Coffin v. United States, 801

• Decision Date: 04 May 1896
• Docket Number: No. 801,801
• Citation: 40 L.Ed. 1109,162 U.S. 664,16 S.Ct. 943
• Parties: COFFIN v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

162 U.S. 664

16 S.Ct. 943

40 L.Ed. 1109

COFFIN

v UNITED STATES.

No. 801.

May 4, 1896.

W. H. H. Miller and F. Winter, for plaintiff in error.

Sol. Gen. Conrad, for the United States.

Mr. Justice WHITE, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.

Fifty-two requests for instructions were submitted on behalf of the defendants to the trial court. The assignments of error are 62 in number. The uselessness of this multitude of assignments is demonstrated by the fact that but 19 out of the 62 were relied upon at bar. These 19 are grouped in the brief of counsel for plaintiff in error under 12 headings. We shall confine our examination to the consideration of the matters embraced under these headings, and in the order in which they are discussed by counsel.

1. Point 1 alleges that the court erred in refusing to give instructions requested numbered 47 and 48.

No. 47 reads as follows:

'(47) In the indictment in this case it is charged that Theodore P. Haughey, president of the Indianapolis National Bank, with intent to injure and defraud the bank, willfully misapplied the funds of the bank, and also that, with intent to defraud the bank and to deceive an agent appointed or to be appointed to examine its affairs, he made or caused to be made false entries upon the books of the bank. The defendants Francis A. Coffin and Percival B. Coffin are charged with having, with like intent, aided and abetted said Haughey in said wrongful acts. In order to sustain this charge of aiding and abetting against the defendants, the evidence must show beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants acted in the matter with a like intent as that attending the action of Mr. Haughey,—that is, it must be shown that the Coffins, charged as aiders and abettors, stood in a similar relation to the alleged crime as Mr. Haughey; that they approached it from the same direction, and touched it at the same point. If, as matter of fact, in any of the transactions charged as criminal in this indictment, Mr. Haughey acted with one intent, and the defendants acted with a different and unlike intent, then, as to that transaction, they are not guilty as charged in this indictment.'

No. 48 is similar to No. 47, except that the words 'stood in a similar relation to the alleged crime,' contained in the third sentence of No. 47, are omitted in No. 48.

We held in our former opinion (156 U. S. 446, 15 Sup. Ct. 349) that the language of the statute fully demonstrated the unsoundness of the contention then advanced, that no offense was stated in the indictment against the aiders and abettors, because in none of the counts was it asserted that they were officers of the bank or occupied any specific official relation to it.

The ruling then made establishes the error of the foregoing req ests to charge, and hence practically disposes of the questions arising under this heading. However, as counsel now contend that their former position was misunderstood, and was not adequately met by the reasoning previously adopted, we add the following considerations: The contention now advanced admits that one not an officer of the bank may be, under some circumstances, and aider or abettor, in violation of section 5209, Rev. St., but urges that, in order to be such aider or abettor, the person so charged, when not an officer of the bank, must stand in such relation to the recreant bank officer, or have such interest with him in other enterprises, 'as that they may work together for the hurt of the bank for a common purpose.' In other words, the argument substantially asserts that an essential element of the offense of aiding and abetting is the existence of a common purpose between the officer and the aider and abettor to promote or subserve the joint interest of the wrongdoers in enterprises in which they are mutually interested. But the statute nowhere requires that there should be a 'common purpose' on the part of the principal and the aider and abettor to subserve their joint interests by the misapplication committed. It only requires that there should be a misapplication of the moneys of the bank, with a joint intent to 'injure or defraud the association or any other company, body politic or corporate, or any individual person, or to deceive any officer of the association or any agent appointed to examine the affairs of such association.' It is clear that the statute has been violated if the one charged with aiding and abetting is shown to have actually aided and abetted the officer of the bank in misapplying its funds, no matter whom the accused may have ultimately intended to benefit by his misconduct, provided, of course, there existed the intent to defraud enumerated in the act of congress. In accord with this view, the court properly instructed the jury that there must have existed in the minds of both Haughey and the defendants the wrongful intent stated in the law. The intent contemplated by counsel in the requested instruction was evidently the other and different one heretofore referred to, namely, the beneficial purpose to be subserved or common interest to be promoted by the performance of the wrongful act. But, as we have said, it is not essential that the intent should, in this particular, have been coincident, provided there existed the intent which the law ordains.

