defalcation

Appellants, welfare recipients residing in the State of Connecticut, brought this action in the Federal District Court for the District of Connecticut on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated. The action concerned state procedures for the commencement of litigation, including requirements for payment of court fees and costs for service of process, in connection with efforts to bring divorce actions. The average cost to a litigant for bringing an action for divorce is sixty dollars. Section 52-259 of the Connecticut General Statutes provides that there shall be paid to the clerks of the supreme court or the superior court, for entering each civil cause, forty-five dollars. An additional fifteen dollars is usually required for the service of process by the sheriff. There is no dispute as to the inability of the named appellants to pay either the court fees required by statute or the cost incurred for the service of process. The affidavits in the record establish that appellants' welfare income in each instance barely suffices to meet the costs of the daily essentials of life. It includes no allotment that could be budgeted for the expense to gain access to the courts. The clerk of the Superior Court returned their papers on the ground that he could not accept them until an entry fee had been paid. Subsequent efforts to obtain a judicial waiver of the fee requirement and to have the court effect service of process were to no avail. Appellants sought a judgment declaring that the fee requirements were unconstitutional as applied to them and an injunction ordering the appropriate officials to permit them to proceed with their divorce actions without payment of fees and costs. A three-judge court was convened pursuant to twenty-eight United States Code section 2281. On July sixteen, nineteen sixty-eight, that court issued its decision. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction in nineteen sixty-nine. The case was heard at the nineteen sixty-nine term and thereafter was set for reargument at the present term.

Paul Weems served as a disbursing officer of the Bureau of Coast Guard and Transportation in the Philippine Islands. He was prosecuted for falsifying a public cash book. The complaint charged that he entered sums of 208 pesos and 408 pesos as wages paid for lighthouse service at Capul and Matabriga when those amounts had not been disbursed. The complaint described Weems as an official of the United States Government of the Philippine Islands and alleged that the falsification was committed corruptly with intent to deceive that government. A demurrer to the complaint was overruled. Weems was convicted after trial. The trial court imposed a sentence of fifteen years of cadena temporal together with a fine of four thousand pesetas and the accessory penalties of civil interdiction, perpetual absolute disqualification, and subjection to surveillance for life. The sentence required service at hard and painful labor while carrying a chain at the ankle hanging from the wrists and with no assistance from outside the penal institution. The Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands affirmed the conviction and sentence. Weems obtained a writ of error from the United States Supreme Court. The assignments of error challenged the sufficiency of the complaint based on the governmental description used. They also claimed that the punishment was cruel and unusual, although that contention had not been presented to the Philippine courts. The record before the Supreme Court contained no trial evidence. The penalty of cadena temporal included not only the term of imprisonment but also perpetual accessories that continued after release. Those accessories encompassed disqualification from exercising parental or marital authority, loss of rights to vote or hold office, and the requirement to notify authorities of any change in domicile while remaining under their inspection.