BLACK MAIL. Rents reserved, payable in work, grain, and the like.
Such rents were called black mail (reditus nigri) in distinction from white rents (blanche firmest, which were rents paid in silver.
A yearly payment made for security and protection to those bands of marauders who infested the borders of England and Scot land about the middle of the sixteenth cen tury and laid the inhabitants under contribu tion. Hume, Hist. Eng. vol. 1. 473; vol. ii. App. No. 8; Cowell.
In common parlance, the term is equiva lent. to, and synonymous with, extortion—the exaction of money, either for the perform ance of a duty, the prevention of an injury, or the exercise of an influence. It supposes the service to be unlawful,. and the payment involuntary. Not unfrequently it is extorted by threats, or by operating upon the fears or the credulity, or by promises to conceal, or offers to expose the weaknesses, the follies, or the crimes of the victim. Edsall v. Brooks, 17 Abb. Pr. (N. Y.) 226.
Threats by defendant to accuse another of a crime, with intent, himself, to commit the crime of extortion, accompanied by success in obtaining money from that other.
That such other person was endeavoring to induce defendant to receive money, for the purpose of accusing him of extortion, and so could not have been moved by fear, will not prevent his conviction for an attempt at extortion; People v. Gardner, 144 N. Y. 119, 38 N. E. 1003, 28 L. R. A. 699, 43 Am. St. Rep. 741; under an act declaring It a crime to threaten a person with a criminal prose cution for the purpose of extorting money, it is immaterial that the person making the threats believed that the person threatened had committed the crime ; People v. Eichler, 75 Hun 26, 26 N. Y. Supp. 998 ; threats of prosecution for perjury were made mali ciously and with intent to compel the one threatened to do an act against his will, the offence is complete ; and it is immaterial whether the one threatened was guilty of perjury ; People v. Whittemore, 102
519, 61 N. W. 13. In a prosecution under an act providing for the punishment of one Who, for the purposes of extortion, seuds a letter expressing or implying, or adapted to imply, any threat, and the letter threatens to make a charge against the person to whom it is sent, the truth or falsity of the charge is im material; People v. Choynski, 95 Cal. 640, 30 Pac. 791; an act making it an offence to accuse one of crime "with intent to extort money," etc., does not cover the case of an owner who demands compensation for prop erty criminally destroyed, and accompanies his demand with a threat to accuse the de fendant of the crime, and, where he is in dicted for extortion, it is error to charge that it is immaterial whether the accusa tion made by him was true or false ; Mann v. State, 47 Ohio St. 556, 26 N. E. 226, 11 L. R. A. 656. A charge of soliciting sexual in tercourse with the wife of, another is a charge of immoral conduct, which, if true, would tend to disgrace one and subject him to the contempt of society, and threatening to make such charge is black mail; Motsing er v. State, 123 Ind. 498, 24 N. E. 342.
On a trial for maliciously threatening to accuse another of burning a builaing with intent to extort money, evidence of the truth of the charge is inadmissible on the question of malice or of intent, or to impeach the prosecuting witness; Com. v. ,Buckley, 148 Mass. 27, 18 N. E. 577, 1 L. R. A. 624.