The proposition upon which reliance is mainly placed is that the person charged as an aider and abettor 'must stand in the same relation to the crime as the principal, approach it in the same direction, touch it at the same point.' This language is taken from the opinion in State v. Teahan, 50 Conn. 92. In that case it was held that one who bought intoxicating liquors from another, the sale being illegal, was not an aider and abettor of the offense of unlawful selling, within the meaning of a general statute, which provided that 'every person who shall assist, aid, counsel, cause, hire, or command another to commit any offense may be prosecuted and punished as if he were a principal offender.' The court said:

'The abetting intended by it is a positive act in aid of the commission of the offense,—a force, physical or moral, joined with that of the proprietor in producing it. This is clear from the context, where aiding is classed with assisting, causing, hiring, and commanding. The abettor, within the meaning of the statute, must stand in the same relation to the crime as the principal, approach it from the same direction, touch it at the same point. This is not the case with the purchaser of liquor. His approach to the crime is from the other side. He touches it at wholly another point. It is somewhat like the case of a man who provokes or challenges a man to fight with him. If the other knocks him down, he has induced, but in no proper sense abetted, this act of violence. He has not contributed any force o its production. He touches the offense wholly on the other side. The purchaser of liquor, by his offer to buy, induces the seller of the liquor to make the sale; but he cannot be said to assist him in it. The whole force, moral or physical, that went to the production of the crime as such, was the seller's.'

Separated from the context in which the sentence was used by the Connecticut court, it becomes meaningless and confusing. The direction from which the parties must approach the transaction that is, the intent to defraud—is accurately specified in the statute under consideration. The meaning which counsel affix to the sentence which they excerpt from State v Teahan, supra, is illustrated by their assertion that it appears from the bill of exceptions that Haughey, the president, had no interest in the cabinet company for whose benefit the indictment alleges the misapplications and false entries were made, nor any interest in or relation to the defendants, and that neither the plaintiff in error nor any other person connected with or interested in the cabinet company, or any of the other companies, had any interest in the bank or with Haughey of any kind whatsoever. Conceding this to be so, the accused was none the less guilty of a violation of the statute if he aided and abetted in the misapplication of the funds of the bank with the intent specified in the law. The contention that if Haughey, the president, intended to benefit the bank by the transactions complained of, he therefore could not have had a common purpose, with the person receiving the money, to defraud the bank, amounts simply to the assertion that, if the proof showed that there was no intent on the part of Haughey to defraud the bank, it was the duty of the jury to acquit. However, the real premise upon which the whole argument rests is that, if the accused was guilty at all, he was guilty as a principal, and not as an aider and abettor. But it is not necessary to give much time to the consideration of this claim, in view of the clear intent of congress as expressed in the statute under review. It is evident that no matter how active the co-operation of third persons may have been in the wrongful act of a bank officer or agent, such third person is required to be charged as an aider and abettor in the offense and prosecuted as such. The primary object of the statute was to protect the bank from the acts of its own servants. As between officers and agents of the bank and third persons co-operating to defraud the bank, the statute contemplates that a bank officer shall be treated as a principal offender. In every criminal offense there must, of course, be a principal; and it follows that, without the concurring act of an officer or agent of a bank, third persons cannot commit a violation of the provisions of section 5209. If, therefore, a violation of the statute in question is committed by an officer and an outsider, the one must be prosecuted as the principal, and the other as the aider and abettor.

2. Under point 2, error is alleged to the refusal of the court to give the following requested...