Under the modern rule, supported both by legislation and by the
very great weight of judicial authority, all persons of competent
understanding are permitted to testify to relevant facts within
their knowledge, and the former common law rule disqualifying
witnesses convicted of crime will no longer be followed, but such
conviction will be given due consideration in determining the
credibility and weight of their testimony.
In a criminal trial in a United States district court in New
York, a witness, previously sentenced and imprisoned under the law
of that state for the crime of forgery in the second degree, was
competent to testify for the United States against his
codefendants, irrespective of whether he would have been
disqualified by the rules of competency as they were in New York at
the date of the Judiciary Act of 1789.
United
States v. Reid, 12 How. 361, is to this extent
disapproved.
Under Rev.Stats., § 161, which authorizes the head of each
department
"to prescribe regulations, not inconsistent with law, for the
government of his department, the conduct of its officers and
clerks, the distribution and performance of its business, and the
custody, use, and preservation of the . . . property appertaining
to it, "
Page 245 U. S. 468
and under and in supplement of § 194 of the Criminal Code, the
Postmaster General, by a general order, may designate as letter
boxes for the receipt or delivery of mail matter all letter boxes
and other receptacles which are so used or intended on city
delivery or other mail route, a privately owned box coming within
such designation is an "authorized depository for mail matter"
within the meaning of the penal section, and a theft of letter from
such a box is punishable as the section prescribes. So
held where the letters were stolen from boxes placed by
tenants for receipt of mail in the halls of buildings in which they
had their place of business. The boxes bore the names of the owner
and were not locked. Mail was deposited in them by the carriers,
but not collected from them.
Mail matter which has not reached the manual possession of the
addressee, but lies in a private letter box, designated as an
authorized depository under the federal law, where it has been
placed by the delivering earlier, is still subject to the
protective power of the government.
237 F. 810, 240 F. 350, affirmed.
The cases are stated in the opinion.
MR. JUSTICE CLARKE delivered the opinion of the Court.
These two cases present precisely the same questions for
decision. They were argued and will be decided together.
In No. 365, Rosen and Wagner were indicted in the District Court
of the United States for the Eastern District of New York with one
Broder for conspiring to buy and receive certain checks and letters
which had been stolen from "duly authorized depositories of United
States mail matter," and which were known to the accused to have
been so stolen. Broder pleaded guilty, and when he was afterwards
called as a witness for the
Page 245 U. S. 469
government, the objection was made that he was not competent to
testify for the reason that, as was admitted by the government, he
had theretofore pleaded guilty to the crime of forgery in the
second degree in the Court of General Sessions in the County and
State of New York, had been sentenced to imprisonment, and had
served his sentence. The objection was overruled and Broder was
permitted to testify. This ruling was assigned as error in the
circuit court of appeals, where it was affirmed, and it is now
assigned as error in this Court.
The second claim of error is that the trial court erred in
refusing the motion of the defendants to direct a verdict of
acquittal on the ground that no crime had been committed, for the
reason that the box from which the mail was taken was not "an
authorized depository of the mail," and that it was taken therefrom
after it had left the possession of the government.
Broder testified, and it was not disputed, that the letters were
stolen from boxes placed by tenants for the receipt of mail in the
halls of buildings in which they had their places of business. The
boxes bore the names of the owners and were not locked, and while
mail was deposited in them by the carriers, no mail was collected
from them.
In No. 438 Pakas and Broder, the same Broder as in No. 365, were
jointly indicted for buying and receiving three designated checks,
knowing the same to have been stolen from letters which had been
deposited in the United States mail for delivery by the post office
establishment of the United States. The same questions are
presented, raised in the same manner, as in No. 365.
For the validity of the claim that Broder was disqualified as a
witness by his sentence for the crime of forgery, the plaintiffs in
error rely upon
United States v.
Reid, 12 How. 361. In that case, it was
Page 245 U. S. 470
held that the competency of witnesses in criminal trials in
United States courts must be determined by the rules of evidence
which were in force in the respective states when the Judiciary Act
of 1789 was passed, and the argument in this case is that, by the
common law as it was administered in New York in 1789, a person
found guilty of forgery and sentenced was thereby rendered
incompetent as a witness until pardoned, and that therefore the
objection to Broder should have been sustained.
While the decision in
United States v. Reid, supra, has
not been specifically overruled, its authority must be regarded as
seriously shaken by the decisions in
Logan v. United
States, 144 U. S. 263-301,
and in
Benson v. United States, 146 U.
S. 325.
The
Benson case differed from the
Reid case
only in that, in the former, the witness whose competency was
objected to was called by the government, while in the latter, he
was called by the defendant. The testimony of the witness was
admitted in the one case, but it was rejected in the other, and
both judgments were affirmed by this Court -- however, forty years
had intervened between the two trials. In the
Benson case,
decided in 1891, this Court, after determining that the
Reid case was not decisive of it, proceeded to examine the
question then before it "in the light of general authority and of
sound reason," and after pointing out the great change in the
preceding fifty years in the disposition of courts to hear
witnesses, rather than to exclude them, a change "which was wrought
partially by legislation and partially by judicial construction,"
and how "the merely technical barriers which excluded witnesses
from the stand had been removed," proceeded to dispose of the case
quite without reference to the common law practice, which it was
claimed should rule it.
