65 F. 62 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of South Carolina | 1894
(charging jury). This is an indictment for conspiracy under sections 5440 and 5480- of the Revised Statutes of the United States, which will be read to you. A conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to do an unlawful act. The unlawful agreement or combination is the gist of the offense, and at common law the offense was complete when the unlawful agree
Having thus endeavored to make plain to you the law as to the offense charged in this indictment, it may be well to say a few words in respect to the evidence necessary to support it. Í have already
Having thus fixed in your minds the principles of the law respecting conspiracies in general, you will now consider most specifically the particular offense with which these parties are charged. The government of the United States has plenary power over the mails and postal service, and by its legislation has attempted to prevent that service, which is intended for the benefit of the people, being used for the purpose of defrauding them. The law, in its efforts to restrict the use of the mails to beneficial purposes, has provided for the punishment of any person who, having devised any scheme to defraud, effects the same by opening correspondences through the post-office establishment. It is for a combination to make such unlawful use of the mails that these parties stand indicted. The government has attempted to prove that the defendants named in this indictment agreed upon a scheme to defraud the parties therein set forth, and used the mails in furtherance of the design. Tou have heard the testimony, and it is for you to say whether the proof is sufficient to establish the offense charged. This testimony is very voluminous; it is partly'oral and partly written. The delivery of it has consumed four days, and the argument of counsel another day, and the court feels that it is a great tax upon your patience to detain you longer with the recital of the facts; but the importance of the case seems to render it necessary that I should sum up the testimony, and I will endeavor to do so as briefly as I can.
The practice in the courts of the United States permits the judge to express an opinion upon the testimony, and, while it is not my
The first witness for the government, one Biggs, details a conversation had with Barrett, wherein Barrett proposed that they should go into an operation similar in kind to that which other witnesses have testified was subsequently entered into, and that he was requested to furnish a list of the principal dealers in pianos' throughout the country. The witness declined the proposition; nothing came of it, so far as appears; and Biggs passed from the scene. Barrett makes emphatic denial of such conversation. The next witness is McElrath, who has entered a plea of guilty. I have already charged you as to the weight to be given to the testimony of persons occupying that position. He testifies that he lived about three miles from Owens, and at his suggestion, in March, 1892, he came to Barrett to secure his aid in establishing a post office to be called “McElrath”; that Owens first informed him of the scheme proposed.
The burden of proof in all criminal cases being upon the government, the presumption of innocence protects the accused until the jury is satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty. You must not convict unless you are convinced, but, if the proof'satisfies yon that the accused are guilty, you should not refuse to convict because of some remote, far-fetched, or merciful suggestion or conjecture that possibly they may he innocent. Absolute certainty is rarely possible, and those vague uncertainties to which some minds are always, and all minds are sometimes, liable are not within the contemplation of the law when it directs that the accused shall have the benefit of the doubt. It is not every doubt, however slight or however foun*ded, which should px-event a verdict of guilty. It is not the mere possibility of innocence, or vague notions or capricious or captious doubt, that is intended. If the evidence has produced in your minds a moral certainty that the accused or any of them are