273 U.S.

510
47 S.Ct. 437
71 L.Ed. 749

TUMEY
v.
STATE OF OHIO.
No. 527.
Argued Nov. 29, 30, 1926.
Decided March 7, 1927.

Messrs. Edward P. Moulinier, James L. Magrish, and Harry H. Shafer, all

of Cincinnati, Ohio, for plaintiff in error.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 511-512 intentionally omitted]
Messrs. Wayne B. Wheeler and Edward Dunford, both of Washington, D.
C., for the State of Ohio.
[Argument of Counsel from page 513 intentionally omitted]
Mr. Chief Justice TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question in this case is whether certain statutes of Ohio, in providing for
the trial by the mayor of a village of one accused of violating the Prohibition
Act of the state (Gen. Code, Ohio, 6212-13 et seq.), deprive the accused of
due process of law and violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal
Constitution, because of the pecuniary and other interest which those statutes
give the mayor in the result of the trial.

Tumey, the plaintiff in error hereafter to be called the defendant, was arrested
and brought before Mayor Pugh, of the village of North College Hill, charged
with unlawfully possessing intoxicating liquor. He moved for his dismissal
because of the disqualification of the mayor to try him under the Fourteenth
Amendment. The mayor denied the motion, proceeded to the trial, convicted
the defendant of unlawfully possessing intoxicating liquor within Hamilton
county as charged, fined him $100, and ordered that he be imprisoned until the

fine and costs were paid. He obtained a bill of exceptions and carried the case
on error to the court of common pleas of Hamilton county. That court heard the
case and reversed the judgment, on the ground that the mayor was disqualified
as claimed. 25 Ohio Nisi Prius (N. S.) 580. The state sought review by the
Court of Appeals of the First Appellate District of Ohio, which reversed the
common pleas and affirmed the judgment of the mayor. 23 Ohio Law Reporter,
634.
3

On May 4, 1926, the state Supreme Court refused defendant's application to

require the Court of Appeals to certify its record in the case. The defendant then
filed a petition in error in that court as of right, asking that the judgment of the
mayor's court and of the appellate court be reversed on constitutional grounds.
On May 11, 1926, the Supreme Court adjudged that the petition be dismissed
for the reason that no debatable constitutional question was involved in the
cause. The judgment was then brought here upon a writ of error allowed by the
Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court, to which it was rightly directed.
Matthews v. Huwe, Treasurer, 269 U. S. 262, 46 S. Ct. 108, 70 L. Ed. 266;
Hetrick v. Village of Lindsey, 265 U. S. 384, 44 S. Ct. 486, 68 L. Ed. 1065.
This brings us to the merits of the case.

The defendant was arrested and charged with the unlawful possession of
intoxicating liquor at White Oak, another village in Hamilton county, Ohio, on
a warrant issued by the mayor of North College Hill. The mayor acted under
the sections of the state Prohibition Act and Ordinance No. 125 of the village
of North College Hill adopted by pursuance thereof.

Section 6212-15, General Code, Ohio, provides that:

'No person shall, after the passage of this act * * * manufacture, * * * possess,
* * * any intoxicating liquors. * * *'
Section 6212-17 provides that:

'* * * Any person who violates the provisions of this act (G. C. 6212-13 to
6212-20) for a first offense shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor
more than one thousand dollars; for a second offense he shall be fined not less
than three hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars; for a third and
each subsequent offense, he shall be fined not less than five hundred dollars nor
more than two thousand dollars and be imprisoned in the state penitentiary not
less than one year nor more than five years. * * *'

The mayor has authority, which he exercised in this case, to order that the
person sentenced to pay a fine shall remain in prison until the fine and costs are
paid. At the time of this sentence, the prisoner received a credit of 60 cents a
day for each day's imprisonment. By a recent amendment, that credit has
increased to $1.50 a day Sections 13716, 13717, Gen. Code Ohio.
Section 6212-18 provides, in part, that:

'Any justice of the peace, mayor, municipal or police judge, probate or common
pleas judge within the county with whom the affidavit is filed charging a
violation of any of the provisions of this act (G. C. 6212-13 to 6212-20)
when the offense is alleged to have been committed in the county in which such
mayor, justice of the peace, or judge may be sitting, shall have final jurisdiction
to try such cases upon such affidavits without a jury, unless imprisonment is a
part to the penalty, but error may be prosecuted to the judgment of such mayor,
justice of the peace, or judge as herein provided.'

