United States v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 28 November 1893
• Docket Number: 2,978.
• Citation: 58 F. 768
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. WILSON.

58 F. 768

UNITED STATES v. WILSON.

No. 2,978.

United States District Court, N.D. California.

November 28, 1893

Charles A. Garter, U.S. Atty.

Lorenzo S. B. Sawyer, for defendant.

MORROW District Judge.

This is an indictment for 'depositing,' etc., 'in a post office of the United States, a certain lascivious, obscene and indecent letter, inclosed in a sealed envelope,' found under section 3893 of the Revised Statutes, as amended by act of September 26, 1888. To this indictment the defendant demurs on the ground that it states no offense against the laws of the United States. It is contended on behalf of the defendant that a strictly private, sealed letter is not included among the inhibitions of section 3893 Rev. St., as amended.

The United States attorney opposes this view, and maintains that the congress, when it amended this section in 1888 by inserting the word 'letters,' intended to and did cover just such a case as this. The offense charged is statutory, and the determination of this question depends upon the construction to be given to the statute upon which the indictment is based. It will be necessary, therefore, to refer to the legislation upon the subject. The act of March 3, 1865, (section 16,) provided that 'no obscene book pamphlet, picture, print or other publication of a vulgar and indecent character shall be admitted to the mails,' and punishment was provided for the violation of this section. The act of June 8, 1872, (section 148,) added to the prohibited matter 'any letter upon the envelope of which, or postal card upon which, scurrilous epithets may have been written or printed,' and prescribed a penalty for the deposit of any 'such obscene publications.' In the act of March 3, 1873, the words 'paper' and 'writing' first appear. The title of this act was 'An act for the suppression of trade in, and circulation of obscene literature and articles of immoral use.' The second section of this act provides that 'no obscene book, pamphlet, picture, paper, print, or other publication,' etc., 'shall be mailable.' This section was revised by the act of July 12, 1876, and the word 'writing' inserted in the list of nonmailable publications. In incorporating this act into the Revised Statutes, its several sections were separated and classified. Section 1 became section 5389; section 2, section 3893; section 3, section 2491; section 4, section 1785; and section 5, section 2492,--of the Revised Statutes. These separated sections serve to explain the meaning of the original statute. In the original, act, section 1 alone contained a full list of the prohibited articles, the other sections referring to it. The repetition of the words in the separate section, therefore, did not render nonmailable anything not made so by the original act. On September 26, 1888, congress amended section 3893 by inserting the word 'letter' between the words 'paper' and 'writing,' leaving the words 'or other publications' as they stood. Before this last amendment the decisions of the United States circuit and district courts were about equally divided upon the proper construction of the statute.

In the following cases it was held that a message or communication in writing from one person to another, of the character known as a 'letter,' was a 'writing,' within the meaning of the statute; U.S. v. Gaylord, 17 F. 438; U.S. v. Hanover, Id. 444; U.S. v. Britton, Id. 731; U.S. v. Morris, 18 F. 900; U.S. v. Thomas, 27 Fed. 682. In the following cases the courts held that a private letter did not come within the prohibition of the statute: U.S. v. Williams, 3 Fed. 484; U.S. v. Loftis, 12 F. 671; U.S. v. Comerford, 25 F. 902; U.S. v. Mathias, 36 F. 892; U.S. v. Huggett, 40 F. 636. The question was settled by the supreme court of the United States in U.S. v. Chase, 135 U.S. 255, 10 S.Ct. 756. This case arose under the act of 1876, but was decided April 28, 1890, or more than a year after the amendment of September 26, 1888. The opinion expressly refers to that amendment, and, while only deciding the case at bar, lays down the rule of construction that must govern this court in construing the amendment of 1888. 'In the statute under consideration,' says the supreme court in this case, 'the word 'writing' is used as one of a group or class of words,--book, pamphlet, picture, paper, writing, print,--each of which is ordinarily and prima facie understood to be a publication; and the enumeration concludes with the general phrase 'or other publication,' which applies to all the articles enumerated, and marks each with the common quality indicated. It must, therefore, according to a well-defined rule of construction, be published writing which is contemplated by the statute, and not a private letter, on the outside of which there is nothing but the name and address of the person to whom it is written. * * * The statute prohibits the conveyance by mail of matter which is a publication before it is mailed, and not such as becomes a publication by reason of its being mailed.'

This decision declares clearly and distinctly two rules of construction for this statute: First, the phrase 'or other publication' applies to and qualifies all the preceding enumerated articles; second, the statute prohibits the conveyance of mail matter which is a publication before it is mailed, and not such as becomes a publication by reason of its being mailed.

These rules appear to be as applicable to the statute as amended by the insertion of the word 'letter' as before. Indeed the amendment was before the court, and is referred to in the decision. It is not, therefore, a case where congress has amended a statute to cure a defect pointed out by the supreme court, but where the court has rendered a decision prescribing rules of construction for an original statute with an amendment before it that would come within such rules. In the case of U.S. v. Clark, 43 F. 574, these rules were accordingly construed as applicable to the amended statute as they were to the statute before amended. On the other hand, in the case of In re Wahll, 42 F. 822, it was held that congress had by the amendment clearly expressed its intention to exclude obscene letters, whether private and sealed or unsealed; but the letter in that case is described as 'written on four several sheets or pieces of paper, on each of which were illuminated, comical pictures, commonly known as and called 'comic valentines,' and then and there containing and consisting of indecent, obscene, lewd, and lascivious delineations,...