Accepting as we do the authority of the later, the
Benson case, rather than that of the earlier decision,
we
Page 245 U. S. 471
shall dispose of the first question in this case "in the light
of general authority and of sound reason."
In the almost twenty years which have elapsed since the decision
of the
Benson case, the disposition of courts and of
legislative bodies to remove disabilities from witnesses has
continued, as that decision shows it had been going forward before,
under dominance of the conviction of our time that the truth is
more likely to be arrived at by hearing the testimony of all
persons of competent understanding who may seem to have knowledge
of the facts involved in a case, leaving the credit and weight of
such testimony to be determined by the jury or by the court, rather
than by rejecting witnesses as incompetent, with the result that
this principle has come to be widely, almost universally, accepted
in this country and in Great Britain.
Since the decision in the
Benson case, we have
significant evidence of the trend of congressional opinion upon
this subject in the removal of the disability of witnesses
convicted of perjury, Rev.Stats. 5392, by the enactment of the
federal Criminal Code in 1909 with this provision omitted and §
5392 repealed. This is significant because the disability to
testify, of persons convicted of perjury, survived in some
jurisdictions much longer than many of the other common law
disabilities, for the reason that the offense concerns directly the
giving of testimony in a court of justice, and conviction of it was
accepted as showing a greater disregard for the truth than it was
thought should be implied from a conviction of other crime.
Satisfied as we are that the legislation and the very great
weight of judicial authority which have developed in support of
this modern rule, especially as applied to the competency of
witnesses convicted of crime, proceed upon sound principle, we
conclude that the dead hand of the common law rule of 1789 should
no longer be applied to such cases as we have here, and that the
ruling
Page 245 U. S. 472
of the lower courts on this first claim of error should be
approved.
There remains the claim that the boxes from which the letters
were stolen were not "authorized depositories of mail matter," and
that therefore the stealing of the letters from them did not
violate § 194 of the federal Criminal Code, of March 4, 1909, under
which petitioners were indicted.
Section 194 provides that:
"Whoever shall steal, take, or abstract . . . from . . . any . .
.
authorized depository for mail matter . . . any letter .
. . or shall abstract or remove from any such letter . . . any
article,"
etc., shall be fined, etc.
Section 161 of the Revised Statutes of the United States
provides:
"The head of each Department is authorized to prescribe
regulations, not inconsistent with law, for the government of his
department, the conduct of his officers and clerks, the
distribution and performance of its business, and the custody, use,
and preservation . . . of the . . . property appertaining
thereto."
A regulation promulgated as an order of the Post Office
Department prior to the dates on which the defendants are charged
with having committed the crime for which they were indicted was
introduced in evidence, and reads as follows:
"Any letter box or other receptacle intended or used for the
receipt or delivery of mail matter on any city delivery route . . .
or other mail route . . . is hereby designated a letter box for the
receipt or delivery of mail matter, within the meaning of the Act
of March 4, 1909."
This regulation was obviously intended to supplement § 194 of
the Criminal Code, under which the defendants were indicted, by
supplying the detail which Congress contemplated should be so
supplied when it left undefined
Page 245 U. S. 473
"or other authorized depository of mail matter." Such a
regulation, if fairly within the scope of the authority given by
Congress to make it, has the force and effect of law, and
violations of it are punishable under the act which it
supplements.
That § 194 contemplates that its general language shall be made
definite by such order is plain, and that the order is well within
the authority conferred upon the Postmaster General by Rev.Stats. §
161 cannot be doubted, prescribing, as it does, a rule for the
conduct of carriers in the discharge of their duties in the
delivery of mail and for safely preserving the property committed
to the care of the department until it shall reach the persons to
whom it is addressed. This satisfies the law.
Searight
v. Stokes, 3 How. 151-169;
Ex Parte Reed,
100 U. S. 13,
100 U. S. 22;
United States v. Grimaud, 220 U.
S. 506;
Light v. United States, 220 U.
S. 523;
Utah Power & Light Co. v. United
States, 243 U. S. 389.
The suggestion that, when the mail was deposited in a privately
owned box, it passed out of the custody of the government and
beyond the protection of the law does not deserve extended notice.
The letters which were stolen did not reach the manual possession
of the persons to whom they were addressed, but were taken from an
authorized depository over which the Act of Congress, by its
express terms, extended its protection until its function had been
served.
It results that the judgments of the circuit court of appeals
must be
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER and MR. JUSTICE McREYNOLDS dissent from
so much of the opinion as departs from the rule settled in
United States v. Reid and
Logan v. United States,
which they think is in no way modified by what actually was decided
in
Benson v. United States.