10

Error from the mayor's court lies to the court of common pleas of the county,
and a bill of exceptions is necessary to present questions arising on the
evidence. Sections 10359, 10361, General Code Ohio. The appellate review in
respect to evidence is such that the judgment can only be set aside by the
reviewing court on the ground that it is so clearly unsupported by the weight of
the evidence as to indicate some misapprehension or mistake or bias on the part
of the trial court or a wilful disregard of duties. Datesh v. State, 23 Ohio Nisi
Prius (N. S.) 273.
Section 6212-19, provides that:

11

'Money arising from fines and forfeited bonds shall be paid one-half into the
state treasury credited to the general revenue fund, one-half to the treasury of
the township, municipality or county where the prosecution is held, according
as to whether the officer hearing the case is a township, municipal, or county
officer.'
Section 6212-37 provides that:

12

'The council of any city or village may, by ordinance, authorize the use of any
part of the fines collected for the violation of any law prohibiting the
manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, for the purpose of hiring
attorneys, detectives, or secret service officers to secure the enforcement of

such prohibition law. And such council are hereby authorized to appropriate not
more than five hundred dollars annually from the general revenue fund, for the
purpose of enforcing the law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of
intoxicating liquors, when there are no funds available from the fines collected
for the violation of such prohibitory law.' 109 Ohio Laws, p. 9, 17.
13

Under the authority of the last section, the village council of North College Hill
passed Ordinance No. 125, as follows: 'An ordinance to provide for
compensation to be paid from the secret service funds of the village of North
College Hill, Hamilton county, Ohio, created by authority of section 6212-37,
of the General Code of Ohio, to detectives, secret service officers, deputy
marshals' and attorneys' fees, costs, etc., for services in securing evidence
necessary to conviction and prosecuting violation of the law of the state of Ohio
prohibiting the liquor traffic.

14

'Be it ordained by the council of the village of North College Hill, Hamilton
county, Ohio:

15

'Section I. That fifty per cent. of all moneys hereafter paid into the treasury to
said village of North College Hill, Ohio, that is one-half of the share of all fines
collected and paid into and belonging to said village of North College Hill,
Ohio, received from fines collected under any law of the state of Ohio,
prohibiting the liquor traffic, shall constitute a separate fund to be called the
secret service fund to be used for the purpose of securing the enforcement of
any prohibition law.

16

'Section II. That deputy marshals of the village of North College Hill, Ohio,
shall receive as compensation for their services in securing the evidence
necessary to secure the conviction of persons violating the law of the state of
Ohio, prohibiting the liquor traffic, an amount of money equal to 15 per cent. of
the fine collected, and other fees allowed by law.

17

'Section III. That the attorney at law of record prosecuting persons charged with
violating the law of the state of Ohio, prohibiting the liquor traffic, shall receive
as compensation for legal services an amount equal to 10 per cent. of the fine
collected, in all cases, whether the plea be guilty or not guilty.

18

'Section IV. That detectives and secret service officers shall receive as
compensation for their services in securing the evidence necessary to secure the
conviction of persons violating the law of the state of Ohio, prohibiting the
liquor traffic, an amount of money equal to 15 per cent. of the fine collected.

19

'Section V. That the mayor of the village of North College Hill, Ohio, shall
receive or retain the amount of his costs in each case, in addition to his regular
salary, as compensation for hearing such cases.

20

'Section VI. This ordinance is hereby declared to be an emergency ordinance,

necessary to the immediate preservation of the public peace and safety, made
necessary by reason of the flagrant violation of the laws of Ohio, enacted to
prohibit traffic in intoxicating liquors, and shall be in effect from and after this
passage.'

21

The duties of the mayor of a village in Ohio are primarily executive. Section
4248 of the General Code of Ohio provides as follows:

22

'Section 4248. The executive power and authority of villages shall be vested in
a mayor, clerk, treasurer, marshal, street commissioner, and such other officers
and departments thereof as are created by law.

23

'Section 4255. * * * He (the mayor) shall be the chief conservator of the peace
within the corporation. * * * He shall be the president of the council, and shall
preside at all regular and special meetings thereof, but shall have no vote except
in case of a tie.

24

'Section 4258. * * * He shall see that all ordinances, by-laws and resolutions of
the council are faithfully obeyed and enforced. * * *

25

'Section 4259. The mayor shall communicate to council from time to time a
statement of the finances of the municipality, and such other information
relating thereto and to the general condition of the affairs of the municipality as
he deems proper or as may be required by council.

