United States v. Moore

Citations

• 129 F. 159
• 1904 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 292

Syllabus

<p>1. Post Office — Nonmailable Matter — Obscene Letter — Statutes—Construction.</p> <p>Rev. St. U. S. § 3893 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 2658], provides that every obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, writing, or other publication of an indecent character shall be nonmailable. Held, that where the necessary inference from the language used in a letter was obscene, and tended to offend the sense of decency, purity, and chastity of society, it was immaterial that the words used were not themselves obscene.</p> <p>2. Same.</p> <p>A letter was written by a married man to a married woman, not his wife, whom he had never met, suggesting that he hoped the same would come to her as “a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day”; that his attention had been called to her “by a friend of ours,” and asked her to meet him on an afternoon at the house of an old lady who kept rooms to rent “for such meetings”; that his proposition was “all straight goods,” and that he would be “a good friend” to her, and, though he had never been at such proposed meeting place, he knew others who had been there, and had been informed by them that it was “all O. K.” Held, that the purpose of such letter was an invitation and solicitation to the addressee to meet the writer for illicit intercourse, and was therefore obscene, within Rev. St. U. S. § 3893 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 2658], prohibiting the sending of any obscene writing through the mails.</p> <p>If 1. Obscene matter as nonmailable, see note to Timmons v. United States, 30 C. C. A. 79.</p> <p>See Post Office, vol. 40, Cent. Dig. § 50.</p>