Court Opinion

ID: 8638212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:48:46.431259+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:56:00.293015
License: Public Domain

DILLON, Circuit Judge
(TREAT. District Judge, concurring). — Respecting the objections against the admissibility as-evidence of certain dispatches, we have united in a conclusion as respects all except two dispatches, respectively dated the 3d and 5th of December. We reserve the questions arising upon these two dispatches, which are somewhat novel and peculiar, for further consideration. All others fall within certain objections, which we proceed to. state and decide.
We are of the opinion that the objection to the dispatches which have been offered in evidence, based upon the ground that they are not relevant or material, is not well taken. The jury is the constitutional tribunal to determine controverted questions of facts, under appropriate advice from the court to assist them in the discharge of this duty. If the evidence offered tends, in any degree, to establish the existence of any material fact, it cannot be rejected as irrelevant, but must be received and submitted to the consideration of the jury in connection with all the other facts and circumstances of the case. To reject the dispatches offered, on the ground that they were irrelevant and immaterial, would be a decision by the court that such dispatches had nothing to do with the alleged conspiracy, ‘and would take that question, which is a question of fact, from the jury, whose exclusive province it is to decide questions of fact. We do not deem it expedient, or even proper, to remark upon the several dispatches, or to say anything in the presence of the jury calculated to disclose the views of the court as to the force and effect of the several dispatches offered in evidence. It is not to be inferred that, in admitting the dispatches, the court holds that they do or do not connect the defendant with the alleged conspiracy. That is a question for the jury, under advice and direction from the court, which should properly come in the charge or summing up to the jury. -
As to the objection that some of the dispatches addressed to the defendant were unanswered, we are of the opinion that, under the circumstances of the case, this alone does not constitute a sufficient ground to exclude them. Such dispatches are to be viewed in connection with all the circumstances of the case, including the nature of the dispatches themselves, as calling for an atfswer or otherwise, and the situation and relation of the parties, and the effect to be given to the circumstance, that no answers were returned (if the jury find the dispatches were received by the defendant), is to be determined by the jury upon the whole evidence, under the rules of the law to be given in the charge to the jury, bearing upon the subject.
As to the dispatches between McDonald and Joyce, confessed conspirators, such dispatches are admissible as statements or acts of conspirators among themselves, in furtherance of the conspiracy; but, as to the defendant, they go for naught, unless he is shown, by other evidence, to be connected with the conspiracy charged in the indictment.
DILLON, Circuit Judge (to District Attorney Dyer). Have you offered all the evidence that you intend to offer respecting the dispatches of December 3d and 5th?
District Attorney Dyer. No, sir.
After the production of other evidence touching the dispatches of December 3d and 5th, the dispatch of December 3d was admitted, and the dispatch of December 5th reject*912ed, because the original dispatch was not produced, nor was it proved to have been in the handwriting of the defendant, or to have been authorized or sent by him, or his direction. The important dispatches received in evidence are given in the charge of the court. See [Case No. 14,486].
[See Case No. 14,487.]
In admitting the dispatches to and from William O. Avery, the court remarked that “they do not purport on their face, as we read them, to connect the defendant with this matter, and they are admitted, not by reason of any declarative force upon their own face, but only to show the acts and declarations of Hr. Avery — on the assumption that he shall be found, by the jury to be connected with the conspiracy — -to show his acts and declarations in connection with Joyce and McDonald, admitted conspirators. The force of the evidence is not for the court to determine. It may .or may not be unfavorable to the defendant, as tending to show that some one else, at the other end of the line, was giving information in connection with these frauds.”