26

'Section 4262. The mayor shall supervise the conduct of the officers of the
corporation. * * *' The fees which the mayor and marshal received in this case
came to them by virtue of the general statutes of the state applying to all state
cases, liquor and otherwise. The mayor was entitled to hold the legal fees taxed
in his favor. General Code Ohio, 4270; State v. Nolte, 111 Ohio St. 486, 146
N. E. 51, 37 A. L. R. 1426. Moreover, the North College Hill village council
sought to remove all doubt on this point by providing (section 5, Ordinance
125, supra), that he should receive or retain the amount of his costs in each case
in addition to his regular salary, as compensation for hearing such cases. But no
fees or costs in such cases are paid him, except by the defendant, if convicted.
There is, therefore, no way by which the mayor may be paid for his service as

judge, if he does not convict those who are brought before him; nor is there any
fund from which marshals, inspectors and detectives can be paid for their
services in arresting and bringing to trial and furnishing the evidence to convict
in such cases, except it be from the initial $500 which the village may vote
from its treasury to set the court going or from a fund created by the fines
thereafter collected from convicted defendants.
27

By an act of 1913 (103 O. L. 290), the mayor's court in villages in Hamilton

county, and in half a dozen other counties with large cities, was deprived of
jurisdiction to hear and punish misdemeanors committed in the county beyond
the limits of the corporation. The Prohibition Act, known as the Crabbe Act,
adopted in 1920 (108 O. L. pt. 1, p. 388, and part 2, p. 1182) changed this and
gave to the mayor of every village in the state jurisdiction within the county in
which it was situate to try violations of that act.

28

Counsel for the state in their brief explain the vesting by state Legislatures of
this country of jurisdiction in village courts as follows:

29

'The purpose of extending the jurisdiction in the first instance was to break up
places of outlawry that were located on the municipal boundary just outside of
the city. The Legislature also faced the situation that in some of the cities the
law enforcement agencies were failing to perform their duty, and therefore, in
order that those forces that believe in enforcement and upholding of law might
have some courts through which process could be had, it gave to mayors
county-wide jurisdiction.'

30

It was further pointed out in argument that the system by which the fines to be
collected were to be divided between the state and the village was for the
proper purpose of stimulating the activities of the village officers to such due
enforcement.

31

The village of North College Hill, in Hamilton county, Ohio, is shown by the
federal census to have a population of 1,104. That of Hamilton county,
including the city of Cincinnati, is more than half a million. The evidence
discloses that Mayor Pugh came to office after Ordinance No. 125 was
adopted, and that there was a division of public sentiment in the village as to
whether the ordinance should continue in effect. A petition opposing it and
signed by a majority of the voters was presented to Mayor Pugh. To this the
mayor answered with the declaration that, if the village was in need of finances,
he was in favor of and would carry on 'the liquor court,' as it was popularly
called, but that, if the court was not needed for village financial reasons, he

would not do so. It appears that substantial sums were expended out of the
village treasury from the fund made up of the fines thus collected for village
improvements and repairs. The mayor was the owner of a house in the village.
32

Between May 11, 1923, and December 31, 1923, the total amount of fines for
violation of the prohibition law collected by this village court was upwards of
$20,000, from which the state received $8,992.50, North College Hill received
$4,471.25 for its general uses, $2,697.25 was placed to the credit of the village
safety fund, and the balance was put in the secret service fund. Out of this, the
person acting as prosecutor in the liquor court received in that period
$1,796.50; the deputy marshals, inspectors and other employees, including the
detectives, received $2,697.75; and $438.50 was paid for costs in transporting
prisoners, serving writs and other services in connection with the trial of these
cases. Mayor Pugh received $696.35 from these liquor cases during that period
as his fees and costs, in addition to his regular salary.

33

That officers acting in a judicial or quasi judicial capacity are disqualified by

their interest in the controversy to be decided is of course the general rule.
Dimes v. Grand Junction Canal, 3 H. L. C. 759; Gregory v. Railroad, 4 Ohio St.
675; Pearce v. Atwood, 13 Mass. 324; Taylor v. Commissioners, 105 Mass.
225; Kentish Artillery v. Gardiner, 15 R. I. 296, 3 A. 662; Moses v. Julian, 45
N. H. 52, 84 Am. Dec. 114; State v. Crane, 36 N. J. Law, 394; Railroad
Company v. Howard, 20 Mich. 18; Stockwell v. Township, 22 Mich. 341;
Findley v. Smith, 42 W. Va. 299, 26 S. E. 370; Nettleton's Appeal, 28 Conn.
268; Cooley's Constitutional Limitation (7th Ed.) p. 592 et seq. Nice questions,
however, often arise as to what the degree or nature of the interest must be. One
is in respect to the effect of the membership of a judge in a class of taxpayers or
others to be affected by a principle of law, statutory or constitutional, to be
applied in a case between other parties and in which the judge has no other
interest. Then the circumstance that there is no judge not equally disqualified to
act in such a case has been held to affect the question. Wheeling v. Black, 25
W. Va. 266, 280; Peck v. Freeholders of Essex, 20 N. J. Law, 457; Dimes v.
Grand Junction Canal, 3 H. L. C. 759 (see Baron Parke's Answer for the
Judges, pp. 785, 787); Year Book, 8 Henry VI, 19; s. c. 2 Roll. Abridg. 93;
Evans v. Gore, 253 U. S. 245, 247, 40 S. Ct. 550, 64 L. Ed. 887, 11 A. L. R.
519; Stuart v. Mechanics' & Farmers' Bank, 19 Johns. (N. Y.) 496; Ranger v.
Railroad, 5 H. L. C. 72. We are not embarrassed by such considerations here,
for there were available in this case other judicial officers who had no
disqualification, either by reason of the character of their compensation or their
relation to the village government.

