Sykes v. United States

• Decision Date: 25 April 1913
• Docket Number: 3,860.
• Citation: 204 F. 909
• Parties: SYKES v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

204 F. 909

SYKES v. UNITED STATES.

No. 3,860.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

April 25, 1913

Edward Higbee, of Lancaster, Mo. (Higbee & Mills, of Lancaster, Mo on the brief), for plaintiff in error.

Homer Hall, Asst. U.S. Atty., of St. Louis, Mo. (Charles A. Houts U.S. Atty., of St. Louis, Mo., on the brief), for the United States.

Before SANBORN, Circuit Judge, and WILLIAM H. MUNGER and TRIEBER District Judges.

SANBORN Circuit Judge.

The writ in this case challenges the trial and conviction of Charles Sykes for breaking into a post office building at Kirksville, in the state of Missouri, on August 23, 1911, and feloniously taking therefrom four mail bags. The question which the record in this case has persuaded us to consider is the existence of any substantial evidence to sustain this conviction. The evidence in the record discloses these facts:

Sykes was a resident and citizen of Knox county, in the state of Missouri and had lived in the vicinity of Hurdland, a few miles from Kirksville, for about three years. He was a dealer in horses, and a man of good reputation for honor and integrity. He was indicted and tried with Bert L. Burnhardt, H. B. Sims, and Mrs. Minnie Callahan. Each of these three defendants testified that he or she had never made the acquaintance of Sykes until after the robbery, and Sykes was not in Kirksville when the robbery was committed. Burnhardt was a young man who had been in Kirksville about three weeks. He was, and had been for some time, an intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Callahan, and she came at his request to the hotel in Kirksville, where he met her the day before the robbery. He was also acquainted with Sims, and neither of the three seems to have had any abiding place. The post office was robbed about 11 o'clock at night on August 23, 1911. Sykes, Burnhardt, and Sims testified that Sykes had nothing to do with it, and his conviction is founded upon the testimony of Mrs. Callahan alone, who pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced on May 30, 1912, to confinement in jail for three months, to date from February 28, 1912, and to pay a fine of $100, so that she was in effect discharged after the verdict, while Sykes was sentenced to pay a fine of $100 and to be confined in the penitentiary five years, and each of the other defendants to pay a fine of $100 and to be confined in the penitentiary four years. Three of the stolen mail bags were found near the post office a few hours after the robbery, and, on September 4, 1911, a workman mowing weeds on the side of the railroad embankment about 200 yards from the railroad station in Kirksville, found the fourth bag and many of its contents, and his find was immediately published. Two days after the robbery, on August 25, 1911, Mrs. Callahan made an affidavit before a post office inspector that she, Burnhardt, and Sims took supper together at the hotel in Kirksville on August 23, 1911, that she and Burnhardt spent from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m. that night together talking with a Mrs. Shelton, a keeper of a boarding house on McPherson street, in Kirksville, concerning renting some rooms; that after this conversation they walked around in the vicinity of the post office, and saw in the distance Sims and one Tholman. She said nothing in this affidavit about Sykes. The next day Burnhardt made an affidavit to the same effect.

In October, 1911, Mrs. Callahan was arrested, and was thereafter confined in jail about 35 days on the charge that she had forged the name of Sykes to a check for $100, a charge which was still pending against her at the time of the trial below. At the expiration of the 35 days she was released from the jail on bail, and two witnesses testified that upon her release she declared she would have revenge on Sykes, and would put him in jail with the others; but she denied that she made this statement. On November 8, 1911, she made a second affidavit before a post office inspector, in which she testified that she did not see Burnhardt any more the night of the robbery after she returned with him from Mrs. Shelton's and entered the hotel; that the first she knew of the robbery was learned by overhearing a conversation between Burnhardt and Sims concerning it at the hotel the next morning after its commission; that she went to Burnhardt's room that morning after hearing this talk and found the mail bag under the mattress in his room; that between August 22 and October 16, 1911, she was out and took beer with Sykes a number of times; that on September 2, 1911, on his invitation, she took a ride in a buggy with him in the afternoon; that he had a mail bag in a gunny sack in this buggy; that he took it out of the buggy, took the gunny sack off of it, carried the mail bag along the railroad embankment several yards, and hid it in the weeds on the side of the railroad; that they returned to Kirksville from their ride about six in the afternoon; and that afterwards Sykes gave her a check for $100 to go away. She rested a month, and then on December 7, 1911, made a third affidavit before a post office inspector in which she testified that Burnhardt asked her to go to Kirksville, and she arrived at the hotel there at 4 in the afternoon of August 22, 1911, that Burnhardt came to her in the hotel an hour later, that the plan for the robbery was made that night, that Burnhardt said that he and Sims were to rob the post office for a third party for $50 each, that their plan was that she was to watch in the alley near the post office while they committed the robbery, that on the next night they executed this plan, that after taking the sacks they cut open three of them and put their contents into the fourth, that Sims brought the fourth bag into her room in the hotel that night through the window, and that he and Burnhardt took it thence to the latter's room.

At the trial she repeated her story of the hiding of the mail bag by Sykes, of the robbery, and of the statement by Burnhardt that he and Sims were hired to commit it, which she had told in her third affidavit, and testified that at Macon, on the 10th of September, 1911, Sykes paid Burnhardt $25 and told her that he gave Burnhardt and Sims $50 apiece for going into the post office. She also testified that she reported the robbery to the officials after she found out that she was charged with forging the check by Sykes. Burnhardt, Sims, and Sykes testified that it was not true that Sykes hired or paid Burnhardt or Sims to commit the robbery, that Mrs Callahan's story about their statements in this regard and about the payment of the money by Sykes to Burnhardt were false, and that Sykes had nothing to do with the crime. Sykes and two other witnesses testified that he was not in Kirksville, but was at Brookfield, and that he there purchased and gave two checks, which were in evidence at the trial, for horses on September 2, 1911, the day when Mrs. Callahan testified that he hid the mail bag in her presence, and Sykes testified that there was no truth in...