14 F. 127 | W.D. Mo. | 1882
(charging jury.) The post-office department, under the law, has established a post-office in the town of Higginsville, in Lafayette county, in the western division of the western district of Missouri, and John W. Enly has boen appointed, and was, on the
“Any person who shall knowingly and willfully obstruct or retard the passage of the mail, or any carriage, horse, driver, or carrier carrying the same, shall for every such an offense be punishable by a ñire of not more than $100.”
The offense here denounced is the knowing and willful obstructing of the passage of the mail. I have already spoken of the meaning of the terms “knowingly and willfully,” and add by way of further explanation that they are used in contradistinction to innocent, ignorant, or unintentional; so that defendant, Glaypool, by the acts 'he did, may have obstructed and retardéd the mail in its passage, yet he is not guilty under the law if he did it innocently and without intending to do so. There is a distinction between the act of obstructing done while in pursuit of-a legitimate or innocent object, and being done while committing an unlawful act. This distinction has been clearly pointed out by the supreme court of the .United States in the case against one Kirby, 7 Wall. 482, and I present it to you in the language of Justice Field, who delivered the opinion, of the court:
“ The statute of congress, by its terras, applies only to persons who ‘ knowingly and willfully ’ obstruct or retard the passage of the mail or of its carrier; that is, to those who know that the acts performed will have that effect, and perform them with the intention that such shall be their operation. When the acts which create the obstruction are in themselves unlawful, the intention to obstruct will be imputed to their author, although the attainment of other ends may have been its primary object.”
As to this branch of the case, with so clear and pointed exposition of the law, you can have no difficulty in its application to the facts of the case you are to determine.
I pass to the definition of the terms “passage of the mail” and their meaning. The provision of the law as read, found in the revision of
It remains to be seen how far an interference with the postmaster is a knowing and willful interference with the passage of the mail, so as to obstruct and retard it. Upon this branch of the ease you are instructed that if you shall find from the evidence that Enly, the postmaster, on the afternoon of the twenty-eighth day of August, went from the place in the room where the post-office is located to the door for the purpose of inviting or inducing the personal encounter which then followed, he must-bear the consequences; and it makes no difference whether he happened to be a postmaster. If the postmaster or his postmastership had no connection with the difficulty between him (Enly) and Claypool, defendant, but was independent and disconnected from the post-office and matters pertaining thereto, you are authorized, on such a conclusion being arrived at by you from the testimony, to find the defendant not guilty. But, on the other hand, if you shall find from the testimony that Claypool committed an unprovoked assault upon Enly, the postmaster, and the necessary result
Under any view taken of the case, an obstruction or\ retarding of the mail must have been the consequence of and followed from Clay-pool’s acts. Drunkenness is no excuse for crime, and, in the instances in which it is resorted to, to blunt moral responsibility, it heightens the culpability of the offender.