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Timestamp: 2018-06-22 17:16:00
Document Index: 659873378

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 5440', '§ 5440', '§ 198', '§ 200', '§ 5440', '§ 2', '§ 5440']

HYDE V. UNITED STATES, 225 U. S. 347 (1912) - US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON-LINE
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HYDE V. UNITED STATES, 225 U. S. 347 (1912)
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Overt acts performed in one district by one of the parties who had conspired in another district in violation of § 5440, Rev.Stat., give jurisdiction to the court in the district where the overt acts are performed as to all the conspirators. Brown v. Elliott, p. 225 U. S. 392, post. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In this case, it does not appear that the jury was coerced by the court into agreeing on the verdict or that the conviction of some of the chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Before proceeding to consider the indictment, it may be well to state the laws and conditions to which the conspiracy charged in the indictment relates. By acts of Congress dated, respectively, March 3, 1853, 10 Stat. 246, c. 145, and February 14, 1859, 11 Stat. 383, c. 33, the states of California and Oregon were granted, for the purpose of public schools, all of sections 16 and 32 in each township, with certain exceptions unimportant to mention. The states authorized the sale of the land so granted for $1.25 per acre, California limiting the right of purchase chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Frederick A. Hyde and John A. Benson were engaged from the 24th of October, 1901, until the 1st of February, 1904, in the City of San Francisco, State of California, in the business of obtaining from the United States and appropriating, in the manner hereinafter set forth, the possession and use of and title to public lands of the United chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Hyde, Benson, Dimond, and Schneider during such period, to-wit, on the 30th day of December, 1901 at Washington, District of Columbia, unlawfully did conspire, combine, and confederate together, and with other persons unknown, to defraud the United States out of the possession and use of and title to divers tracts of the public lands of the United States open and to be opened to selection in lieu of lands within forest reserves established and to be established in California and Oregon, by means of false and fraudulent practices whereby Hyde and Benson were to obtain fraudulently from those states title to and possession of school lands within the limits of such reserves which were open to purchase from those states by residents thereof, being citizens of the United States or having declared their intention to become such, under the laws thereof, in quantities for each resident not exceeding 640 chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Hyde and Benson were, during said period, to induce and procure, and take advantage of the fact that they had induced and procured, the said Woodford D. Harlan and William E. Valk by paying them respectively divers sums of money for that purpose, corruptly to furnish information concerning the status in the General Land Office of all matters pertaining to their said business, and especially to their false and fraudulent selections, and to expedite, contrary to their duty, the matters which should be pending in the Land Office pertaining to their business and the examination of such selections made and to be made by Hyde and Benson, and by securing the approval thereof in advance and otherwise favoring and assisting Hyde and Benson in their fraudulent practices. This chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The indictment contains the description of the lands which it was the object of the conspiracy to secure, amounting to 6,800 acres, of which 3,400 acres were selected in chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Two overt acts are charged against Hyde, one of which was committed on July 29, 1903, by causing to be transmitted by mail from the United States land office at Vancouver to the Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington a written notification to the Commissioner, signed by Hyde for C. W. Clarke, that the latter appealed to the Secretary of the Interior from a certain decision of the Commissioner, with an assignment of errors, and the second of which was that Hyde, on March 31, 1902, caused to be presented by the hand of Dimond a paper signed by him, Hyde, notifying the Commissioner that one S.E. Kieffer was authorized and appointed as Hyde's chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Attorney General assented to the granting of the writ, he saying that "the determination of this case depends upon the principles of law governing conspiracy," and that, in view of the decisions of the lower courts and of the numerous prosecutions under the conspiracy statute, "it was of vital importance to the United States, as chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
It is contended by the defendants that the conspiracy -- the union in an unlawful purpose -- constitutes the crime, and that the requirement of an overt act does not give the offense criminal quality or intent, but that the provision of the statute in regard to such act merely affords an opportunity to withdraw from the design without incurring its criminality (called in the cases a locus penitentiae). The following, among other cases, are cited in support of this view: United States v. Britton, 108 U. S. 199, 108 U. S. 204; Pettibone v. United States, 148 U. S. 197, 148 U. S. 202; chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
A question may be raised as to the extent of the agency between conspirators, but we need not enter into that broad inquiry. As for as the case at bar is concerned, it chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