34

All questions of judicial qualification may not involve constitutional validity.

Thus matters of kinship, personal bias, state policy, remoteness of interest

would seem generally to be matters merely of legislative discretion. Wheeling
v. Black, 25 W. Va. 266, 270. But it certainly violates the Fourteenth
Amendment and deprives a defendant in a criminal case of due process of law
to subject his liberty or property to the judgment of a court, the judge of which
has a direct, personal, substantial pecuniary interest in reaching a conclusion
against him in his case.
35

The mayor of the village of North College Hill, Ohio, has a direct personal
pecuniary interest in convicting the defendant who came before him for trial, in
the $12 of costs imposed in his behalf, which he would not have received if the
defendant had been acquitted. This was not exceptional, but was the result of
the normal operation of the law and the ordinance. Counsel for the state do not
deny this, but assert the validity of the practice as an exception to the general
rule. They rely upon the cases of Ownbey v. Morgan, 256 U. S. 94, 41 S. Ct.
433, 65 L. Ed. 837, 17 A. L. R. 873; Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land &
Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 276-280, 15 L. Ed. 372.

36

These cases show that in determining what due process of law is, under the
Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment, the court must look to those settled usages and
modes of proceeding existing in the common and statute law of England before
the emigration of our ancestors, which were shown not to have been unsuited to
their civil and political condition by having been acted on by them after the
settlement of this country. Counsel contend that in Ohio and in other states, in
the economy which it is found necessary to maintain in the administration of
justice in the inferior courts by justices of the peace and by judicial officers of
like jurisdiction, the only compensation which the state and county and
township can afford is the fees and costs earned by them, and that such
compensation is so small that it is not to be regarded as likely to influence
improperly a judicial officer in the discharge of his duty, or as prejudicing the
defendant in securing justice. even though the magistrate will receive nothing if
the defendant is not convicted.

37

We have been referred to no cases at common law in England, prior to the

separation of colonies from the mother country, showing a practice that inferior
judicial officers were dependant upon the conviction of the defendant for
receiving their compensation. Indeed, in analogous cases it is very clear that the
slightest pecuniary interest of any officer, judicial or quasi judicial, in the
resolving of the subject-matter which he was to decide, rendered the decision
voidable. Bonham's Case, 8 Coke, 118a; same case, 2 Brownlow &
Goldesborough's Reports, 255; City of London v. Wood, 12 Modern Reports,
669, 687; Day v. Savage, Hobart, 85, 87; Hesketh v. Braddock, 3 Burrows,

1847, 1856, 1857, 1858.

38

As early as 12 Richard II, A. D. 1388, it was provided that there should be a

commission of the justices of the peace, with six justices in the county once a
quarter, which might sit for three days, and that the justices should receive four
shillings a day 'as wages,' to be paid by the sheriffs out of a fund make up of
fines and amercements, and that that fund should be added to out of the fines
and amercements from the Courts of the Lords of the Franchises which were
hundred courts allowed by the king by grant to individuals.

