United States v. Dimmick

• Decision Date: 22 November 1901
• Docket Number: 3,926.
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. DIMMICK.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California

112 F. 350

UNITED STATES v. DIMMICK.

No. 3,926.

United States District Court, N.D. California.

November 22, 1901

Denson & Schlesinger, for the United States.

George D. Collins, for defendant.

DEHAVEN District Judge.

The defendant has indicted for the violation of section 5492 of the Revised Statutes, and convicted. The section is as follows:

'Every person who, having moneys of the United States in his hands or possession, fails to make deposit of the same with the treasurer, or some assistant treasurer, or some public depository of the United States, when required so to do by the secretary of the treasury, or the head of any other proper department, or by the accounting officers of the treasury, shall be deemed guilty of embezzlement thereof.'

The question now presented for decision arises upon defendant's motion for a new trial. One of the grounds for the motion, and the only one which I deem it necessary to discuss, is that the verdict is unsupported by evidence. The following facts were shown upon the trial: That at the times named in the several counts of the indictment upon which the defendant has been convicted he was chief clerk of the United States mint at San Francisco; that it was his duty, as such clerk, to make sale of by-products and old materials, and receive the money for which they were sold, and keep the same in his custody until the time for depositing it in the United States subtreasury; that during all the times referred to in the indictment the following general regulation for the transaction of business in the United States mints, made by the director of the mint, and approved by the secretary of the treasury, was in force:

'All funds received from the sale of by-products and old materials, and for assays of bullion, shall be separately deposited on the last day of each quarter in the treasury of the United States, and the nature of the deposit specified in the certificate of deposit. The original certificate, together with a statement in detail of the receipts from each source, shall be forwarded to the bureau of the mint.'

It was also shown that the defendant, as clerk of the United States mint at San Francisco, received moneys from the sale of by-products, and willfully failed to deposit such moneys with the assistant treasurer of the United States at San Francisco during the quarter in which they were received as charged in the indictment; that such funds...