How to Become a Federal Criminal Chapter 1 HOW TO BECOME A FEDERAL CRIMINAL BY MAIL As early as 1865, Congress passed a law providing that "no obscene book, pamphlet, picture, print, or other publication of a vulgar and indecent character, shall be admitted into the mails." In 1873, Congress passed the Comstock Act, which went even further by completely banning anything related to contraception or abortion from the mail. In 1920, the postmaster general supposedly had to tell postal workers not to accept human beings as mail after a few child-mailing incidents.1 CRIME BY MAIL Even before the United States of America became a country, there was the Postal Service. It was established in 1775 and got its own clause in the Constitution a few years later. By 1792, Congress passed a statute giving postmen a monopoly on carrying letters. Since that time, anyone who has dared to compete with the Postal Service has risked federal prison. The mail has always been serious business in America.

In the late 1700s, Congress even made the death penalty available for anyone caught stealing mail. Believe it or not, the Postal Service used to deliver things even more exciting than credit card preapprovals and extended car warranty offers. People actually sent important things to one another, like love letters, which was basically sexting but slower. Americans liked their mail and they didn''t want to see it go missing. Sure enough, in 1830, two men were convicted of mail theft and sentenced to death by hanging. One of them, James Porter, was hanged right away. But his accomplice, George Wilson, had well-connected friends who were able to convince President Andrew Jackson to grant Wilson a presidential pardon. In an unexpected and unprecedented move, however, Wilson refused the pardon and chose instead to be hanged.

It was probably the overwhelming guilt of having stolen mail.2 Aside from teaching us all that it''s actually possible to refuse a presidential pardon and force the government to kill you, federal mail crimes have also served as a buzzkill in lots of other ways. For example, 18 U.S.C. § 3061(c)(4)(B) and a corresponding regulation, 39 C.F.R.

§ 232.1, make it a crime to go into the post office while drunk or high, or to smoke a pipe inside, climb onto the roof, or gamble while you''re there. In fact, even not going to the post office can be a federal crime under the right circumstances. Consider 18 U.S.C. § 1700, which provides: Whoever, having taken charge of any mail, voluntarily quits or deserts the same before he has delivered it into the post office at the termination of the route, or to some known mail carrier, messenger, agent, or other employee in the Postal Service authorized to receive the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. In other words, if you take someone''s mail, agree to bring it to the post office, and don''t follow through, you can be charged with a federal crime.

And while the crime has mostly been used to prosecute fed-up letter carriers, there''s no reason it can''t be used to put a bad friend in prison. (See Fig. 1-1.) Wear a Postal Uniform if You Aren''t a Postal Worker There are only a few clothing choices made criminal by federal statute. One of them is the federal ban on non-postal workers wearing the uniform of a United States letter carrier. Specifically, 18 U.S.C.

§ 1730 provides that "whoever, not being connected with the letter-carrier branch of the Postal Service, wears the uniform or badge which may be prescribed by the Postal Service to be worn by letter carriers, shall be fined . or imprisoned not more than six months, or both." That means you can get up to six months in prison for stolen postal valor. By its terms, the statute doesn''t require that the uniform wearer do anything nefarious while playing dress-up. The crime is in the wearing. As one federal judge remarked: "The very act of impersonating a letter carrier is by nature an act of deceit."3 When Americans see those little blue shorts and tube socks strutting down the sidewalk, we want to know we aren''t getting duped. To be a crime, however, the offender must wear the officially prescribed uniform for letter carriers.

That requires some attention to detail. (See Fig. 1-2.) THE ACTOR EXCEPTION From the time it was enacted in the 1880s until the late 1960s, the prohibition on civilians wearing postal uniforms was totally unforgiving. Any non-letter carrier wearing a postal uniform could be convicted no matter the circumstances. In 1967, however, the U.S. Post Office Department (the predecessor to the U.

S. Postal Service) asked Congress to carve out a narrow exception that would allow screen and stage actors to portray like postal workers without risk of indictment. According to the Post Office Department, actors had periodically requested permission to wear postal uniforms, but the department was forced to refuse because Congress wrote a law with no exceptions. When a House subcommittee held hearings on a proposed amendment to the law in August of 1967, the department''s assistant general counsel testified: In recent years we have had a number of inquiries and we felt this is a problem where people are probably disregarding the law. There is no public policy that we can see which would be served by continuing the prohibition against the wearing of the uniform in theatrical performances. Rather than have the law ignored, we think it would be better to have it amended.4 Rather than be embarrassed by pretend postal workers thumbing their noses at the law, the department proposed an amendment that would allow actors to wear the uniform "if the portrayal [did] not tend to discredit that service." That is, actors could play letter carriers, but not bad letter carriers.

That led one lawmaker to ask what kind of portrayal might still be prohibited under the new law. The lawyer for the Post Office Department suggested: I would suppose if the carrier were portrayed systematically opening people''s mail or engaging in that type of activity we would certainly think that would be within this particular prohibition. Of course, that was before the internet, so the full range of unsavory things people in postal outfits might be shown doing on film hadn''t been fully explored. The law was ultimately amended as proposed, allowing actors to play well-intentioned mail carriers. Three years later, however, the Supreme Court struck down a similar provision in a statute concerning military uniforms. In that case, Daniel Jay Schacht was sentenced to prison for wearing an army uniform in a skit critical of the Vietnam War. When the case reached the Supreme Court, Justice Hugo Black wrote that "an actor, like everyone else in our country, enjoys a constitutional right to freedom of speech, including the right openly to criticize the Government during a dramatic performance." The court struck down the statute as an unconstitutional abridgement of freedom of speech, at least to the extent it required theatrical performances to be favorable to the military.

In 1990, about twenty years after the decision in Schacht v. United States, Congress finally got around to removing the same language from the postal uniform statute. Actors were now free to play even despicable postal workers. The following year, Newman made his first appearance on Seinfeld. Although performances are no longer required to cast the Postal Service in a positive light, the only non-mail carriers who are expressly permitted to wear the postal uniform with impunity are actors. There remains no Halloween costume exemption--even for "sexy" letter carriers. Paint a Car to Look Like a Mail Vehicle if It Isn''t One It''s not only a crime to dress like a postal worker, it''s a crime to drive like one too. 18 U.

S.C. § 1731 makes it a federal crime to paint, print, or otherwise put the words "United States Mail" on any vehicle that isn''t actually used to carry the mail. Logos, abbreviations, and any other markings that falsely suggest a vehicle is a mail vehicle are also prohibited. Violators can be fined, imprisoned up to six months, or both. But unlike impersonating a police officer, driving around in a fake mail truck doesn''t have many perks. It won''t let you do fun things like pull people over or run red lights. And forget high-speed chases.

Actually, forget high-speed anything in a mail truck. At best, you might be able to get away with driving on the wrong side of the road at three miles per hour with your hazards flashing. Not bad, but plenty of people already do that every day in Florida with regular old Buicks. The fake-mail-vehicle statute makes no distinction between offenders with sinister motives and those who just have a bizarre affinity for all things postal. In other words, driving around and delivering or picking up mail isn''t required for a conviction, and other statutes prohibit those things already. The law also doesn''t require a fake mail vehicle to look e.