## Facts

- Congress authorized federal construction of a lighthouse at Cape Hatteras and a beacon at Shell Castle Island, North Carolina, with federal contracting handled through the Treasury Department.
- Tench Coxe, Commissioner of the Revenue, was directed to receive proposals for the construction work.
- Robert Worrall offered money to Coxe with intent to influence Coxe’s official conduct in connection with awarding or favoring a contract.
- A federal grand jury indicted Worrall in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Pennsylvania District on two counts for attempted bribery of a federal officer.
- The indictment relied on common law rather than any federal statute defining bribery or prescribing punishment.
- Worrall was tried and convicted; after conviction, he moved in arrest of judgment on the ground that federal courts lacked jurisdiction over common-law crimes.

## Issues

1. Whether federal courts may exercise criminal jurisdiction over common-law offenses (including attempted bribery of a federal officer) when Congress has not defined the offense and fixed punishment by statute.
2. Whether English common law, or any general common law, is part of the “law of the United States” enforceable as federal criminal law.

## Decision

- The circuit court judges issued separate opinions and divided on whether federal courts possess common-law criminal jurisdiction.
- Justice Chase concluded federal courts lack authority to prosecute “offences merely at the common law” because the United States, as a federal government, has no common-law criminal code absent congressional enactment.
- Judge Peters concluded that certain attacks on federal institutions or corruption of federal officers could be punished as offenses against the United States even without a specific statute.
- Despite the division, the conviction was left standing and a relatively mild sentence was imposed, with Justice Chase acquiescing in the result.

## Legal Principles

- Federal criminal jurisdiction is grounded in the Constitution and acts of Congress; absent statutory definition and punishment, federal courts (under Chase’s view) cannot treat conduct as a federal crime merely because it is a common-law offense.
- Congress may have constitutional power to create and punish offenses necessary and proper to carry federal powers into execution, but courts may not supply criminal definitions and penalties in Congress’s place.
- States may recognize and apply common-law crimes through their own legal systems, but the federal government does not automatically inherit English common law as a national criminal code.
- The case reflects an early conflict between (a) an enumerated-powers, separation-of-powers approach denying unwritten federal crimes and (b) a limited theory permitting punishment of offenses directly threatening federal operations.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a conviction for attempting to bribe a federal officer even though the judges disagreed on the existence of federal common-law criminal jurisdiction; Justice Chase’s view—that federal courts cannot prosecute common-law crimes without a statute—became the dominant rule in later federal doctrine.


United States v. Worrall, 28 F. Cas. 774 (C.C.D. Pa. 1798)