This provision takes an emphasis of signification from the fact chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Section 731 was applied in In re Palliser, 136 U. S. 257, to the offense of unlawfully using the mails. It was decided that an offense committed by mailing a letter was continued in the place where the letter was received, and triable in the district court of the United States having jurisdiction in such place. The case was cited in Benson v. Henkel, 198 U. S. 1, 198 U. S. 15, which was concerned with extradition proceedings against one charged with the crime of bribery, alleged to have been committed by mailing a letter in the State of California, directed to certain officers of the General Land Office in the District of Columbia. It was objected to the removal of the defendant to the District of Columbia for trial that the crime was committed, if at all, in California. The contention was held untenable under the ruling in In re Palliser. The strong expression of counsel for the defendants may therefore be turned from derision of to the support of the view that crime, even conspiracy, may be carried from one place to another in the "mail pouches." And we may ask, in passing, may not a conspiracy be formed through the mails, constituted by letters sent by persons living in different states? And, if so formed, we may further ask, to which state would the conspiracy be assigned? In such cases, must the law come forward with some presumption or fiction, if you chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
This Court has recognized, therefore, that there may be a constructive presence in a state, distinct from a personal presence, by which a crime may be consummated. And if it may be consummated, it may be punished by an exercise of jurisdiction -- that is, a person committing it may chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
We realize the strength of the apprehension that to extend the jurisdiction of conspiracy by overt acts may give to the government a power which may be abused, and we do not wish to put out of view such possibility. But there are counter-considerations. It is not an oppression in the law to accept the place where an unlawful purpose is attempted to be executed as the place of its punishment, and rather conspirators be taken from their homes than the victims and witnesses of the conspiracy be taken from theirs. We must not, in too great a solicitude for the criminal, give him a kind of immunity from punishment because of the difficulty in convicting him -- indeed, of even detecting him. And this may result if the rule contended for be adopted. Let him meet with his fellows in secret, and he will try to do so; let the place be concealed, as it can be, and he and they may execute their crime in every state in the Union and defeat punishment in all. And the suppositions are not fanciful, as illustrated by a case submitted coincidentally with this. Brown v. Elliott, post, p. 225 U. S. 392. The possibility of such a result repels the contention and demonstrates that to yield to it would carry technical rules and rigidity of reasoning too far for the practical administration of criminal justice. We see no reason why a constructive presence should not be assigned chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Cases are cited which oppose the views we have expressed, and others to support them. In Robinson v. United States, in the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Eighth Circuit, the question was directly presented. 172 F.1d 5. The conspiracy passed on was alleged in the indictment to have been entered into in Cincinnati and Chicago, the overt acts set out were proved to have been committed in Minneapolis, and the evidence showed that it was the intention of the conspirators to carry out their conspiracy at Minneapolis. The trial court was moved to direct a verdict for the defendants if the jury found that the agreement was entered into in Cincinnati and Chicago, and was complete when the parties went into the District of Minnesota. The instruction was refused, and, the defendants having been convicted, the refusal was assigned as error in the circuit court of appeals based on the provisions of the Constitution of the United States giving those accused of crime the right to trial by jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
But it is said that the crime charged is not the crime proved, even if it be assumed that the overt act is part of the crime of conspiracy under § 5440. In support of chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The plea of the statute as affected by overt acts was considered in United States v. Kissel, 218 U. S. 601, where it was declared that a conspiracy may be a continuing one, and the doctrine is applicable to the case at bar unless there is something special in the facts regarding Hyde and Schneider which constitutes a defense as to them. This is asserted. It is contended that the relation of Schneider to the conspiracy was only that of one rendering service as a servant of his master (Hyde), in consideration of the salary paid to him by his master, and that he had not, within three years before the finding of the indictment, participated in any way in the carrying out of the master's scheme, the subject of the conspiracy. And from this it is contended the question arises whether Hyde is not also entitled to the protection of the statute of limitation chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The contention of the defendants is that the statute begins to run from the last overt act within three years from the formation of the conspiracy within which there was conscious participation. (Italics ours.) The government chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