39

It was required that the justices of the peace should be knights, esquires, or
gentlemen of the land, qualifications that were not modified until 1906. The
wages paid were used 'to defray their common diet,' and they soon became
obsolete. Holdsworth's History of English Law, 288, 289. The wages paid were
not dependant on conviction of the defendant. They were paid at a time when
the distinction between torts and criminal cases was not clear. Holdworth, vol.
2, pp. 363, 365; Id. vol. 3, p. 328. And they came from a fund which was
created by fines and amercements collected from both sides in the controversy.
There was always a plaintiff, whether in the action for a tort or the prosecution
for an offense. In the latter he was called the prosecutor. If he failed to prove
his case, whether civil or criminal, he was subject to amercement pro falso
clamore, while, if he succeeded, the defendant was in misericordia. See
Commonwealth v. Johnson, 5 Serg. & R. (Pa.) 195, 198; Musser v. Good, 11
Serg. & R. (Pa.) 247. Thus in the outcome some one would be amerced in every
case, and the amercements generally went to the crown, and the fund was
considerable. The statute of Richard II remained on the statute book until 1855
when it was repealed by St. 18 and 19 Victoria. Meantime the hundred courts
by franchise had largely disappeared. The wages referred to were not part of the
costs. The costs at common law were the amounts paid either by the plaintiff or
prosecutor or by the defendant for the witnesses or services of the court
officers. Burn's Justice, vol. 1, p. 628; Chitty's Criminal Law (4th Ed. 1841)
vol. 1, p. 829. See, also, St. 14 George III, c. 20, 1774. For hundreds of years
the justices of the peace of England seem not to have received compensation for
court work. Instead of that they were required, upon entering upon the office, to
pay certain fees. Holdsworth, vol. 1, p. 289; 19 Halsbury's Laws of England,
1152. Local judges in towns are paid salaries.

40

There was at the common law the greatest sensitiveness over the existence of
any pecuniary interest however small or infinitesimal in the justices of the
peace. In Hawkins, 2 Pleas of the Crown, Bk. 2, ch. 8, 68, 69 we find the
following:

41

'The general rule of law certainly is that justices of the peace ought not to
execute their office in their own case (citing 1 Salk. 396); and even in cases
where such proceeding seems indispensably necessary, as in being publicly
assaulted or personally abused, or their authority otherwise contemned while in
the execution of their duty, yet if another justice be present, his assistance
should be required to punish the offender (Stra. 240).

42

'And by the common law, if an order of removal were made by two justices,
and one of them was an inhabitant of the parish from which the pauper was
removed, such order was illegal and bad, on the ground that the justice who
was an inhabitant, was interested, as being liable to the poor's rate. Rex v. Great
Chart, Burr. S. C. 194, Stra. 1173.'

43

And this strict principle, unless there is relief by the statute, is seen in modern
cases. Queen v. Recorder of Cambridge, 8 Ellis & Blackburn, 637; Regina v.
Hammond, 9 Law Times Reports (N. S.) 423; The Queen v. Rand, Law
Reports, 1 Queen's Bench, 230; Queen v. Gaisford (1892) 1 Queen's Bench
Division, 381; 19 Halsbury's Laws of England, 1156.

44

There was then no usage at common law by which justices of the peace or
inferior judicial officers were paid fees on condition that they convicted the
defendants, and such a practice certainly cannot find support as due process of
law in English precedent. It may be that the principle as stated in Blackstone,
book 3, p. 400, that the king shall neither pay nor receive costs, because it is the
king's prerogative not to pay them to a subject and is beneath his dignity to
receive them, was misunderstood and led, as suggested by Mr. Lewis in his
edition of Blackstone (see Lewis' Blackstone, note No. 60, vol. III, p. 400) to
the practice in some states in minor cases of allowing inferior judges no
compensation, except by fees collected of the convicted defendant, but,
whether it did or not, the principle relied on did not support the practice. That
practice has prevailed and still prevails in Arkansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, North
Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas, and it seems at one time to have obtained
in Indiana, Oregon, Illinois, and Alabama.

45

In two of these states only has the question been considered by their courts, and
it has been held that provision for payment to the judge of fees only in case of
conviction does not disqualify him. Those are Bennett v. State, 4 Tex. App. 72;
Wellmaker v. Terrell, 3 Ga. App. 791, 60 S. E. 464. There is no discussion in
either of the question of due process of law. The existence of a statute
authorizing the practice seems to have been the controlling consideration. Two
other cases are cited. In Ex parte Guerrero, 69 Cal. 88, 10 P. 261, the judge was

paid a regular salary fixed by law. The fund out of which this was paid was
increased by fees and fines collected in his court, but there is no evidence that
payment of his salary was dependent on the amount of his collections or
convictions. In Herbert v. Baltimore County, 97 Md. 639, 55 A. 376, the action
was by a justice of the peace against a county for services in criminal cases. A
new law limited him to $10 a month. The statement of the case does not
distinctly show that in convictions he would have had a larger compensation
from his costs collected out of the defendant, but this may be assumed from the
argument. His contention was that the new law was invalid, because it did not
give the defendants before him due process. The court held against him, chiefly
on the ground that he must be satisfied with the compensation the law afforded
him. Responding to his argument that the new law was invalid, because justice
would be induced to convict when in justice they should acquit, the court said:
46

'We cannot recognize the force of this suggestion, founded as it is upon the
assumption that the justices will violate their oaths and the duties of their
office, and not upon anything that the law authorizes to be done.'

