Culp v. United States
| Decision Date | 25 October 1897 |
| Docket Number | 4. |
| Parties | CULP v. UNITED STATES. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
James Scarlet and J. H. McDevitt, for plaintiffs in error.
Samuel B. Griffiths, for defendant in error.
Before ACHESON and DALLAS, Circuit Judges, and KIRKPATRICK, District judge.
The indictment charged the defendant with having devised a scheme to defraud, to be effected by opening communication with certain named persons by means of the post-office establishment of the United States, and that in executing such scheme the defendant deposited in a post office of the United States certain letters, addressed to said persons, to be sent and delivered to them by the post-office establishment: and the fraudulent scheme particularly set out was this: That, intending to defraud the persons to whom said letters were addressed, the defendant therein and thereby requested the persons addressed to sell and ship to him certain articles of merchandise, for which he agreed to pay the shippers, whereas, in truth, and in fact, he did not intend to pay for said articles, but intended fraudulently to appropriate them and convert them to his own use without paying therefor. There is no doubt that the indictment plainly sets out a scheme to defraud (Evans v. U.S., 153 U.S. 584, 592, 14 Sup.Ct. 934, 939;
Weeber v. U.S., 62 F. 740), that it was to be effected by means of correspondence through the post-office establishment, and that, in the execution of the scheme, letters were placed in the post office. It is not seriously questioned, and, indeed cannot be denied, that the indictment charges an offense within the terms and meaning of section 5480 of the Revised Statutes. It is, however, contended on behalf of the plaintiff in error that that section was completely repealed and superseded by the act of March 2, 1889, c. 393, entitled 'An act to punish dealers and pretended dealers in counterfeit money and other fraudulent devices for using the United States mails' (25 Stat. 873), and that this later act does not reach such a case as this record discloses. But in this conclusion we are unable to concur. It may be that the act of March 2, 1889, the initial clause of which reads 'Be it enacted,' etc., 'that section fifty-four hundred and eighty of the Revised Statutes be, and the same is hereby, so amended as to read as follows, ' superseded said numbered section (5480), and is a complete substitute therefor. But, granting this, it does not follow that the plaintiff in error was wrongfully convicted and sentenced. The first section of the said ac t of 1889, verbatim, and in addition thereto it contains new matter, which is introduced immediately after the words, 'If any person having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud,' and immediately before the words, 'to be effected by either opening or intending to open correspondence or communication with any person, whether resident within or outside the United States, by means of...
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