United States v. De Groat

• Citation: 30 F. 764
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. DE GROAT and another.
• Decision Date: 09 April 1887
• Court: United States District Courts. 6th Circuit. United States District Court (Eastern District of Michigan)

30 F. 764

UNITED STATES v. DE GROAT and another.

United States District Court, E.D. Michigan.

April 9, 1887

C. P Black, Dist. Atty., for the United States.

L. F Bedford and D. S. Grece, for defendants.

Defendants were indicted under Rev. St. Sec. 5403, for taking and carrying away, with the intent to steal or destroy, certain records belonging to the office of the internal revenue collector at Detroit, Michigan. The proof showed that, the government not furnishing sufficient accomodations for their safe keeping, the collector stored them in the stable or bar at his private residence. They were packed loosely in boxes such as are used for merchandise, some of which were nailed and others not, and some of the papers were loose on the floor, and altogether there were about 10 or 15 tons so stored in the barn. The records consisted of the accumulations of all the years since the system was adopted, and were the papers that had been kept and filed in the course of business. The collector received them from his predecessor in office, and placed them in his barn for the reason stated, it being used for no other purpose, and fastened with such locks and bolts as are usually found in barns. The defendants, hiring a wagon, had taken four or five thousand pounds of the papers away, and sold them to junk dealers, when they were discovered, arrested, and arraigned on this indictment.

HAMMOND J., (orally.)

The defendants should not be convicted on this proof, gentlemen of the jury. The statute under which they are charged reads thus:

'Every person who willfully destroys, or attempts to destroy, or, with intent to steal or destroy, takes and carries away any record, paper, or proceeding of a court of justice, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of such court, or any paper or document or record filed or deposited in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer, shall, without reference to the value of the record, paper, document, or proceeding so taken, pay a fine of not more than two thousand dollars, or suffer imprisonment at hard labor not more than three years, or both.'

It is manifest that this statute is not broad enough, and was not intended to punish the mere larceny or theft of the papers or documents as property, but that the essential element of the offense is the specific intent to destroy them as records of a public office; or, in other words, to obliterate or conceal them as the evidence of that which constitutes their value as public records, or to destroy or impair their legal effect or usefulness as a record of our governmental affairs, be that effect or usefulness what it may. The suggestion that these old papers are of no value, and can be of none, does not avail defendants, because they are useful and may be needed in many ways, as testimony against delinquent and fraudulent tax-payers, for example, or for statistical or historical purposes; and, indeed, the government and its officers are the sole judges of whether they require preservation or not, and the very language of the statute is that the offense is committed 'without reference to the value of the record, paper, document, or proceeding so taken. ' The object of the statute is to preserve the public records and papers intact from all kinds of spoliation, mutilation, or destruction.

But still the specific intent to destroy a record must be present, and its absence, through want of knowledge of the fact that the paper or document destroyed constituted a record, relieves the defendants of any criminal offense under this statute, however guilty they may be, under the laws of...