Safter v. United States

• Citation: 87 F. 329
• Decision Date: 09 May 1898
• Docket Number: 993.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit)
• Parties: SAFTER v. UNITED STATES.

87 F. 329

SAFTER v. UNITED STATES.

No. 993.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

May 9, 1898

Wm. M Cravens, for plaintiff in error.

F. A Youmans, for defendant in error.

Before SANBORN and THAYER, Circuit Judges, and SHIRAS, District Judge.

SANBORN Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff in error, L. A. Saffer, pleaded not guilty to an indictment for mailing two lewd and lascivious letters on July 15, 1895, and on August 6, 1895, respectively, and after a trial by a jury was convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor in the penitentiary at Ft Leavenworth for two years. The trial court declared the letters to be lewd and lascivious as a matter of law, and the only question submitted to the jury was whether or not they were mailed. Upon this issue the testimony was conflicting. After the plaintiff in error had testified that they never were transmitted through the mails, but that one of them was handed by him personally to the woman to whom it was addressed, and that the other was sent to her by a special messenger, the district attorney was permitted, over the objection of counsel for the accused, to ask him whether or not, in January, 1896, he and the addressee of the letters registered at an hotel in Ft. Smith, in the state of Arkansas, and occupied the same room, as John Jones and wife. After he had answered that they did not, the district attorney was allowed to introduce evidence, over like objections, that they did, and that at another time and place, months after the letters were delivered, they were seen in a water-closet together. These and many other rulings of the court below are assigned as error. What relevancy this testimony had to the question whether or not these letters were sent through the mails, or to the question whether the letters were lewd and lascivious or not, or to the question whether the testimony of the defendant was credible or not, it is difficult to perceive. The fact, if it was a fact, that the accused committed adultery with the addressee of the letters or that he frequented a closet with her, is certainly not evidence that he mailed a lewd and lascivious letter to her six months before. It is too well settled for consideration or discussion that proof of the subsequent commission of another crime is no evidence of the earlier commission of a like or a different crime. People v. O'Brien, 96 Cal. 171, 31 P. 45; Clapp v. State, 94 Tenn. 186, 30...