Tinder v. United States (345 U.S. 565)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 25, 1953 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 345 U.S. 565 · 73 S. Ct. 911
- Decided
- May 25, 1953
- Term
- October Term 1952
- Vote
- 5–3
- Majority author
- Justice Reed
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Mr. Justice Reed delivered the opinion of the Court. On September 13, 1950, petitioner pleaded guilty to a six-count indictment charging the theft of six separate letters from the mailboxes of the six addressees in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1708. Petitioner was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on each count, the sentences to run concurrently. 193 F. 2d 720. After serving almost a year of his term, petitioner, on August 3, 1951, filed a motion under 28 U. S. C. § 2255 to vacate or correct sentence on the ground that the indictment did not allege that any of the letters stolen from the mailboxes had a value of more than $100, hence that the indictment charged misdemeanors under § 1708, the maximum penalty for each of which was one year, instead of felonies for which the maximum penalty was five years. The District Court denied petitioner’s motion and the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed. Both of the courts below held that the misdemeanor provision of § 1708 applies only to thefts of “any article or thing” which in turn had been taken from a letter or package, and not to thefts of intact units of mail. As this result was in direct conflict with the position taken by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Armstrong v. United States, 187 F. 2d 954, we granted certiorari to resolve that conflict. 343 U. S. 976. The statute in question appears in the…
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