makes the counter-contention that, however true this may be as to accomplished conspiracies, it is not true of one having continuity of purpose and which contemplated the performance of acts through a series of years. And that such a distinction can exist, we have seen, is decided and illustrated in United States v. Kissel. And necessarily so. Men may have lawful and unlawful purposes, temporary or enduring. The distinction is vital, and has different consequences and incidents. The conspiracy accomplished or having a distinct period of accomplishment is different from one that is to be continuous. If it may continue, it would seem necessarily to follow the relation of the conspirators to it must continue, being to it during its life as it was to it the moment it was brought into life. If each conspirator was the agent of the others at the latter time, he remains an agent during all of the former time. This view does not, as it is contended, take the defense of the statute of limitations from conspiracies. It allows it to all, but makes its application different. Nor does it take from a conspirator the power to withdraw from the execution of the offense or to avert a continuing criminality. It requires affirmative action, but certainly that is no hardship. Having joined in an unlawful scheme, having constituted agents for its performance, scheme and agency to be continuous until full fruition be secured, until he does some act to disavow or defeat the purpose, he is in no situation to claim the delay of the law. As the offense has not been terminated or accomplished, he is still offending. And we think, consciously offending -- offending as certainly, as we have said, as at the first moment of his confederation, and continuously through every moment of its existence. The successive overt acts are but steps toward its accomplishment, not necessarily its accomplishment. This is the reasoning of the Kissel case, stated in another way. As he has started evil forces, he must withdraw his support chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
There are overt acts charged subsequent to the disclosure made by Schneider, and it is contended that, by the instruction embodied in the seventh assignment of error, Schneider was continued in the conspiracy by overt acts committed after his disclosure to the agent of the Land chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The instruction does not sustain the contention based upon it. The court submitted to the jury the effect of repudiation, and whether it was adhered to, as evidence of Schneider's further participation in the conspiracy by the overt acts done subsequent to the date of his disclosure. Acts prior to that time are within the principles we have announced, and the only question under the chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The case was remanded for further proceedings, and the mandate was filed in the Supreme Court of the District April 26, 1906. Nearly two years afterwards (April 1, 1908), the defendants filed pleas in abatement, alleging irregularity in the making up of the list of jurors from which the grand jury which found the indictment was selected. The charge was that the commission to make a list of jurors appointed under § 198 of the District Code placed on the "list the names of persons many of which were selected not by themselves or by any of them, but by some other person or persons whose names are" to the defendant unknown, and that, on the 16th of November, 1903, the commissioners met in the District of Columbia and then and there made an order by which they undertook to appoint one James A. Harstock secretary of said commission, and undertook by a further order to give him the right of access to the jury box provided in accordance with § 200 of the Code, and that he took the box, unaccompanied by any other person, into a room in the City Hall and there opened it and took out of it all of the pieces of paper therein containing the names of the jurors, and from day to day during several successive days replaced in the box such names as he deemed fit, and thereupon returned it to the custody of the clerk. The chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In the case at bar, four years elapsed between the finding of the indictment and the filing of the plea, two years after the mandate of the Court of Appeals sustaining the action of the trial court upon the demurrer and after a bill of particulars had been demanded and furnished. The delay is not attempted to be explained. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
If there is confusion in the instruction, it is easily resolved. It is clear, when read in connection with other chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The court emphasized the necessity of the proof of the conspiracy, and stated that by it the overt acts were to be judged, saying: "An overt act must be one in pursuance of the conspiracy and one in furtherance of it," and whether a certain act was in pursuance of it might depend entirely upon what the conspiracy was. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The next assignment of defendants is that the court erred in allowing the district attorney, on the direct examination of witnesses for the government, to examine them as to previous statements made by them to certain representatives of the government, and in permitting comment upon such statements as tended to show their truth. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The next contention, constituting the twelfth assignment of error, is as to the refusal of the court to permit the defendants to prove that certain letters addressed to John P. Jones never reached the Dead Letter Office. This testimony, it is insisted, became significant and important to the defendants from the fact that the district attorney had asked Schneider if he (Schneider) had not gone under the name of John P. Jones at the post office while in Mexico at a place called Allamos. On redirect examination, he explained the reason to have been that he had suspected the postmaster at Tucson, that letters which had been written to him had not reached him, and that, at the time mentioned, his wife, who was at Tucson, addressed him as John P. Jones, but that nobody else had. He further testified that the letters he referred to were chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
We answer the contention as the Court of Appeals did -- "the question is immaterial, because the applications were fraudulent by reason of the agreement for transfer" -- chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The motion for a new trial set forth that the verdict was the result of an agreement between certain of the chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
But, even conceiving such possibility, we think the court rightly ruled. It was within the issues of the case to convict some of the defendants and acquit others, and we think the rule expressed in Wright v. Illinois & Miss. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
* Ex Parte Black, 147 F.8d 2, 840, and same case in 160 F.4d 1; Ware v. United States, 154 F.5d 7; United States v. Eccles, 181 F.9d 6; United States v. Greene, 115 F.3d 3, 350; Ochs v. People, 25 Ill.App. 379, same case, 124 Ill. 399.
