Quong Mow v. United States

The plaintiff in error, together with Dong Ho, was convicted and sentenced tb imprisonment for five years under an indictment charging him with possession of opium and concealing, buying and selling the same. He made no request for an instructed verdict of acquittal, but it is so urgently insisted that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the judgment against him that we have given the record a careful consideration. We' think the contention is-well founded. The officers arrested Dong Ho, a woman, while she was in the actual operation of a shack used as an opium den. They thereafter searched nearby premises in which, she lived, and there they found and seized opium which she was trying to conceal. After they had been upon the premises about 20' minutes, the plaintiff in error entered the-same by means of a key which he had, and he-was 'also arrested. The officers, on learning that he had rooms three-quarters of a block away, went and searched the same, and found there no opium, but found two boxes containing money.

The theory of the government was that the two - defendants were man and wife, and that the plaintiff in error must have had knowledge of and participation in the…