It should not be forgotten that these devices are employed for the public good, and that the security of a vast amount of property, as well as the removal of unjust suspicion, often depends upon the detection of some delinquent post-office employé. In such a case, it would surely be foolishly fastidious to object to the adoption of a method of effecting the desired end, which accurately distinguishes between the innocent and the guilty, and which does injustice to no one.
In the defence of criminals tried in the United States Courts, for mail robbery, whose detection has been effected by means of decoy letters, especially in cases where there seems to be no other ground of defence, it is frequently insisted on very eloquently, that as the law of Congress on this subject provides against the embezzlement of letters "intended to be conveyed by post," no offence is committed by the purloining of decoys, inasmuch as this class of epistles are not bonâ fide letters, and are not intended to be conveyed in the mail, within the true intent and meaning of the statute.
This position has been overthrown, however, as often as it has been assumed, and it is believed that the decisions on this point, of all the United States Judges before whom the question has been raised, have been uniform throughout the country.
In a recent important trial in the city of New York, before his Honor Judge Betts, the decoy system received a severe hetchelling from the learned counsel for the prisoner, and after the evidence had been laid before the jury, the Court was asked to dismiss the case and the culprit, on the ground that the offence provided against in the twenty-first section of the Act of 1825, had not been committed.
But his Honor took a very different view of the matter, as will appear by the following extract from his decision:—
Judge Betts remarked to the jury that the facts upon which the indictment is found being uncontroverted, the question of the prisoner's guilt depends solely upon points of law.
When facts are ascertained, it is the province of the Court to determine whether they come within the provisions of the law sought to be applied to them; and, although in criminal cases the jury gives a general answer, covering both the law and fact, to the inquiry whether the accused is guilty or not guilty, it is not to be supposed they will, in a case resting wholly upon a question of law, render a verdict in opposition to the instructions of the Court. The defence of the accused assumes that the twenty-first section above recited, in order to a conviction under it, demands affirmative proof from the prosecution that the letters were intended to be conveyed by post, according to their address: And it is urged that such proof not being made, but on the contrary, the evidence being that the writer of the letters did not intend they should be so delivered, but meant to take them out of the mail himself, to prevent their delivery, if they were not embezzled in the office in this city, the acts done by the accused are no offence under the statute.
I think that construction of the statute cannot be maintained in respect to letters actually in the mail, and especially in this case, where the letters had been conveyed by post and came into this office by the mail from other offices.
It is a presumption of law, and not a matter of proof, that letters so circumstanced, were intended to be conveyed by post. The question of intention is no longer referable to the private purpose of the writer, whatever might be the fact when letters are given to persons employed in the Post-Office Department, out of the office, for the purpose of being put into it or conveyed by mail.
When, however, a letter already in the mail is purloined, (1 McLean R. 504; 2 Id. 434,) or is embezzled by a carrier on the route, (1 Curtis R. 367,) it is, in judgment of law, intended to be conveyed by post, within the meaning of the statute, and the private purpose and intention of the person who put it in the mail, is in no way material, and need not be proved.