Wong Kim v. United States

By an indictment returned in the Northern district of California^ the appellant, together with twenty others, was charged with a conspiracy unlawfully to land in the United States at the port of San Francisco ten Chinese aliens. Wong Mun, one of the defendants, became a fugitive from justice and has never been apprehended. At the trial of the other twenty, appellant was convicted and all others acquitted. From a judgment imposing a fine and imprisonment, he prosecutes this appeal.

Two assignments are argued: One, that it was error to receive in evidence a written memorandum made by one of the alleged eon *778 spirators; and the other, that the court should have granted appellant’s motion to dismiss, not upon the ground that the evidence was insufficient to establish a conspiracy substantially as alleged, but because it failed to show appellant’s participation therein.

As to the first, we are inclined to think the memorandum, which purports to show the distribution of the bribe money paid on behalf of the landed aliens, was properly received under the general rule that acts and declarations of a conspirator during the course of the conspiracy pertaining to the common object…