Santana v. United States
| Decision Date | 22 June 1964 |
| Docket Number | No. 6185.,6185. |
| Citation | 329 F.2d 854 |
| Parties | Ricardo SANTANA, Defendant, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Joseph T. Wynne, San Juan, P. R., Francisco Ponsa Feliu, San Juan, P. R., on the brief, for appellant.
Benicio Sanchez Rivera, Asst. U. S. Atty., Francisco A. Gil, Jr., U. S. Atty., on the brief, for appellee.
Before WOODBURY, Chief Judge, and MARIS* and ALDRICH, Circuit Judges.
Certiorari Denied June 22, 1964. See 84 S.Ct. 1915.
The only question on this appeal from a judgment of conviction and sentence for depositing lottery tickets in the mail in violation of Title 18 U.S.C. § 1302 is whether a package, mailed by the appellant and found on inspection by the postmaster at the place of mailing to contain 55 tickets of the lottery of Puerto Rico, was subject to opening and inspection without a search warrant.
The facts of the mailing are undisputed. On January 27, 1961, the defendant-appellant presented a package wrapped in paper and tied with a string weighing between three and four pounds at the parcel post window of the United States Post Office, Bayamon, Puerto Rico, and asked the postal clerk on duty to compute the necessary postage to forward the package to the addressee in New York City via air mail, special delivery and insured. The clerk did so, and the defendant paid $2.91 for air mail stamps, $.45 for special delivery and $.20 for insurance, making a total of $3.56. The clerk testified that he gave the defendant a receipt showing the postage paid, the insurance fee, the special delivery fee, the postmark of the post office and the date. After the postage was applied and the defendant had left, the postal clerk, being under the impression for some unknown reason that the package contained non-mailable meat delicacies, took it to his superior, the superintendent of mails, who removed the string, opened the paper wrapping and found the lottery tickets and copies of a local newspaper.
It was stipulated on motion to suppress made by leave of court at the trial that if the search of the package and the seizure of the lottery tickets were unlawful, the defendant should be acquitted, but if the search and seizure were legal, he should be found guilty. The court found the search and seizure legal and entered the judgment of sentence appealed from.
Whether the search was legal depends upon whether the parcel was first-class mail, for Title 39 U.S.C. § 40571 provides: "Only an employee opening dead mail by authority of the Postmaster General, or a person holding a search warrant authorized by law may open any letter or parcel of the first class which is in the custody of the Department." Whereas Postal Manual Regulation 311.11 provides: "Mail other than first class mail may be opened for postal inspection, except official mail weighing more than four pounds."
To resolve the question whether the package was first class or other than first class we turn to the statute and Title 39 of the Code of Federal Regulations, C.F.R. hereinafter, as it read when the package was mailed.
The package was...
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...private letters entrusted by him to the mail were intercepted and read by F.B.I. agents acting without a warrant. In Santana v. United States, 329 F.2d 854 (1st Cir. 1964), on the other hand, the court allowed the search of a package sent by fourth class mail placing implicit reliance upon ......
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