This is an indictment under Rev.Stat. § 5440, amended, act of May 17, 1879, c. 8, 21 Stat. 4, for a conspiracy to defraud the United States. The petitioners were tried and convicted in the District of Columbia, the conviction was affirmed by the Court of Appeals, 35 App.D.C. 451, and thereupon a writ of certiorari was granted by this Court. The scheme was to obtain by fraudulent devices from the States of California and Oregon school lands lying within forest reserves, to exchange them for public lands of the United States open to selection, and then to sell the lands so obtained. Hyde and Schneider were in California, and never were actually in the District in aid of the conspiracy, but overt acts are alleged to have been done there to effect the objects in view. Most of these acts are innocent, taken by themselves, consisting mainly of the entry of appearance by Hyde's lawyer in the matter of different selections, the filing of papers concerning them, and letters urging speed. Hyde is alleged to have caused some documents affecting the same to be transmitted from California to the Commissioner at Washington, and in the last six counts payments to employees in the Land Office are alleged to have been made with corrupt purpose and in aid of the plan by a person who was included in the indictment as a conspirator, but whom the jury did not convict. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In order to answer this question, it is not enough to say that, as the overt act was one that was contemplated by the conspirators, it is treated as the Act of them all, and that this is equivalent to saying that they were constructively present. That would be passing a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. They are chargeable there for the act, but it does not follow that they were there to other intents. They are shown not to have been by the fact that they could not be treated as fugitives from justice even in respect of that very act, when and although that act was itself a crime. Hyatt v. New York, 188 U. S. 691, 188 U. S. 712. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Obviously the use of this fiction or form of words must not be pushed to such a point in the administration of the national law as to transgress the requirement of the Constitution that the trial of crimes shall be held in the state and district where the crimes shall have been committed. Art. III, § 2, cl. 3. Amendments, Art. VI. With the country extending from ocean to ocean, this requirement is even more important now than it was a hundred years ago, and must be enforced in letter and spirit if we are to make impossible hardships amounting to grievous wrongs. In the case of conspiracy, the danger is conspicuously brought out. Every overt act done in aid of it, of course, is attributed to the conspirators, and if that means that the conspiracy is present as such wherever any chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
No distinction can be taken based on the gravity of the overt act, or the fact that it was contemplated, or that it is important for the accomplishment of the substantive evil that the conspiracy aims to bring about and the law seeks to prevent. That would be carrying over the law of attempts to where it does not belong. Although both are adjective crimes, a conspiracy is not an attempt, even under Rev.Stat. § 5440, which requires an overt act. When I first read that section, I thought that it was an indefinite enlargement of the law of attempts. But reflection and the decisions both convinced me that I was wrong. The statute simply did away with a doubt as to the requirements of the common law. Rex v. Spragg, 2 Burr. 993, 999; Roscoe, Crim.Ev., 6th ed., 381, 382. An attempt, in the strictest sense, is an act expected to bring about a substantive wrong by the forces of nature. With it is classed the kindred offense where the act and the natural conditions present or supposed to be present are not enough to do the harm without a further act, but where it is so near to the result that, if coupled with an intent to produce that result, the danger is very great. Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U. S. 375, 196 U. S. 396. But combination, intention, and overt act may all be present without amounting to a criminal attempt -- as if all that chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
I can think of no other case in which it would be argued that an act constituting no part of the crime charged draws jurisdiction to the place where it is done. Even when the act is the substance of a felony, the history of the chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The defendants were in California and never left the state, so far as this case is concerned. The fraud, assuming as I do, for the purposes of decision, that there was one, was to get land from the United States there and elsewhere on the Pacific coast. If successful, it would be punished there. The crime with which the defendants are charged is having been engaged in or members of a conspiracy, nothing else; no act, other than what is implied as necessary to signify their understanding to each other. It is punished only to create a further obstacle to the ultimate crime in California. The defendants never were members of a conspiracy within a thousand miles of the District chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
It is said that the conspiracy may be a secret one; but that cannot affect the tests of jurisdiction. The overt act may amount to evidence not only of its existence, but of its place. But to treat overt acts as evidence is one chanroblesvirtualawlibrary