For Celestino Vincioni, selling grapes to mining camps during the early years of Prohibition must have felt like taking candy from a baby.

Solicit orders for grapes. Deliver grapes. Collect payment for grapes. Repeat.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a bit, as it turns out, starting with a minor arrest that remarkably ascended to the New Mexico Supreme Court – not once but twice.

Dawson arrest

On Sept. 27, 1923, Vincioni was on his way to deliver grapes to miners in Dawson, New Mexico, when his car was pulled over by Lawrence O. Mace, the town marshal.

Mace, who would hold this post for 45 years, charged Vincioni with trespassing because he did not have permission from Phelps Dodge Corp., owner of the mining town, to conduct business on the property.

Vincioni was arraigned and convicted of the trespassing charge before Justice of the Peace T.L. Kinney, the company-hired town supervisor. Separately, Vincioni lost his $2,000 deposit – more than $30,000 in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars – on the now undeliverable grapes, which no doubt were destined to be stomped into bootleg wine in the privacy of the miners’ homes.

Vincioni appealed his conviction to Colfax County District Court in Raton, where attorneys A.C. Voorhees and H.A. Kiker pleaded his case before Judge Thomas D. Leib and a jury of “twelve good and lawful men,” according to court documents.

District Attorney Hugh B. Woodward, representing the county, argued that Phelps Dodge was operating in accordance with state law when it posted notices requiring outsiders to obtain permission before entering the property, especially for business purposes.

Plus, Vincioni should have known better, Woodward said, since Phelps Dodge had denied his request for a permit to “market or peddle” grapes in Dawson eight months earlier.

Undeterred, Vincioni had begun soliciting orders directly from miners, then delivering the grapes to their homes. That’s precisely what he was up to when he was interrupted by the town marshal.

For their part, Vincioni’s lawyers called attention to the discrepancy in the posting of notices in the name of the Stag Canyon Fuel Co., a subsidiary of Phelps Dodge. Under state law, his attorneys argued, only the company operating the property – Phelps Dodge – had the authority to post such notices.

Furthermore, they cited an earlier case, Commonwealth v. Burford, where the court found that an individual leasing a house on company-owned property not only had access to the streets around it, but so did those who “visited his home for any lawful purpose.”

Vincioni’s lawyers put forward these arguments only after the judge denied their motion for a directed verdict of not guilty on the grounds that the prosecutor had failed to make his case.

On May 17, 1924, after a short trial, jury foreman E.T. Gillispie delivered the verdict: “We, the jury in the above entitled cause, find the defendant guilty.”

High court appeal

Vincioni’s lawyers appealed his conviction to the New Mexico Supreme Court in State v. Vincioni, where the case turned on the trial judge’s decision to deny Vincioni’s bid for a directed verdict prior to the case going to the jury.

“We conclude that the state rested without having established a prima facie case,” Justice John C. Watson wrote. “Appellant was entitled to a directed verdict. To refuse it was error.”

With Chief Justice Frank W. Parker and Justice Howard L. Bickley concurring, Watson ordered Vincioni’s conviction reversed and remanded to the district court for discharge, a decision the high court affirmed following a state-sought rehearing on Sept. 4, 1925.

End of story?

Not quite.

Civil case

One year later, Vincioni, now a resident of Folsom, filed a civil suit against Phelps Dodge in Union County District Court in Clayton, seeking $10,000 in damages and another $5,000 for “unlawful, willful, wanton and malicious acts.” In essence, Vincioni’s lawyers argued their client never should have been arrested in the first place.

Prior to putting on a defense, Phelps Dodge’s lawyers moved for a directed verdict. Judge Carl A. Hatch, who years later as a U.S. senator would author the Hatch Act to prohibit federal workers from engaging in political activity, granted the motion.

Vincioni once again appealed to the state Supreme Court, but this time the justices affirmed the district court judge’s decision. That ruling – Vincioni v. Phelps Dodge Corporation et al – would be cited in malicious prosecution cases as late as 1982.

In 1939, Vincioni entered the wholesale liquor business as a partner in the Raton Wholesale Liquor Co., a position he held until the late 1950s. He died in 1977, at the age of 90, and is buried at Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Raton.