  DECOY LETTERS. Those who may have perused the preceding pages of this work, will require no further comment on the nature and utility of decoy letters. But as some persons are met with who, without much reflection, condemn their use under all circumstances, it may be well to offer a few remarks in defence of this practice. It is very clear that decoy letters can never injure honest men. These missives trouble no one who does not unlawfully meddle with them, and it can hardly be claimed that they offer any greater temptations to the dishonestly inclined than any other class of money-letters. It is of course impossible for any one to distinguish between a decoy letter and a genuine one, and he who faithfully discharges his duties in reference to other letters, will never find out by his own personal experience, that there are such things as decoys. 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 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 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. Nor indeed, if the accused can prove, or it is made to appear upon the evidence of the prosecution, that the letter was placed in the mail or came into a post-office, prepared and intended as a decoy, and was not intrusted to the mail in the way of bon fide correspondence, is the criminality of taking it thereby absolved: even if the evidence advances another stage, and shows that the decoy was aimed at and intended for the particular person caught by it, (The United States v. Laurence, 2 McLean R. 441; The United States v. Foye, 1 Curtis R. 307-8.) These decisions enforce the manifest policy of the statute. The post-office establishment, and the enactments maintaining the security of its action and the fidelity of persons employed in it, compose a great national measure, and the laws governing and protecting it are to be construed so as to subserve the public good, and not with a view to what might be a reasonable rule in transactions between individuals. But I apprehend that even in individual transactions, the agents of a bank, a merchant's clerk, or a domestic servant could not protect themselves against a criminal or civil charge of appropriating the effects of their employers, by proof that the property had been placed within their reach by its owner, in distrust of their honesty, and for the purpose of testing it. The method adopted by the Department to detect offenders under this law, does not appear to me objectionable in the point of view pressed by the counsel for the accused. No further temptation or facility to the commission of the offence is thereby placed before such offenders than must necessarily be presented in the daily business of their trusts. These packages were in every respect the same in appearance, and with only the same indications of enclosing money, as ordinary letters by which remittances are made. And it seems to me when it comes to be understood by persons handling such packages in the mail or destined for it, that a watchful eye may be following each package from office to office, and noticing everything done to it, that the apprehension of such supervision may act almost with the force of a religious consciousness of accountability, in awing wicked purposes and preventing criminal actions. I am persuaded that letters would rarely be intercepted in their transmission by post, if every person concerned in mailing or carrying them, could be impressed with the idea that each package enclosing valuables, may be but a bait seeking to detect whoever may be dishonest enough to molest it, and to become a swift witness for his conviction and punishment. The jury convicted the prisoner, and on the 29th day of December, 1854, he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. |
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