United States v. Falkenhainer

• Decision Date: 16 September 1884
• Citation: 21 F. 624
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. FALKENHAINER. [1]
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri

21 F. 624

UNITED STATES v. FALKENHAINER. ^[1]

United States Circuit Court, E.D. Missouri.

September 16, 1884

William H. Bliss, for the United States.

Thos C. Fletcher and Geo. H. Shields, for defendant.

BREWER J.

The defendant was convicted in the district court, under section 5469 of the Revised Statutes, of stealing and taking from a postal car certain letters, and sentenced to hard labor for a term of two years. A bill of exceptions was signed, a writ of error allowed, and the case is now in this court for review. Several questions have been ably and elaborately argued by counsel. I shall notice the most important.

1. It is insisted that the section prescribed no punishment for the offense charged, and the case of U.S. v. Long, 10 F 879, decided by Circuit Judge PARDEE, is cited as authority. With the highest respect for that distinguished judge, I cannot concur in his conclusions. The specific objection is this: The section contains several clauses, each defining an offense against the postal service, separated from each other by a semicolon and connected by no conjunction, copulative or disjunctive, and the last clause alone containing any express denunciation of penalty. So that the section reads thus: 'Any person who shall steal the mail,' etc.; 'any person who shall take the mail,' etc. Then, after several clauses separated in the same manner, the following: 'Any person who shall, by fraud or deception, obtain,' etc., 'shall, although not employed in the postal service, be punishable,' etc. There is in this last clause no word or expression which, in terms, refers to or includes the prior clauses, and the contention is that the penalty is denounced only on him who is guilty of the offense described in this last clause. When tried by the strict letter there is force in the objection; but it is as old as the Scripture that while 'the letter killeth, the spirit maketh alive,' and no better illustration can be found than the present; for if we keep to the mere narrowness of the letter, the first clauses, embracing five-sixths of the section, are not only without force to sustain the present indictment, but are absolutely dead and meaningless. They signify nothing, and congress, instead of defining these various offenses, might as well have filled up the section with a recitation of the Greek alphabet. I do not think that the courts are at liberty to set at naught the obvious intent of congress, and thus destroy the main body of this section. Courts will often look beyond the letter to the intent, upholding the latter even at the expense of the former. Indeed, the cardinal canon of construction is that the intent when ascertained governs, and to that all mere rules of interpretation are subordinate. State v. Bancroft, 22 Kan. 206. 'A thing which is within the intention of the makers of a statute is as much within the statute as if it were within the letter; and a thing which is within the letter of the statute is not within the statute unless it be within the intention of the makers; and such construction ought to be put upon it as does not suffer it to be eluded. ' Holmes v. Carley, 31 N.Y. 290; Bac. Abr. St. 1, Secs. 5, 10, and authorities cited. Plowden thus quaintly expresses the same thought in his commentary upon the case of Eyston v. Studd, 2 Plowd. 465:

'It is not the words of the law, but the internal sense of it, that makes the law; and our law, like all others, consists of two parts, viz., of body and soul. The letter of the law is the body of the law, and the sense and reason of the law are the soul of the law,-- quia ratio legis est anima legis,-- and the law may be resembled to a nut, which has a shell and a kernel within; the letter of the law represents the shell, and the sense of it the kernel; and as you will be no better for the nut if you make use only of the shell, so you will receive no benefit from the law if you rely upon the letter, and as the fruit and profit of the nut lie in the kernel and not in the shell, so the fruit and profit of the law consist in the sense more than in the letter. And it often happens that when you know the letter you know not the sense, for sometimes the sense is more confined and contracted that the letter, and sometimes it is more large and extensive.' Doubtless the letter is first to be considered in order to determine the intent of the legislature, for the courts may not read a law simply as they wish it should read. But other matters may also be considered, and among them the evils sought to be remedied. It was resolved by the barons of the exchequer in Heydon's Case, 3 Rep. 7, as follows:

'For the sure and true interpretation of all statutes in general, be they penal or beneficial, restrictive or enlarging of the common law, four things are to be discerned and considered: First. What was the common law before the making of the act? Second. What was the mischief and defect against which the common law did not provide? Third. What remedy the parliament hath resolved and appointed to cure the disease of the commonwealth. And, fourth, the true reason of the remedy.'

In Powlter's Case, Lord COKE observes:

'It is frequent in our books that penal statutes have been taken by intendment, to the end that they should not be illusory, but should take effect according to the intention of the makers of the act.' 11 Coke, 34.

Bishop, in his work on Statutory Crimes, says, in section 243:

'When the legislative meaning is plain, the exact grammatical construction and propriety of language may be disregarded, even in a penal statute. Courts interpret the word 'and' as disjunctive, and the word 'or' as conjunctive, when the sense absolutely requires it; and this, in extreme cases, is criminal statutes against the accused. ' Section 212: 'A strict construction is not violated by giving the words of the statute a reasonable meaning according to the sense in which they were intended, and disregarding captious objections and even the demands of an exact grammatical propriety. ' Section 81: 'A statute will not be controlled by grammatical construction in such a way as to defeat its obvious meaning; * * * for example, conjunctive sentences describing

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