MONTGOMERY
v.
UNITED STATES
AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.
Thomas M. Montgomery, a railway postal clerk, was convicted of embezzling letters containing money that he stole from the mail in 1890, and he appealed arguing that the letters were "decoy" letters planted to entrap him and that there was a fatal variance between the indictment and the evidence presented at trial. The Supreme Court affirmed his conviction, holding that the use of decoy letters does not constitute a valid defense to embezzlement charges and that the correspondence between the letters in evidence and those described in the indictment was sufficient despite differences in their origin and intended interception.
© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.
Mr, Justice Shiras delivered the-opinion of the court.
Thomas M. Montgomery, the plaintiff-in error, was indicted in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Tennessee, for the crime of embezzling and stealing, on March 8 and 9, 1890, certain letters containing money in United States currency, which had come into his possession as a railway postal clerk or route agent, on the railway mail route between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Bristol, Tennessee. The defendant was tried, convicted and sentenced to be confined at. hard labor for the term of two years in the penitentiary at •Columbus, Ohio. At the trial it appeared that the letters taken had been mailed for the purpose of detecting the defendant; in other words,'were “decoy” letters; and thereupon the defendant asked the court to instruct the jury that, as thé letters taken were mailed for the purpose of entrapping defendant into the commission of a crime, there could be no conviction of the defendant for the taking of said letters.
The refusal of the court to so charge is the subject of the •first assignment of error. To dispose of this .assignment it is sufficient to cite the case of Goode v. United States, 159 U. S. 663, where it was held that, in an indictment against a letter carrier charged with secreting, embezzling or destroying a letter containing postage stamps, the fact that the letter was a decoy is. no defence.
Error was likewise assigned to the refusal of the court to charge that there was a fatal variance between thé indictment and proof in respect to the description of the letters, for the stealing or embezzling of which the defendant was indicted.
In the indictment it was averred that the letters in question had come into the defendant’s possession as a railway postal clerk, to be conveyed by mail and to be delivered to the persons addressed. It was disclosed by the evidence that the letters and money thus mailed belonged to the inspectors who mailed them, and were to be intercepted and withdrawn from the mails by them before they reached the persons to whom they were addressed.
There is no merit in this assignment. The letters' put in evidence corresponded, in address and contents, to the letters described in the indictment, and it made no difference, with respect to the duty of the carrier, whether the letters were genuine or decoys with a fictitious address. Substantially this question was ruled in the case of Goode v. United States, above cited.
The judgment of the court below is
Affirmed.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
-
Quinn Plumbing Co., Inc. v. New Miami Shores Corp., 100 Fla. 413 (Fla. 1930)…e claiming under him. This right cannot be extinguished except by due process of law. After the foreclosure of a mortgage, redemption may be had by any person entitled to it who was not made a party to the suit. Bryan v. Kales, 162 [*417] U. S. 411, 40 L. Ed. 1020. The purchaser at such a sale takes the premises subject to the right of a junior mortgagee, who was not made party to the foreclosure of a prior mortgage, to redeem from the senior mortgage. Howard v. Milwaukee, etc., 101 U. S. 837, 25 L. Ed. 1081;…
-
601 W. 26 Corp. v. Equity Cap. Co., 178 So. 2d 894 (Fla. 3d DCA 1965)…y in good faith on a foreclosure sale which later is set aside holds as a “mortgagee in possession,” entitled to retain the property until the mortgage debt is paid or redeemed, or the property foreclosed. Bryan v. Kales, 162 U.S. 411, 16 S.Ct. 802, 40 L.Ed. 1020; Ponca City Building & Loan Co. v. Graff, 189 Old. 410, 117 P. 2d 514; Jasper State Bank v. Braswell, 130 Tex. 549, 111 S.W. 2d 1079, 115 A.L.R. 329; 37 Am.Jur. Mortgages §§ 795, 796; Annot., 115 A.L.R. 339; Annot., 40 L.R.A. (n. s.) 839, 842. With…
-
Hall v. United States, 168 U.S. 632 (U.S. 1898)…whom it is directed, shall be punishable by imprisonment at hard labor for not less than one year; nor more than five years.” A test or “ decoy ” letter comes within the statute. Goode v. United States, 159 U. S. 663 ; Montgomery v. United States, 162 U. S. 410. Although the section provides the same punishment for all the various acts set forth therein, yet the section itself clearly describes two different classes of offences. United States v. Wight, 38 Fed. Rep. 106. The proof would not show a violatio…
Previewing 3 of 9 citing cases — full citator treatment, depth of discussion, and citing context are member features.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceAuthorities Cited
- Goode v. United States, 159 U.S. 663 (U.S. 1895)