47

So far as the case goes, it is an authority for the contention of the state, but the
issue thus raised was not considered at length, and was not one which in such
an action the court would be patient to hear pressed by the justice, whose
constitutional rights were not affected. Tyler v. Court, 179 U. S. 405, 409, 21 S.
Ct. 206, 45 L. Ed. 252; California Reduction Co. v. Sanitary Reduction Works,
199 U. S. 306, 318, 26 S. Ct. 100, 50 L. Ed. 204.

48

In the case of Probasco v. Raine, Auditor, 50 Ohio St. 378, 34 N. E. 536, the
question arose whether the fee of 4 per cent. payable to county auditors for
placing omitted property on the duplicate list for taxation, which required
investigation and quasi judicial consideration, was invalid. The court held that
it was not, and that the objection urged there could not be based on the
argument that a man could not be a judge in his own case; that the auditor had
no case to be adjudged, but that, on the contrary, he was the taxing officer,
before whom other parties were cited to appear and show cause why they
should not bear their equal burden of taxation. The court said that the action of
the auditor was not final, so as to cut off further inquiry, but that the whole case
might be gone into anew by proper proceedings in court. An exactly opposite
conclusion was reached by the United States Circuit Court for the Northern
District of Ohio in Meyers v. Shields, 61 F. 713, 725, et seq.

49

In other states than those above mentioned the minor courts are paid for their
services by the state or county, regardless of acquittal or conviction, except that
in Virginia the minor courts receive one-half of the usual fees where there is

acquittal. Four states have put into their Constitutions a provision that the state
must pay the costs in such cases in case of acquittal. They are California,
Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
50

The strict common-law rule was adopted in this country as one to be enforced
where nothing but the common law controlled, and citizens and taxpayers have
been held incompetent to sit in suits against the municipal corporation of which
they have been residents. Diveny v. Elmira, 51 N. Y. 506; Corwein v. Hames,
11 Johns. (N. Y.) 76; Clark v. Lamb, 2 Allen (Mass.) 396; Dively v. Cedar
Falls, 21 Iowa, 565; Fulweiler v. Louis, 61 Mo. 479; Petition of New Boston, 49
N. H. 328; Commonwealth v. McLane, 4 Gray (Mass.) 427; Fine v. St. Louis
Public Schools, 30 Mo. 166, 173. With other courts, however, and with the
Legislatures, the strict rule seemed to be inconvenient, impracticable, and
unnecessary, and the view was taken that such remote or minute interest in the
litigation might be declared by the Legislature not to be a reason for
disqualification of a judge or juror.

51

A case, much cited, in which this conclusion was reached, and in which the old
English corporation cases were considered, was that of City Council v. Pepper,
1 Rich. (S. C.) 364. The recorder of the city of Charleston sentenced a
nonresident of the city for violation of a city ordinance requiring him to take
out a license for what he did, or to pay a fine not exceeding $20. The contention
was that the defendant was a noncorporator and nonresident, and not subject to
the jurisdiction of the city court; that the recorder was a corporator and
interested in the penalty, and therefore was not competent to try the cause. The
court said (page 366) in respect to Hesketh v. Braddock, 3 Burr. 1847, supra:

52

'It will be remarked that that case depends altogether upon the common law,
and if the city court depended upon the same for its jurisdiction, the objection
might be fatal. But the establishment and jurisdiction of the city court
commences with the act of 1801. * * * By that act it is clothed with the power
of trying all offences against the by-laws of the city, and for that purpose is
given concurrent jurisdiction with the Court of Sessions. This grant of power is
from all the people of the state, through their Legislature, and surely they have
the power to dispense with the common-law objection, that the corporators
were interested, and ought not to be intrusted with the enforcement of their laws
against others. The authority given to the city court to try all offenders against
the city ordinances, impliedly declares, that notwithstanding the common-law
objection, it was right had proper to give it the power to enforce the city laws
against all offenders. That there was great reason in this cannot be doubted,
when it is remembered that the interest of the corporators is so minute as not to
be even thought of, by sheriff, juror or judge. It is very much like the interest

which similar officers would feel in enforcing a state law, the sanction of which
was a penalty. The sum thus to be recovered goes in exoneration of some part
of the burden of government to which every citizen is subjected; but such an
interest has no effect upon the mind. It is too slight to excite prejudice against a
defendant. The same thing is the case here. For the judge, sheriff and jurors,
are members of a corporation of many thousand members. What interest, of
value, have they in a fine of $20? It would put a most eminent calculator to
great trouble to ascertain the very minute grain of interest which each of these
gentlemen might have. To remove so shadowy and slight an objection, the
Legislature thought proper to clothe the city court, consisting of its judge, clerk,
sheriff and jurors, with authority to try the defendant, and he cannot now object
to it.'
53

