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.
Charles Palliser, being detained by the United States Marshal
for the Southern District of New York under a warrant from a
commissioner of the circuit court of the United States for that
district, obtained from that court a writ of habeas corpus as well
as a writ of certiorari to the marshal and commissioner, both
returnable at a stated term of the court, in obedience to which the
commissioner returned a record of proceedings had before him under
§ 1014 of the Revised Statutes, which enacts that "for any
crime or offense against the United States, the offender may," by
any commissioner of the circuit court, "be arrested and imprisoned
or bailed, as the case may be, for trial before such court of the
United States as by law has cognizance of the offense," and that
where any offender "is committed in any district other than that
where the offense is to be tried," a warrant may be issued by the
district judge and executed by the marshal of that district, "for
his removal to the district where the trial is to be had." The
proceedings stated in the return were as follows:
First. The complaint, of which the following is a copy:
Page 136 U. S. 258
"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"
"Postmaster, Black Hall, Conn."
" 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."
" Yours very truly,"
"PALLISER, PALLISER & Co."
"with the intent of him, the said Palliser, to induce him, the
said De Wolf, as such postmaster, to do certain acts in violation
of his lawful duty as such postmaster -- that is to say, to sell
him, the said Palliser, postage stamps of the United States
otherwise than for cash, to-wit, upon the credit of said Palliser,
against the peace of the United States and contrary
Page 136 U. S. 259
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."
"JOHN H. BARIO"
"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.
Fourth. The evidence taken before the commissioner, tending to
prove the following facts: Palliser was a member of the firm of
Palliser, Palliser & Co., architects and publishers of works on
building, having their principal place of business in the City of
New York, and a printing office at Bridgeport in the State of
Connecticut. The letter set forth in the complaint was signed and
mailed by Palliser at New York in a sealed envelope and was
received at Black Hall in the County of New London and State of
Connecticut by De Wolf, postmaster at that place, who was a
postmaster of the fourth class, receiving no salary, and
compensated upon the basis of, among other things, the amount of
stamps cancelled at his office. Act of March 3, 1883, c. 142,
§ 2, 22 Stat. 602. At the same time, Palliser sent similar
letters from New York or Bridgeport to many other postmasters of
the same class in Connecticut. About a fortnight afterwards, De
Wolf received by freight a box of circulars, and on November 26,
1888, he sent by mail to Palliser, Palliser & Co. at the City
of New York a reply to their letter in these words:
"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."
"Yours, etc.,"
"W. R. De Wolf, P.M."
Page 136 U. S. 260
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.
Sixth. The final order of the commissioner, dated December 3,
1889, by which, after reciting the arrest and examination, and
"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.
Page 136 U. S. 262
MR. JUSTICE GRAY, after stating the case as above, delivered the
opinion of the 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.
By section 5451 of the Revised Statutes,
"Every person who promises, offers, or gives, or causes or
procures to be promised, offered, or given, any money or other
thing of value, or makes or tenders any contract, undertaking,
obligation, gratuity, or security for the payment of money, or for
the delivery or conveyance of anything of value to any officer of
the United
Page 136 U. S. 263
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"
by fine and imprisonment.
By the Act of June 17, 1878, c. 259, § 1,
"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.
The petitioner relies on the following passage in an opinion
delivered by Mr. Justice Swayne:
"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."
Hoffman v. Hancock Ins. Co., 92 U. S.
161,
92 U. S. 164.
But the only point decided in that case was that an agent of an
insurance company could not, unless authorized by the company,
accept personal property as
Page 136 U. S. 264
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.
If this letter was not an offer of money to the postmaster, it
was clearly a tender of a contract for the payment of money to him
with intent to induce him to sell postage stamps for credit, in
violation of his lawful duty, and therefore came within § 5451
of the Revised Statutes, above quoted. A promise to a public
officer that if he will do a certain unlawful act, he shall be paid
a certain compensation, is an offer to bribe him to do the unlawful
act, and an offer of a contract to pay money to a postmaster for an
unlawful sale by him of postage stamps on credit is not the less
within the statute because the portion of that money which he
would
Page 136 U. S. 265
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."
Reference was made in argument to the question, often disputed,
where an indictment for murder shall be tried when a mortal blow
struck or shot fired in one jurisdiction is followed by death in
another jurisdiction?
See Commonwealth v. Macloon, 101
Mass. 1, and authorities there cited;
Queen v. Keyn, 2
Ex.D. 63; 11 Amer.Law Rev. 625;
State v. Bowen, 16 Kan.
475;
United States v. Guiteau, 1 Mackey 498. But there the
original unlawful act is not only done by the offender, but reaches
the person at whom it is aimed in one jurisdiction, and it is the
subsequent effect only which takes place in another jurisdiction.
We have no occasion now to consider such a case beyond observing
that before the Declaration of Independence, provision had been
made by statute, both in England and in Ireland, for trying such
cases in either jurisdiction, and was never supposed to be
inconsistent in principle with the provision of Magna Charta, c.
14, for trial by a jury of the vicinage. 1 East P.C. 366; 1
Gabbett's Crim.Law 501. It is universally admitted that where a
shot fired in one jurisdiction strikes a person in another
jurisdiction, the offender may be tried where the shot takes
effect, and the only doubt is whether he can be tried
Page 136 U. S. 266
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.
Where a crime is committed partly in one district and partly in
another, it must, in order to prevent an absolute failure of
justice, be tried in either district or in that one which the
legislature may designate, and Congress has accordingly provided
that
"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."
Rev.Stat. § 731.
Where an offense is committed by means of a communication
through the post office, the sender has sometimes, as appears by
the cases cited for the petitioner, been held to be punishable at
the place where he mails the letter.
United
States v. Worrall, 2 Dall. 384;
United States
v. Bickford, 4 Blatchford 337;
Rex v. Williams, 2
Campbell 506;
King v. Burdett, 3 B. & Ald. 717, 4 B.
& Ald. 95;
Perkin's Case, 2 Lewin 150;
Regina v.
Cooke, 1 Fost. & Finl. 64;
Queen v. Holmes, 12
Q.B.D. 23, 15 Cox.Crim.Cas. 343. But it does not follow that he is
not punishable at the place where the letter is received by the
person to whom it is addressed, and it is settled by an
overwhelming weight of authority that he may be tried and punished
at that place whether the unlawfulness of the communication through
the post office consists in its being a threatening letter,
King v. Girdwood, 1 Leach 142, 2 East P.C. 1120;
Esser's Case, 2 East P.C. 1125, or a libel,
King v.
Johnson, 7 East, 65, 3 J.P.Smith 94;
King v. Burdett,
4 B. & Ald. 95, 136, 150, 170, 184;
Commonwealth v.
Blanding, 3 Pick. 304;
In re Buell, 3 Dillon 116,
122, or a false pretense or fraudulent representation,
Regina
v. Leech, Dearsly 642, 7 Cox Crim.Cas. 100;
Queen v.
Rogers, 3 Q.B.D. 28, 14 Cox Crim.Cas. 22;
People
Page 136 U. S. 267
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.
In the case before us, the offense charged being an offer of
money, or a tender of a contract for the payment of money,
contained in a letter mailed in New York and addressed to a
postmaster in Connecticut to induce him to violate his official
duty, it might admit of doubt whether any offense against the laws
of the United States was committed until the offer or tender was
known to the postmaster and might have influenced his mind. But
there can be no doubt at all that if any offense was committed in
New York, the offense continued to be committed when the letter
reached the postmaster in Connecticut, and that if no offense was
committed in New York,
Page 136 U. S. 268
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.
Order affirmed.
