87 F. 329 | 8th Cir. | 1898
The plaintiff in error, L. A. Safter, pleaded not guilty to an indictment for mailing two lewd and lascivious letters on July 15, 1895, and on August 6, 1895, respectively, and after a trial by a jury was convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor in the penitentiary at Ft. Leavenworth for two years. The trial court declared the letters to he lewd and lascivious as a matter of law, and the only question submitted to the jury was whether or not they were mailed. Upon this issue the testimony was eonilictiug. After the plaintiff in error had testified that they never were, transmitted through the mails, but that one of them was handed by him personally to the woman to whom it was addressed, and that the other was sent to her by a special messenger, the district attorney was permitted, over the objection of counsel for the accused, to ask him whether or not, in January, 1896, he and the addressee of the letters registered at an hotel in Ft. Smith, in the state of Arkansas, and occupied the same room, as John Jones and wife. After he had answered that they did not, the district attorney was allowed to introduce evidence, over like objections, that they did, and that at another time and place, months after the letters were delivered, they were seen in a water-closet together. ■ These and many other rulings of the court below are assigned as error. What relevancy this testimony had to