And the same view is taken in Commonwealth v. Ryan, 5 Mass. 90;

Commonwealth v. Reed, 1 Gray (Mass.) 472, 475; Thomas v. Mt. Vernon, 9
Ohio, 290; Commissioners v. Lytle, 3 Ohio, 289; Wheeling v. Black, 25 W. Va.
266, 280; Board of Justices v. Fennimore, 1 N. J. Law, 190; Foreman v.
Marianna, 43 Ark. 324; Cartersville v. Lyon, 69 Ga. 577; Omaha v. Olmstead,
5 Neb. 446; Hill v. Wells, 6 Pick. (Mass.) 104; Commonwealth v. Emery, 11
Cush. (Mass.) 406; Bennett v. State, 4 Tex. App. 72; Welmaker v. Terrell, 3
Ga. App. 791, 60 S. E. 464; State v. Craig, 80 Me. 85, 13 A. 129.

54

Mr. Justice Cooley, in his work on Constitutional Limitations (7th edition, page
594), points out that the real ground of the ruling in these cases is that:

55

'Interest is so remote, trifling, and insignificant that it may fairly be supposed to

be incapable of affecting the judgment of or of influencing the conduct of an
individual. And where penalties are imposed, to be recovered only in a
municipal court, the judge or jurors in which would be interested as corporators
in the recovery, the law providing for such recovery must be regarded as
precluding the objection of interest.'
But the learned judge then proceeds:

56

'But, except in cases resting upon such reasons, we do not see how the
Legislature can have any power to abolish a maxim which is among the
fundamentals of judicial authority.'

57

Referring, then, to a remark in the case of the Matter of Leefe, 2 Barb. Ch. (N.
Y.) 39, that the people of the state, when framing their Constitution, might
possibly establish so great an anomaly, if they saw fit, the learned author says:

58

'Even this must be deemed doubtful, since the adoption of the fourteenth article
of the Amendments to the federal Constitution, which denies to the state the
right to deprive one of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.'

59

From this review we conclude that a system by which an inferior judge is paid
for his service only when he convicts the defendant has not become so
embedded by custom in the general practice, either at common law or in this
country, that it can be regarded as due process of law, unless the costs usually
imposed are so small that they may be properly ignored as within the maxim
'de minimis non curat lex.'

60

The mayor received for his fees and costs in the present case $12, and from
such costs under the Prohibition Act for seven months he made about $100 a
month, in addition to his salary. We cannot regard the prospect of receipt or loss
of such an emolument in each case as a minute, remote, trifling, or insignificant
interest. It is certainly not fair to each defendant brought before the mayor for
the careful and judicial consideration of his guilt or innocence that the prospect
of such a prospective loss by the mayor should weigh against his aquittal.

61

These are not cases in which the penalties and the costs are negligible. The
field of jurisdiction is not that of a small community, engaged in enforcing its
own local regulations. The court is a state agency, imposing substantial
punishment, and the cases to be considered are gathered from the whole county
by the energy of the village marshals and detectives regularly employed by the
village for the purpose. It is not to be treated as a mere village tribunal for
village peccadilloes. There are doubtless mayors who would not allow such a
consideration as $12 costs in each case to affect their judgment in it, but the
requirement of due process of law in judicial procedure is not satisfied by the
argument that men of the highest honor and the greatest self-sacrifice could
carry it on without danger of injustice. Every procedure which would offer a
possible temptation to the average man as a judge to forget the burden of proof
required to convict the defendant, or which might lead him not to hold the
balance nice, clear, and true between the state and the accused denies the latter
due process of law.

