Case ID: f_80/html/0513-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "HUGHES, District Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

UNITED STATES v. JONES.
    (Circuit Court, E. D. Virginia.
    April 11, 1897.)
    Larceny prom Mails—Decoy Letters,
    Criminal prosecutions for abstracting money from tbe mails may be based upon tbe taking of money from decoy letters mailed by post-office inspectors.
    This was an indictment, under Rev. St. § 5467, against Ulysses T. Jones, Jr., for abstracting and embezzling money from the mails.
    Tbe facts, as developed in tbe evidence, show that complaints bad been made against the post office at Mattoax, where tbe defendant was assistant postmaster, in consequence of which tbe post-office department bad delegated one of its inspectors to investigate tbe matter. This investigation showed that two letters mailed on the train from Richmond to Mattoax by tbe inspector on tbe 9th of February last, which contained money, were not in the'mail bag after it passed through the hands of the assistant postmaster at Mattoax, whereupon the post-office inspector visited the post office at Mattoax, and, together with a person called in as a witness by him, found the money, which had been placed in one of the letters and marked, in a barrel in the post office, and one of the other letters, which had been mailed by him that morning, with money in it, marked, together with four other letters in the post office. The assistant postmaster stated to the inspector that he knew nothing of the letters at first, but subsequently produced one of the decoy letters and four other letters which had been detained from the said mail. The accused stated that these five letters had been left out of the mail accidentally, and denied all knowledge of the other letter, the money from which was found in the barrel. Such, in brief, are the facts. Upon these facts the defense asked the court to instruct the jury that a decoy letter, addressed to a fictitious person, could not be the subject of theft. The court declined to give the instructions, and, under decisions of the supreme court of the United States, instructed the jury that such a letter could be the subject of theft.
    W. H. White, U. S. Atty., cited the following authorities:
    U. S. v. Rapp, 30 Fed. 818; U. S. v. Hamilton, 9 Fed. 442; U. S. v. Cottingham, 2 Blatchf. 470, Fed. Cas. No. 14,872; U. S. v. Foye, 1 Curt. 364, Fed. Cas. No. 15,157; U. S. v. Matthews, 35 Fed. 890; Goode’s Case, 159 U. S. 663, 16 Sup. Ct. 136; Montgomery’s Case, 162 U. S. 410, 16 Sup. Ct. 797; Price v. U. S., 17 Sup. Ct. 366.
   HUGHES, District Judge.

The circuit courts of the United States have not been disposed to encourage the use of decoy letters as the basis of criminal prosecutions for depredations upon the mails. There is something repugnant in the idea of the government, by art and contrivance, entrapping one of its citizens into the commission of crime in order to subject him to criminal prosecution; and such prosecutions have been felt by the courts to be more or less objectionable in morals and in policy. The use of decoy letters for the purpose of discovering who the mail robbers are is in itself probably necessary, and, if objectionable, is at least tolerable, on the ground of necessity. But to go further, and, after the citizen has been seduced by the government into robbing the mail, to prosecute him criminally for the act, is more or less offensive to public sentiment. I should have been disposed to follow the rulings of some of the circuit courts in discouraging these prosecutions, but I think the supreme court has decided, unmistakably, not only that the use of decoy letters is necessary to the detection of certain offenses, but that criminal prosecutions based on decoys must be sustained. I will therefore give to the jury the instructions asked for by the district attorney, and will refuse to give the instructions offered by counsel for the defense.