254 Mass. 86 | Mass. | 1925
The defendant having been acquitted on the indictment for forgery, his exceptions are confined to the indictment for conspiracy, on which he was found guilty. The indictment charged that the defendant and George A. Hastings and Robert O. Sears conspired together to steal the property, moneys, goods and chattels of George C. Lee, who could be found by the jury to have been a member of the banking firm of Lee, Higginson and Company, doing business in Boston, but only the defendant and Hastings were tried as Sears had not been arrested.
The defendant offered no evidence and the case was submitted to the jury on the testimony introduced by the Commonwealth. If the jury accepted this testimony as true, they could find that a clerk of the company, employed as a seller of bonds, in response to a letter dated June 14, 1924, addressed to the firm, bearing on the letterhead the words, “Hotel Vendóme,” and purporting to be signed by Sears “per W. L. G.,” had an interview with Sears, who after
It is clear there was proof of a criminal conspiracy by Sears and Hastings to obtain the bonds by using the forged draft. Commonwealth v. Dyer, 243 Mass. 472, 483. While there was no direct evidence implicating the defendant, the remaining question is whether there was any circumstantial evidence on which it could be found that he was a participant. Attorney General v. Tufts, 239 Mass. 458.
It was in evidence that when Hastings left the office of Lee, Higginson and Company on the day he presented the draft, the defendant was seen waiting a short distance from the office, and that, after Hastings and the defendant met, they turned into an intersecting street and walked up and down for some time. The jury also, if they believed the evidence of Towle, a police inspector, could find, that the defendant had written him a letter, to the admission of which as a standard of comparison the defendant excepted. It was admitted rightly in the first instance by the presiding
It follows, that the requests for a directed verdict, and that there was no evidence that the defendant conspired with the other defendants, and that there was not sufficient evidence to warrant an ordinarily reasonable and prudent man in deciding that the defendant was guilty, and that the verdict must be not guilty, could not have been given. The exceptions to the denial of the defendant’s motion for a new trial, not having been argued, are treated as waived.
Exceptions overruled.