United States v. Koki

Citations

• 3 D. Haw. 462

Syllabus

<p>Criminal law — Embezzlement—Indictment based on suspicious circumstances: The prosecution may base an indictment for embezzlement, not on specific, identifiable items of embezzlement, but on suspicions circumstances such as shortages evidenced by false official statements and entries.</p> <p>Same: All evidence tending to show a system of embezzlement based on suspicious circumstances may be admitted.</p> <p>Same — Burden of proof: If the jury are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt by evidence of prosecution admitted, that an actual shortage has existed in the accounts of an. agent accused of embezzlement, the burden of proof is shifted to the defendant to show that the shortage or shortages were not as a matter of faet caused by conversion of the trust funds to his own use.</p> <p>Same — Embezzlement—Former jeopardy: K, a postmaster, was indicted, tried and acquitted for embezzling money order funds. The indictment was based entirely on prima facie showing of a shortage as of November 27th, 1907, through a false statement in an official paper of defendant. At the trial, evidence was admitted showing the official conduct of K's money order business from August 11th, 1905, to December 13th, 1907, at which date he resigned without a shortage then existing in his accounts. This evidence showed at least eleven other interrelated prima facie shortages, through false official statements or gross delays in remitting. For six of these other indictments had been returned against the same defendant, among them one for an alleged shortage of $1,865 on November 8th, 1907. Many times more evidence of this $1,865 shortage was admitted on the former tidal than of the November 27th shortage. The record evidence made part of the special plea of former acquittal shows that all the alleged shortages are inextricably interdependent on each other and that there is no evidence of even one identifiable item of embezzlement. Held, on demurrer to the special plea, that a system of shorta