United States v. Lynch

• Decision Date: 20 December 1918
• Citation: 256 F. 983
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. LYNCH.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

256 F. 983

UNITED STATES v. LYNCH.

United States District Court, S.D. New York.

December 20, 1918

Wm. H Daly and M. Michael Edelstein, both of New York City, for defendant.

HOUGH Circuit Judge (charging jury).

I have spent some considerable time in reflecting upon what is a novel situation to me, and am now prepared to dispose of this trial; a motion having been made on the part of the defendant on the whole case, and in respect to the second and third counts of the indictment, to dismiss or advise the jury to acquit. I have reduced my views to writing, and I will read them:

It is plain and very old law that, while detectives and decoys are not only necessary, but praiseworthy, instruments in ascertaining whether a given person is committing or has committed crime, it is equally plain and old that detection exceeds its limits when the detective or the decoy provokes or creates a crime that would not otherwise have occurred. It is not always easy to apply this rule. Border line cases are difficult, and doubtless it is usually best to leave the matter to the jury when and if, in view of the evidence, a reasonable man would be justified in holding that the accused had the intent or desire to do that for which he is indicted and seized and swallowed the bait that was laid for him.

After reflection and argument yesterday afternoon, when the gentlemen of the jury had retired or been excused, it is to me plain that in this case there is no contradiction of any vital or really important point of fact. Whether there were meetings, not only on September 19th, or on that day, and also a few days before, whether one man, months or years before that September last, borrowed money of the other, or whether one man ever said that he sometimes became unconscious, meaning thereby intoxicated, are no more than the trivial trimmings of the following outstanding and dominating facts:

A man who expected to be an officer in the United States army, and had a very good reason to believe that he would be soon commissioned, was asked what he would want out of a government contract over which he seemed-- only seemed--to have some control. He replied most properly, most honorably 'Nothing,' because he was about to become an officer; and there the matter dropped on that occasion.

Later days later, weeks later, at the instigation or by the order-- it does not appear which, and it makes no difference which-- of the...