Supreme Court of the United States

Johnson v. United States

1913 U.S. LEXIS 2386 · 228 U.S. 457 · 33 S. Ct. 572 · 57 L. Ed. 919

April 28, 1913 · Docket 715

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Headnotes

Generated summaries
  1. Headnote 1

    The court noted that the books were transferred to the trustee pursuant to § 70 and that the transfer was authorized by law, citing Matter of Harris. Because the privilege does not follow the documents, the books could be admitted at trial.

  2. Headnote 2

    The opinion explained that while a debtor may invoke privilege to avoid producing his books, the privilege does not extend to preventing the government from using the documents after they have been transferred to the trustee.

  3. Headnote 3

    The Court compared the bankruptcy transfer to an execution transfer, stating that obtaining legal title to corporate books does not shield a party from their evidentiary use in criminal prosecution.

  4. Headnote 4

    Citing Wheeler, the Court affirmed that once the debtor’s books are in the hands of a third party, the privilege to avoid their use in a criminal case is lost.

  5. Headnote 5

    The Court found that the record contained enough proof of the defendant’s knowledge and concealment to satisfy the constitutional burden of proof, and therefore the conviction stands.

  6. Headnote 6

    The opinion relied on Seigel to conclude that the evidence, taken as a whole, was adequate to sustain the conviction, and thus the appellate court affirmed the judgment.

Opinion

*458 Mr. Justice Holmes

delivered the opinion of the court.

This is an indictment for concealing money from the defendant’s trustee in bankruptcy. The defendant was convicted and sentenced subject to exceptions which raised in different forms the questions whether his books properly were admitted against him and whether the evidence warranted the verdict.-

On the first point the facts are simply that the books had been transferred to the trustee in accordance- with § 70 of the Bankruptcy Act of July 1, 1898, 30 Stat. 544, c. 541, and were produced before the grand jury and béfore the petit jury at the trial. That the transfer lawfully could be required is established by Matter of Harris, 221 U. S. 274. But the defendant lays hold of an expression in that case, ‘the properly careful provision to protect him from use of the books in aid of prosecution,’ as an intimation that the books could not be put to such a use.

Courts proceed step by step. And we now have to consider whether the cautious statement in the former case marked the limit of the law in a case where no rights, if there were any, were saved- when the books were transferred. The answer was implied in that decision. A party is privileged from producing the evidence but not from its production. The transfer by bankruptcy is no different from a transfer by execution of a volume with a confession written on the fly leaf. It is held that a criminal cannot protect himself by getting the legal title to corporate books. Wheeler v. United States, 226 U. S. 478. But the converse proposition is by ho means true, that he may keep the protection from the introduction of documentary evidence that he would have had while he retained it, after the title and possession have gone to some one else.

It is true that the transfer of the books may have been against the defendant’s will, but it is compelled by the law as a necessary incident to the distribution of his property, not in order to obtain criminal evidence against him. Of course a man cannot protect his property from being used to pay his debts by attaching to it a disclosure of crime. If the documentary confession comes .to-a third hand alio intuitu, as this did, the use of it in court does not compel the defendant to be a witness against himself.

As to the question of evidence, it is enbugh to say- that there was evidence tending as far as it went to show that the defendant foresaw what was coming and attempted to save something from the wreck. There is no certificate-that.all the evidence is before us, and we should not be warranted in declaring ás matter of law that the Government did not make out a case. See Seigel v. Cartel, 164 Fed. Rep. 691.

Judgment affirmed.