62

But the pecuniary interest of the mayor in the result of his judgment is not the
only reason for holding that due process of law is denied to the defendant here.
The statutes were drawn to stimulate small municipalities, in the country part of
counties in which there are large cities, to organize and maintain courts to try
persons accused of violations of the Prohibition Act everywhere in the county.
The inducement is offered of dividing between the state and the village the
large fines provided by the law for its violations. The trial is to be had before a

mayor without a jury, without opportunity for retrial, and with a review
confined to questions of law presented by a bill of exceptions, with no
opportunity by the reviewing court to set aside the judgment on the weighing of
evidence, unless it should appear to be so manifestly against the evidence as to
indicate mistake, bias, or willful disregard of duty by the trial court. It
specifically authorizes the village to employ detectives, deputy marshals, and
other assistants to detect crime of this kind all over the county, and to bring
offenders before the mayor's court, and it offers to the village council and its
officers a means of substantially adding to the income of the village to relieve it
from further taxation. The mayor is the chief executive of the village. He
supervises all the other executive officers. He is charged with the business of
looking after the finances of the village. It appears from the evidence in this
case, and would be plain if the evidence did not show it, that the law is
calculated to awaken the interest of all those in the village charged with the
responsibility of raising the public money and expending it, in the pecuniarily
successful conduct of such a court. The mayor represents the village and cannot
escape his representative capacity. On the other hand, he is given the judicial
duty, first, of determining whether the defendant is guilty at all; and, second,
having found his guilt, to measure his punishment between $100 as a minimum
and $1,000 as a maximum for first offenses, and $300 as a minimum and
$2,000 as a maximum for second offenses. With his interest as mayor in the
financial condition of the village and his responsibility therefor, might not a
defendant with reason say that he feared he could not get a fair trial or a fair
sentence from one who would have so strong a motive to help his village by
conviction and a heavy fine? The old English cases cited above in the days of
Coke and Holt and Mansfield are not nearly so strong. A situation in which an
official perforce occupies two practically and seriously inconsistent positions,
one partisan and the other judicial, necessarily involves a lack of due process of
law in the trial of defendants charged with crimes before him. City of Boston v.
Baldwin, 139 Mass. 315, 1 N. E. 417; Florida ex rel. Colcord v. Young, 31 Fla.
594, 12 So. 673, 19 L. R. A. 636, 34 Am. St. Rep. 41. It is, of course, so
common to vest the mayor of villages with inferior judicial functions that the
mere union of the executive power and the judicial power in him cannot be said
to violate due process of law. The minor penalties usually attaching to the
ordinances of a village council, or to the misdemeanors in which the mayor
may pronounce final judgment without a jury, do not involve any such addition
to the revenue of the village as to justify the fear that the mayor would be
influenced in his judicial judgment by that fact. The difference between such a
case and the plan and operation of the statutes before us is so plain as not to call
for further elaboration.
63

Counsel for the state argue that it has been decided by this court that the

Legislature of a state may provide such system of courts as it chooses, that there
is nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment that requires a jury trial for any
offender, that it may give such territorial jurisdiction to its courts as it sees fit,
and therefore that there is nothing sinister or constitutionally invalid in giving to
a village mayor the jurisdiction of a justice of the peace to try misdemeanors
committed anywhere in the county, even though the mayor presides over a
village of 1,100 people and exercises jurisdiction over offenses committed in a
county of 500,000. This is true and is established by the decisions of this court
in Missouri v. Lewis, 101 U. S. 22, 30, 25 L. Ed. 989; In re Claasen, 140 U. S.
200, 11 S. Ct. 735, 35 L. Ed. 409. See, also, Carey v. State, 70 Ohio St. 121, 70
N. E. 955. It is also correctly pointed out that it is completely within the power
of the Legislature to dispose of the fines collected in criminal cases as it will,
and it may therefore divide the fines as it does here, one-half of the state and
one-half to the village by whose mayor they are imposed and collected. It is
further said with truth that the Legislature of a state may and often ought to
stimulate prosecutions for crime by offering to those who shall initiate and
carry on such prosecutions rewards for thus acting in the interest of the state
and the people. The Legislature may offer rewards or a percentage of the
recovery to informers. United States v. Murphy & Morgan, 16 Pet. 203, 10 L.
Ed. 937. It may authorize the employment of detectives. But these principles do
not at all affect the question whether the state, by the operation of the statutes
we have considered, has not vested the judicial power in on who by reason of
his interest, both as an individual and as chief executive of the village, is
disqualified to exercise it in the trial of the defendant.
64

It is finally argued that the evidence shows clearly that the defendant was guilty
and that he was only fined $100 which was the minimum amount, and therefore
that he cannot complain of a lack of due process, either in his conviction or in
the amount of the judgment. The plea was not guilty and he was convicted. No
matter what the evidence was against him, he had the right to have an impartial
judge. He seasonably raised the objection, and was entitled to halt the trial
because of the disqualification of the judge, which existed both because of his
direct pecuniary interest in the outcome, and because of his official motive to
convict and to graduate the fine to help the financial needs of the village. There
were thus presented at the outset both features of the disqualification.

65

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Ohio must be reversed, and the cause
remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

66

Judgment reversed.