Hagner v. United States

• Decision Date: 11 April 1932
• Docket Number: No. 590,590
• Citation: Hagner v. United States, 285 U.S. 427, 52 S.Ct. 417, 76 L.Ed. 861 (1932)
• Parties: HAGNER et al. v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

285 U.S. 427

52 S.Ct. 417

76 L.Ed. 861

HAGNER et al.

v UNITED STATES.

No. 590.

Argued March 14, 1932.

Decided April 11, 1932.

[Syllabus from 428 intentionally omitted] Messrs. William E. Leahy, William J. Hughes, Jr., and Lucien H. Van Doren, all of Washington, D. C., for petitioners.

The Attorney General and Mr. Thomas D. Thaoher, Sol. Gen., of Washington, D. C., for the United States.

Mr. Justice SUTHERLAND delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioners were indicted in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia under section 215 of the Criminal Code, U. S. C., title 18, § 338 (18 USCA § 338), which provides:

'Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, * * * shall, for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice or attempting so to do, place, or cause to be placed, any letter, * * * in any post office, * * * to be sent or delivered by the post office establishment of the United States, * * * or shall knowingly cause to be delivered by mail according to the direction thereon, * * * any such letter, * * * shall be fined not more than $1,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.'

The indictment charges that petitioners devised and intended to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud the Merchants' Transfer & Storage Company out of its money and property in manner and form set forth; and that 'for the purpose of executing said scheme and artifice, on, to wit, April 19, 1927, did place and cause to be placed in the Post Office at the City of Scranton, in the State of Pennsylvania, to be sent and delivered by the Post Office establishment of the United States of America, to the addressee thereof, three certain accounts enclosed in a certain envelope addressed to Merchants' Transfer and Storage Company, 920 E Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.'

Petitioners were arraigned, entered pleas of not guilty, and went to trial without challenging the sufficiency of the indictment or the jurisdiction of the court to hear and determine the case. They were found guilty by a jury, and thereupon moved in arrest of judgment upon the ground that the indictment failed to charge any offense within the jurisdiction of the court. The motion was overruled, and petitioners sentenced to pay a fine and undergo a term of imprisonment. Upon appeal the judgment was affirmed by the court below. 60 App. D. C. 335, 54 F.(2d) 446.

The contention is that the indictment charges no offense committed in the District of Columbia, but only an offense committed in Pennsylvania; and, assuming this to be true, that the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia was without jurisdiction. Undoubtedly, the indictment is adequate to charge an offense committed in Pennsylvania; but the question first to be considered is whether, upon this record and upon a motion in arrest of judgment, the indictment may be sustained as also sufficient to charge an offense committed within the District of Columbia. The record brought here does not contain the evidence or any of the trial proceedings. We have before us only the indictment, the fact that petitioners were arraigned, entered pleas, were convicted and sentenced, the motion in arrest of judgment, and the order of the court overruling it, together with the formal docket entries relating thereto.

The defect said to exist is that the indictment fails to allege specifically that petitioners did 'cause (the letter) to be delivered by mail according to the direction thereon.' Obviously, in this particular, the indictment does not precisely follow the terms of the statute, but it does allege that the letter was deposited in a post office so addressed as to constitute a direction for its delivery to the addressee at a particular place in the District of Columbia. The rule is well settled that proof that a letter properly directed was placed in a post office creates a presumption that it reached its destination in usual time and was actually received by the person to whom it was addressed. Rosenthal v. Walker, 111 U. S. 185, 193, 4 S. Ct. 382, 28 L. Ed. 395. And the fact that receipt of the letter subjects the person sending it to a penalty does not alter the rule. Id., page 194 of 111 U. S., 4 S. Ct. 382, 28 L. Ed. 395. If the indictment had alleged actual delivery of the letter in question, the case for the government in this particular would have been made out by proof that the letter thus directed had been placed in the post office for transmission. The burden then would have been cast upon petitioners to show the contrary.

While, therefore, the indictment does not in set terms allege delivery of the letter, a presumption to that effect results from the facts which are alleged. In Ball v. United States, 140 U. S. 118, 133, 136, 11 S. Ct. 761, 35 L. Ed. 377, it was held that an indictment for murder which fails to allege the time of the death is fatally defective, since to constitute murder it is necessary that death shall occur within a year and a day from the time of the fatal stroke. But it appearing that the indictment then under consideration had been returned less than a year from the day of the assault, the court did not consider the objection fatal to the indictment in his particular, nowithstanding the absence of an allegation of the time of death.

The rigor of old common-law rules of criminal pleading has yielded, in modern practice, to the general principle that formal defects, not prejudicial, will be disregarded. The true test of the sufficiency of an indictment is not whether it could have been made more definite and certain, but whether it contains the elements of the offense intended to be charged, 'and sufficiently apprises the defendant of what he must be prepared to meet, and, in case any other proceedings are taken against him for a similar offense,...