Hagan v. United States

• Decision Date: 15 February 1924
• Docket Number: 4003,4004.
• Citation: 295 F. 656
• Parties: HAGAN v. UNITED STATES (two cases).
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

295 F. 656

HAGAN v. UNITED STATES (two cases).

Nos. 4003, 4004.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

February 15, 1924

Pierre A. White, of Cleveland, Ohio (Calfee, Fogg & White, of Cleveland, Ohio, on the brief), for plaintiff in error.

M. A McCormack, Asst. U.S. Atty., of Cleveland, Ohio (A. E Bernsteen, U.S. atty., of Cleveland, Ohio, on the brief), for the United States.

Before DENISON and MACK, Circuit Judges, and ROSS, District Judge.

MACK Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff in error was indicted and subsequently convicted for passing and conspiring to pass counterfeit war savings certificate stamps of the United States, knowing them at the time to be counterfeit. It is now urged in his behalf, both that there was no substantial evidence from which the jury could find that the defendant had this knowledge, and that the court erred in instructing the jury that the defendant was responsible and chargeable with the result which a reasonable inquiry into the genuineness of the stamps would have produced to him, whether or not he made the inquiry.

1. It is conceded that the plaintiff in error came into the possession of the stamps under very questionable circumstances. He was advised that the stamps had been stolen or surreptitiously taken from another person whose initials appeared thereon. The man, who, as it later appeared, had forged the stamps and who sold them to the plaintiff in error, told him that he (the seller) could not cash them, for the reason that the stamps were in another's name. The plaintiff in error undoubtedly knew that there was something wrong about the transaction, else he could not have purchased stamps, redeemable at par, at considerably less, irrespective of whether he bought them, as claimed by him, at 20 per cent., or, as testified to by the other party, at 80 per cent. discount.

Defendant was a printer; he knew that some forged stamps of this kind were supposed to be in circulation; from these and the circumstances surrounding his acquisition of them, the jury was reasonably justified in inferring guilty knowledge as to the forgery of the stamps in question. Guilty knowledge of the forgery was not, as it need not be, shown by direct evidence; the circumstantial evidence cannot be said to be unsubstantial.

2. The following are the pertinent portions of the charge, which, it is contended, permitted the jury to find a verdict of guilty not on defendant's knowledge of the counterfeit character, but on the knowledge that he would have acquired if he had made reasonable inquiry:

'The court shall rather tell you what the law calls guilty knowledge, not what we may call guilty knowledge in common parlance. That distinction is very vital here. It is a matter of very great importance. It is the criterion of this case. And it is very important to the well-being of society that the distinction between what we ordinarily call guilty knowledge and what the laws calls guilty knowledge should be understood and appreciated.

'Guilty knowledge, under the legal definition, exists when the jury charged with answering the question is able to say that the individual under investigation should reasonably have known that the stamps were forged. In other words, you are not called upon to find here an actual definite state of knowledge of the falsity of these documents. * * *

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