Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/136/257/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 08:24:29+00:00

Document:
A sale by a postmaster of postage stamps on credit is a violation of the Act of June 17, 1878, c. 259, § 1, forbidding him to "sell or dispose of them except for cash."
Sending a letter to a postmaster asking him whether, if the writer of the letter will send him five thousand circulars in addressed envelopes, he will put postage stamps on them and send them out at the rate of one hundred daily, and promising him, if he will do so, to pay to him the price of the stamps, is a tender of a contract for the payment of money to the postmaster, with intent to induce him to sell postage stamps on credit and in violation of his duty, and is punishable under § 5451 of the Revised Statutes.
The offense of tendering a contract for the payment of money in a letter mailed in one district and addressed to a public officer in another, to induce him to violate his official duty may be tried in the district in which the letter is received by the officer.
"United States of America, Southern District of New York, ss. John H. Bario, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he is an inspector of the Post Office Department; that on October 23d 1888, Charles Palliser of the City and New York, then and there doing business under the name and style of Palliser, Palliser & Co. at Old Lyme, in the County of New London, in the State and District of Connecticut, with force and arms unlawfully and willfully did tender to one W. R. De Wolf, who then and there was and thereafter continued to be until the 4th day of March, 1889, a postmaster of the United States at a certain post office known as Black Hall, in said County of New London, a certain contract in the words and figures following:"
"New York, October 23, 1888"
" Dear Sir: We desire in each county a place through which to send out mail matter, as we want to reach every businessman, mechanic, and real estate owner in every state by circular. If we ship to you from our printing department, located in the country in your state, say 5,000 or 10,000 circulars in envelopes, and each addressed, will you give the same your careful attention, sending out daily 50 to 100 during the coming months until they are all out, and then render us statement of same, with account for stamps used, and we will remit. We are doing this at other general store post offices in adjoining counties to yours, and it is perfectly legitimate, and we await your reply in addressed and stamped envelope enclosed herewith, as, if you cannot attend to same, we must at once send elsewhere."
to the statutes thereof in such case made and provided. Deponent further says that said Charles Palliser is now within the Southern District of New York."
"Subscribed and sworn to before me this 27th day of September, 1889."
"JOHN A. SHIELDS, U.S. Commissioner"
Second. The warrant of arrest, dated September 2 7, 1889, reciting the substance of the complaint, and that it had been satisfactorily proved to the commissioner "that the said Charles Palliser is now within the Southern District of New York."
Third. The bringing of the prisoner before the commissioner, and his discharge on bail pending his examination.
"Gentlemen: Have received a case of circulars from you, which I did not order, as cannot handle them. They are here subject to your order. Take notice of sec. 515 of postal laws and regulations, 1887."
"W. R. De Wolf, P.M."
Fifth. An order of the commissioner, dated November 26, 1889, committing the prisoner, upon his surrender by his bail, to the custody of the marshal.
"it appearing to me from the testimony offered that there is probable cause to believe the said Charles Palliser guilty of the offense charged in said warrant, the said Charles Palliser is hereby committed for trial at the District of Connecticut, the district in which the offense is alleged to have been committed, and he is hereby remanded to the custody of the United States Marshal for the Southern District of New York until the warrant for his removal shall issue by the United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, or he be otherwise dealt with according to law."
The record transmitted to this Court, after setting forth the proceedings above stated, further set forth: 1st, an opinion of the circuit judge, filed December 3, 1889, treating the case as before him, and not before the circuit court, and directing the writ of habeas corpus to be dismissed; 2d., an order of the circuit court at a stated term held on the same day, ordering the writ of habeas corpus to be dismissed and the prisoner remanded to the custody of the marshal; 3d., an appeal from that order to this Court.
Upon the record before us, the final order dismissing the writ of habeas corpus and remanding the prisoner to the custody of the marshal appears to have been decision of the circuit court at a stated term, and therefore clearly subject to an appeal to this Court under the Act of March 3, 1885, c. 353, 23 Stat. 437. Carper v. Fitzgerald, 121 U. S. 87.
But he was rightly remanded to custody, because the return shows that he was charged with a crime against the laws of the United States and within the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States for the District of Connecticut.
states, . . . with intent to influence him to commit, or aid in committing, or to collude in or allow any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud on the United States, or to induce him to do or omit to do any act in violation of his lawful duty, shall be punished"
"No postmaster of any class, or other person connected with the postal service, entrusted with the sale or custody of postage stamps, stamped envelopes, or postal cards, shall use or dispose of them in the payment of debts or in the purchase of merchandise or other salable articles, or pledge or hypothecate the same, or sell or dispose of them, except for cash,"
on pain of being deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and punished accordingly. 20 Stat. 141.
