McInerney v. United States

• Decision Date: 26 February 1906
• Docket Number: 584.
• Parties: McINERNEY v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

143 F. 729

McINERNEY v. UNITED STATES.

No. 584.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

February 26, 1906

Harvey H. Pratt (Henry F. Hurlburt and Isaac F. Paul, on the brief) for plaintiff in error.

William H. Lewis, Asst. U.S. Atty. (Melvin O. Adams, U.S. Atty., on the brief).

Before COLT and PUTNAM, Circuit Judges, and ALDRICH, District Judge.

ALDRICH District Judge.

The defendant was indicted under section 5403 of the Revised Statutes (U.S.Comp.St. 1901, p. 3656), which was enacted for the purpose of protecting records, papers, and proceedings of courts of justice, and papers, documents, and records filed or deposited in the public offices of the federal government.

The defendant was charged in four counts. In the first count it was alleged that there was in the office of the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts a certain public record of a court of justice of the United States, which was known as the 'record of the citizenship of one James McInerney,' and that the defendant unlawfully took it and carried it away with intent to steal.

The second count sets out that there was a certain document in the clerk's office, the document then and there being a record of the naturalization and admission to citizenship of one James McInerney, which the defendant unlawfully took and carried away with intent to steal.

The third count charges the willful and unlawful destruction of the record described in the first count; and the fourth count charges the willful and unlawful destruction of the document described in the second count.

Without setting out the assignments of error in detail, it may be said that they relate largely to the question whether the thing described in the indictment and in the proofs as taken and destroyed was a record, or a document which was a record within the meaning of the statutes.

It is quite apparent that Congress, in this sweeping statute, did not intend to limit the act in its operation to a record of a judicial proceeding, as enrolled in its entirety. It cannot be possible that it was only intended to protect an entire record, and that the statute should have no force against an offender who mutilates or destroys a part of a record, or against one who destroys documents or papers which constitute a part of the original record or files in a judicial proceeding, or against one who destroys papers or documents or detached records filed or deposited in the public offices of the federal government. If the statute were to be so narrowly and so strictly interpreted, the evident purpose of the lawmaking power would be defeated in a very substantial degree. We assume, therefore, that it was not only intended to declare it to be an offense to willfully destroy an entire record, but as well to make it an offense to steal or destroy any part thereof, or any document or paper filed or deposited in the offices of the clerks of the United States courts in the course of judicial procedure, or any paper, document, or record filed or deposited in any of the public offices of the federal government; the purpose being to preserve them as evidence relating to things which concern the public and the government.

Such being the manifest purpose, it only becomes necessary to consider whether the thing alleged to have been taken and destroyed was within the fair meaning of the statute, and whether the thing was described with sufficient legal accuracy in the indictment, and whether there was any substantial variance between the proofs and the allegations.

The thing is described in one set of counts as a public record of a court of justice, as a record of naturalization and admission to citizenship, and as a record contained in a book numbered and lodged in the clerk's office. In the other set of counts it is described as a document filed and deposited in a public office, and as being a record of naturalization and admission to citizenship, and as a document contained in a book numbered 256 of the records of naturalization proceedings. What was taken and destroyed according to the proofs, was two sheets, or four pages, which contained the original application of James McInerney for naturalization, with the certificate of the clerk that the oath was administered to the petitioner before the court, on which was the impression of the official stamp of the United States Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts indicating the date on which the application was filed. The sheets also contained the affidavits of the witnesses and the certificate of the clerk or a deputy that the affidavits were sworn to by the witnesses in the presence of the court, together with the date; also the oath of allegiance administered to the applicant upon his admission to citizenship; the certificate of the clerk that the oath was taken and that the applicant was admitted to become a citizen of the United States; and a certificate that the court ordered a record to be made thereof accordingly. The sheets also contained an impression of the official stamp of the Circuit Court, recording the date on which the case was decided. These sheets or documents had been bound into a large volume kept in the vaults connected with the office of the clerk, with several hundred similar volumes. There was inscribed on the bank of the volume, in prominent letters and figures, the following: 'RECORD OF NATURALIZATION. Vol. 256. NOV. 20, 1894 to JAN. 10, 1895. UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT. ' There was also bound into this volume an index to the cases which it contained. In the index is the name of McInerney, James, with figures referring to page 144, which page, according to the evidence, had reference to the naturalization case to which the index referred, and that page, together with everything following it which related to the case of James McInerney, was cut from the volume. These sheets or pages bound in such volume contained all the existing record of the naturalization of James McInerney, and, according to the evidence, everything about the case was taken and destroyed, except the index name and reference to the page.

The evidence tends to show that under a practice or a system which has been in vogue for a long time, the papers, documents, and the proceedings in naturalization cases are not enrolled or extended upon the records as is done in adversary civil and criminal proceedings, but in instances where the applicant is admitted to citizenship the original papers and documents, together with the certificates, are bound into volumes which are preserved in the custody of the clerk as the only record of naturalization cases. Such a record, of course, is not strictly a common-law record, which means an enrollment of the documents in a record extended by the necessary incidental formalities. It is, however, a muniment of the applicant's title to citizenship, and though the papers and documents are an original rather than an enrolled record, in view of their association with a judicial act, and in view of their established judicial recognition, they are so far a record of the events involved as to be evidence of citizenship in proceedings, which put in question the applicant's right to exercise the privileges and have the protection of an American citizen at home, and so far a record as to be evidence in situations which involve the question whether he shall be protected by the United States government as an American citizen abroad; and thus it was clearly something which should not have been destroyed or stolen from the records or files of the courts. This being so, and such being its weight by reason of its fixed connection with an actual investigation and judicial act, which in a judicial proceeding established a right, it was a record within the fair meaning of the statute.

The word 'record,' when used in the sense of a record in a judicial proceeding, has been described as 'a precise statement of the suit from its commencement to its termination, including the conclusion of law thereon, drawn up by the proper officer for the purpose of perpetuating the exact state of facts. ' Lord Coke says, 'Records are memorials or remembrances on rolls of parchment. ' Clearly enough the word 'record,' used either by courts or in statutes, in connection with the idea of a thing which shall be conclusive upon questions of law and fact in adversary proceedings, would mean a formally extended record; because, in order to be conclusive as between adversary parties; it must necessarily be complete, and the word used in such a connection means a copy of the papers from beginning to end spread upon the record books. But in a statute like the one in question, intended to protect government archives, the view is entirely different, because the word is used in a popular, or at least in a more general, sense. The purpose of the statute was not to describe a record which shall conclude rights, but records to be protected from destruction, and the purpose changes entirely the point of view, and consequently the sense of the words employed.

It being a penal statute, however, it is, of course, subject to the rule of strict construction, but such general rule contemplates a reasonable construction in aid of the purposes of the act. Lewis' Sutherland Statutory Construction Secs. 528-534. It does not mean the narrowest interpretation (Sutherland, Sec. 529), but that courts should follow the true intent of the Legislature and adopt that sense of the words which harmonizes best with the context and promotes in the fullest manner the apparent policy and objects of the Legislature. United States v. Winn, 3 Sumn. 209, Fed.Cas.No. 16,740; United States v. Hartwell, 6 Wall. 385, 395, 396, 18 L.Ed. 830; United States v. American...