Kelley

Appellant, a custodial laborer employed by the United States in the United States Post Office at Los Angeles, California, was indicted for two violations of 18 U.S.C.A. § 318 , which statute provides as follows:

From the evidence it appears that mail packages had been disappearing from the area of the post office in which appellant worked and that appellant was under suspicion. Two packages were prepared by postal inspectors as decoys. Cancelled postage stamps and the names and addresses of living persons as senders and addressees were placed on both of these packages. Before appellant reported for work on December 21, 1946, the packages were deposited at two places in the post office where mail was handled and where appellant would pass in the course of his janitorial duties. A postal inspector kept watch from a gallery and observed appellant pick up one of the prepared packages, throw it onto his pile of sweepings, cover it with waste paper and sweep it away. Shortly thereafter postal authorities examined the trash hamper in which appellant had been gathering his sweepings and *345 found it to contain both of the decoy packages. One package was intact and the other had been…