Quick hypothetical: You’re at the library, and you pull a copy of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell from the shelf. Before bringing it to the front desk to check out, you flip through the pages, and an envelope falls out. You pick it up, and it’s stamped and sealed and addressed to a P.O. Box one town over. What would you do with it?
Followup: Would your answer change if it came out of:
- … a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica?
- … Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban by J. K. Rowling?
- … The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism by Matthew Carr?
- … a book on the new releases shelf?
- … a magazine?
If no to all of the above, is there any case where your answer would be different?
Comments (7)
Put it in a bigger envelope and return to sender. Yeah it costs a couple cents, but at least you sent it to the only person that knows what to do with it.
The book does not matter.
Did it have a return address? If so, I might put it into another envelope back to the sender. If not, I would mail it.
By the way, didn’t we just have a discussion about looking in motel room Bibles for money?
I don’t know, what DID you do?
Does it have a return address on it? Is it near by? Likely, I would leave it at the front desk and have them return it to the sender next time they came in. It would be interesting to return it in person though.
If I opened it, would that be tampering with government property, since it had never been put into a mailbox?
I didn’t do anything, because it didn’t happen to me. It’s a hypothetical question, the answers to which may or may not have some future consequence.
IANAL, but my understanding of 18 USC 1708 is that it isn’t “mail” until its been dropped in a mailbox or mail bin or some such. Opening it would be (informally) invasion of privacy and keeping anything inside would probably be (petty) theft, but IMHO a mail tampering charge wouldn’t stick.
I posted an answer and it disappeared
It got marked as spam. I fixed it.
I would most likely hand it over to the librarian, they’d know what to do with it I’m sure.