Facts: A complaint alleged that the defendants, on September 24, 1927, and on eight subsequent dates in October and November, 1927, published and circulated editions of “The Saturday Press”(published in Minneapolis) which were 'largely devoted to malicious, scandalous and defamatory articles'(based on Session Laws of Minnesota). The articles charged, in substance, provides that a Jewish gangster was in control of gambling, bootlegging, and racketeering in Minneapolis, and that law enforcing officers and agencies were not energetically performing their duties. Most of the charges were directed against the chief of police; he was charged with gross neglect of duty, illicit relations with gangsters, and with participation in graft. The county attorney was charged with knowing the existing conditions and with failure to take adequate measures to remedy them. The mayor was accused of inefficiency and dereliction. One member of the grand jury was stated to be in sympathy with the gangsters. A special grand jury and a special prosecutor were demanded to deal with the situation in general, and, in particular, to investigate an attempt to assassinate one Guilford, one of the original defendants, who, it appears from the articles, was shot by gangsters after the first issue of the periodical had been published. Now defendants challenged the Minnesota statute which provides for the abatement, as a public nuisance, of a malicious, scandalous and defamatory news paper, magazine or other periodical. The District Court ruled against defendants. Hence the appeal.
Issue: Whether or Not the proceeding authorized by the statute herein constitutes an infringement of the freedom of the press.
Held: Yes. The insistence that the statute is designed to prevent the circulation of scandal which tends to disturb the public peace and to provoke assaults and the commission of crime is unavailing.
The reason for the enactment, as the state court has said, is that prosecutions to enforce penal statutes for libel do not result in 'efficient repression or suppression of the evils of scandal.' In the present instance, the proof was that nine editions of the newspaper or periodical in question were published on successive dates, and that they were chiefly devoted to charges against public officers and in relation to the prevalence and protection of crime. In such a case, these officers are not left to their ordinary remedy in a suit for libel, or the authorities to a prosecution for criminal libel. The statute not only operates to suppress the offending newspaper or periodical, but to put the publisher under an effective censorship.
Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press; but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity.
The liberty of the press was to be unrestrained, but he who used it was to be responsible in case of its abuse.' Public officers, whose character and conduct remain open to debate and free discussion in the press, find their remedies for false accusations in actions under libel laws providing for redress and punishment, and not in proceedings to restrain the publication of newspapers and periodicals.
Characterizing the publication as a business, and the business as a nuisance, does not permit an invasion of the constitutional immunity against restraint. Nor can it be said that the constitutional freedom from previous restraint is lost because charges are made of derelictions which constitute crimes.
The preliminary freedom, by virtue of the very reason for its existence, does not depend, as this court has said, on proof of truth.
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