retried and convicted, the Court affirmed, inter alia, on the ground that the agreement between Burton and Rialto had occurred in St. Louis.
Burton was the first defendant convicted under § 1782 of the Revised Statutes, 40 years after its 1864 enactment. Burton and his supporters argued that he was selectively prosecuted, on the orders of President Theodore Roosevelt, for political reasons. Burton also became the first member of the United States Senate to be convicted of public corruption, in fact the first member of the Senate to be convicted of any crime.[3] The next year, Senator John H. Mitchell (R-OR) was convicted under the same statute for his role in the Oregon land fraud scandal.[4]