By this statute, postmasters are peremptorily forbidden not only to dispose of postage stamps in the payment of debts or in the purchase of commodities or to pledge them, but "to sell or dispose of them except for cash." The word "cash" in this statute, as in common speech, means ready money, or money in hand, either in current coin or other legal tender, or in bank bills or checks paid and received as money, and does not include promises to pay money in the future. A sale on credit is not, ordinarily speaking, and in the absence of any evidence of usage, a sale for cash within the meaning of that word as used in statutes or contracts. Muller v. Norton, 132 U. S. 501; Bliss v. Arnold, 8 Vt. 252; Steward v. Scudder, 4 Zabriskie 96; Foley v. Mason, 6 Md. 37; Blair v. Wilson, 28 Grattan 165, 175; Farr v. Sims, Rich.Eq.Cas. 122, 131; Meng v. Houser, 13 Rich.Eq. 210, 213.
"Life insurance is a cash business. Its disbursements are all in money, and its receipts must necessarily be in the same medium. This is the universal usage and rule of all such companies."
money in payment of a premium; no question arose or was considered as to the premium note, and it cannot reasonably be inferred that the learned justice meant to intimate that a premium note was cash or money before the amount thereof was paid by the insured and received by the insurance company according to the terms of their contracts.
The substance and effect of the letter written and sent by the petitioner, in behalf of himself and his partners, to De Wolf as postmaster was to ask him whether, if they should send him from five to ten thousand circulars in addressed envelopes, he would put postage stamps on them and send them out at the rate of 50 to 100 daily, and to promise him that, if he would do so and would render them a statement of his doings and an account of the stamps used, they would remit to him the price of the stamps. If we take five thousand, the smallest number of circulars proposed to be sent by the petitioner to the postmaster, and one hundred, the largest number suggested to be sent out by the postmaster daily, it would require fifty days for the postmaster to send out the circulars, and the petitioner would thus be allowed an average credit of at least twenty-five days on his payments to the postmaster for five thousand postage stamps, and the postmaster would receive and retain a commission on the sale of as many stamps, which neither he nor any other postmaster would retain if the circulars were mailed by the petitioner at the post office in New York, or any other post office where the postmaster was paid by a salary.
ultimately have the right to retain by way of commission from the United States would be no greater than he would have upon a lawful sale for cash of an equal amount of postage stamps.
The remaining and more interesting question is whether the petitioner can be tried for the offense in this district of Connecticut.
The petitioner relies on those provisions of the Constitution of the United States which declare that in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall have the right to be tried by an impartial jury of the state and district where the crime shall have been committed. Article III, Section 2; Amendments, Art. 6.
But the right thereby secured is not a right to be tried in the district where the accused resides, nor even in the district in which he is personally at the time of committing the crime, but in the district "wherein the crime shall have been committed."
where the shot is fired. Rex v. Coombes, 1 Leach (4th ed.) 388; United States v. Davis, 2 Sumner 482; People v. Adams, 3 Denio 190, 207, 1 N.Y. 173, 176, 179; Cockburn, C.J., in Queen v. Keyn, 2 Ex.D. 233, 234.
"When any offense against the United States is begun in one judicial district and completed in any other, it shall be deemed to have been committed in either, and may be dealt with, inquired of, tried, determined, and punished in either district in the same manner as if it had been actually and wholly committed therein."
v. Rathbun, 21 Wend. 509; People v. Adams, 3 Denio 190, 1 N.Y. 173; Foute v. State, 15 Lea 712.
The only decision to the contrary, cited for the petitioner, is one in which the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, upon the authority of a former case in the same court in which no opinion is reported, held that where a letter containing a forged check was put in the post office at Baltimore addressed to a person in Washington, there was no uttering of the forged paper in Washington. United States v. Plympton, 4 Cranch C.C. 309, citing United States v. Wright, 2 Cranch C.C. 296. In Dana's Case, 7 Ben. 1, a warrant to remove to the District of Columbia a person alleged to have printed a libel in a newspaper published in New York and circulated by his authority in the District of Columbia was refused by MR. JUSTICE BLATCHFORD, then district judge, not because the offense could not be punished in the District of Columbia, but because the law of that District provided for its prosecution by information only, and was therefore unconstitutional. In United States v. Comerford, 25 F. 902, an indictment on § 3893 of the Revised Statutes, for "knowingly depositing or causing to be deposited" in the post office at New York a letter containing obscene matter in a sealed envelope addressed to a person in Texas, was quashed, not merely for want of jurisdiction in Texas, but because the court held that the act did not constitute an offense under that statute, in accord with the decision of this Court at the present term in United States v. Chase, 135 U. S. 255.
an offense was committed in Connecticut, and that, in either aspect, the District Court of the United States for the District of Connecticut had jurisdiction of the charge against the petitioner. Whether he might have been indicted in New York is a question not presented by this appeal.

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 § 3893
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