Mortensen v. United States

I have been unable to concur in affirming the conviction of these appellants because I am not convinced that their act of taking the named young women in their automobile on the vacation trip through the mountains and back was criminal.

Recognizing, as the record requires, that the business at appellants’ house in Grand Island, Nebraska, was carrying on prostitution, I think there is a fallacy in spelling a crime out of the act of taking the inmates away from their place of prostitution and stopping it for the two weeks period of vacation travel. In the Mann Act Congress has exercised its…