Chitwood v. United States
| Decision Date | 22 March 1910 |
| Docket Number | 2,985. |
| Citation | 178 F. 442 |
| Parties | CHITWOOD v. UNITED STATES. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
George W. Murphy (Charles T. Coleman and W. M. Lewis, on the brief) for plaintiff in error.
William G. Whipple, U.S. Atty.
Before HOOK and ADAMS, Circuit Judges, and CARLAND, District Judge.
Chitwood a clerk in a post office, was tried for secreting and embezzling letters and stealing their valuable contents. A writing purporting to be a confession of guilt, signed by the accused, was received in evidence against him. He testified in his own behalf that before he signed the confession he did not read it, it was not read to him, and its contents were contrary to his understanding of them. He also denied that when the confession was read to him the following day, he admitted it was as he understood it. The accused was afterwards indicted, tried, and convicted of perjury in so testifying, and that is the matter involved in the present writ of error.
It is claimed the trial court erred in admitting certain testimony of two post office inspectors and in excluding the records showing the acquittal of the accused in the first case. At the trial of the perjury case the inspectors were allowed to testify, over the objection of the accused, that they secretly watched him while he was at work with the mail, and to describe particularly and minutely his suspicious actions.
The government seeks to justify the admission of this evidence upon the ground that what the inspectors saw was part of the res gestae. We do not think so. The matter then in issue was, not whether the accused was guilty of a crime against the postal laws, but solely whether he committed perjury in testifying that the writing purporting to be a confession had not been read and was not so understood by him. After watching him a while, the inspectors confronted and accused him, and the alleged confession followed. What they told him during that conversation and what was done was properly admitted as part of the transaction with him, and as bearing on his understanding of the character of the writing he signed, but not what previously occurred. His actions while secretly watched threw no light at all upon the question whether the confession was read to him or by him; and, though they may have been the inducement to the inspectors' subsequent accusation, they were not necessary incidents to the confession itself and the understanding of its particular character by the accused. What the inspectors told the accused was a part of the transaction, but not the independent facts upon which their action proceeded.
It is argued by counsel for the government that the evidence objected to tended to show the confession was true, and therefore, it was...
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