United States v. Butler

• Decision Date: 29 April 1889
• Citation: 38 F. 498
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. BUTLER.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan

38 F. 498

UNITED STATES v. BUTLER.

United States District Court, E.D. Michigan.

April 29, 1889

Syllabus by the Court

A defendant, who had been acquitted upon an indictment for selling liquors, without payment of the special tax required by law, was subsequently put upon trial for perjury, in swearing upon his preliminary examination before a commissioner that he did not so sell. Held, that a plea of prior acquittal was bad, as the two indictments were not for the same transaction, nor sustained by the same evidence.

Held further, that his acquittal for selling liquor was a conclusive adjudication in his favor upon the subsequent trial for perjury, and that the government could not show that his oath was false.

C. P Black, U.S. Atty.

D. A Straker and Sylvester Larned, for defendant.

BROWN J.

It certainly strikes one as an anomaly that, after an acquittal for a criminal offense, a party may be put upon trial for perjury, in swearing that he was not guilty of that offense but I do not think a plea of former acquittal is the proper way to take advantage of it. To make such a plea effective it must appear that the same evidence will sustain both indictments, and that they relate to the same transaction. Thus, if a person be acquitted of robbery, he cannot be convicted of larceny of the same property; nor, after conviction for arson, can a prisoner be tried for murder committed in burning the building, although it has been held that a trial and conviction for an assault and battery is no bar to a subsequent indictment for manslaughter. Burns v. People, 1 Park.Crim.R. 182. But the offense of perjury is a totally distinct and separate thing from selling liquor, and was committed at a different time, although it related to the same transaction, and the evidence that will sustain one will only partly sustain the other. If defendant's contention were sound it would follow as a matter of course that if he had been convicted upon the first indictment for selling liquor, he could have pleaded a prior conviction to the indictment for perjury, a point I should be quite unwilling to concede.

But I am clearly of the opinion that upon the trial of this case the defendant would be entitled to show that he had been acquitted of the offense concerning which he is charged to have committed perjury, and that such acquittal would be conclusive. Whenever the same fact has been put in issue between the same par...