Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-07-03107/USCOURTS-caDC-07-03107-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Peter R. Turner
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 12, 2008 Decided December 5, 2008

No. 07-3107

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

PETER R. TURNER,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 06cr00026-01)

Arthur Luk, appointed by the court, argued the cause for

appellant. With him on the briefs was Michele J. Woods,

appointed by the court.

Edward P. Sullivan, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,

argued the cause for appellee. On the brief were Daniel A.

Petalas and Ann C. Brickley, Attorneys. Roy W. McLeese III ,

Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an appearance.

Before: RANDOLPH, ROGERS and TATEL, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH.

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 1 of 16
-2-

Dissenting Opinion by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge: The main issue in this appeal

from a conviction, after a jury trial, is whether the sentence

imposed on the defendant, Peter R. Turner, violated the Ex Post

Facto Clause of the Constitution. U.S.CONST. art. I, § 9. Turner

also raises the question whether the prosecution established his

guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence, viewed in favor

of the verdict, shows that there was sufficient evidence to

support his conviction. 

In 1998, while serving as a volunteer driver for the

Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Turner struck

up a romantic relationship with Vester Mayo, a nurse at the

Medical Center. Vester died in December 2000. She had taken

out a life insurance policy through a federally-administered

program. Her beneficiary designation form, contained in her

personnel file, listed Turner and her mother, Lorenza Mayo, as

co-beneficiaries. In January 2001, Turner filed a claim for his

share of the life insurance benefits and later received a money

market account valued at $20,562.90. 

In preparing her claim, Lorenza examined her daughter’s

papers and concluded that Vester’s beneficiary designation form

contained forgeries. The dates on the form were inconsistent,

Lorenza’s name and address were misspelled, and Vester’s

social security number was incorrect. Lorenza reported this to

federal authorities.

The ensuing investigation revealed that shortly after

obtaining his life insurance payout, Turner wrote a $1,000 check

from the proceeds to his friend, LaTanya Andrews. Andrews

was a payroll technician at the Medical Center. She had worked

in the human resources section, which housed employees’

personnel files and was located in the same area as the payroll

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 2 of 16
-3-

section. A government agent interviewed her in November

2005. At first Andrews said she never received more than $10

from Turner. When the agent showed her the $1,000 check, she

claimed that Turner wrote the check to prove to a car dealership

that she had a checking account. When the agent told her this

made no sense, Andrews said she borrowed the money from

Turner to purchase a car and repaid him sometime before March

2001. Agents found nothing in Andrews’s bank records to

support her claim. 

The grand jury charged Turner and Andrews with

conspiracy to defraud the United States, in violation of 18

U.S.C. § 371, and bribery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 201(b).

Evidence a reasonable jury could credit showed that Vester’s

signature on the beneficiary form had been forged, that Andrews

had easy access to Vester’s personnel file containing the

beneficiary form, and that Lorenza saw Turner forge her

daughter’s signature on two checks. The jury convicted both

defendants on both counts. On Andrews’s separate appeal, we

affirmed her conviction. United States v. Andrews, 532 F.3d

900 (D.C. Cir. 2008). We now affirm Turner’s.

A sentencing court, applying the Sentencing Guidelines,

must “use the Guidelines Manual in effect on the date that the

defendant is sentenced” unless the court determines that this

would violate the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution, U.S.

CONST. art. I, § 9, in which case the court “shall use the

Guidelines Manual in effect on the date that the offense of

conviction was committed.” U.S. SENTENCING GUIDELINES

MANUAL §§ 1B1.11. The Ex Post Facto Clause bars the

retroactive application of “enactments which . . . increase the

punishment for a crime after its commission.” Garner v. Jones,

529 U.S. 244, 249 (2000). When Turner received his share of

the proceeds of Vester Mayo’s life insurance policy in 2001, the

Guidelines set the base offense level for conspiracy to defraud

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 3 of 16
-4-

1

The amendment imposed a two-point increase in the

offense level for a defendant who is a “public official.” SeeU.S.

SENTENCING GUIDELINES MANUAL § 2C1.1 (2004). The

government concedes that the district court erred when it

determined that Turner was a public official under the amended

Guidelines. Because we hold that the Ex Post Facto Clause

required the court to use the 2000 Guidelines, the error will not

be repeated on remand. 

the United States at 10. A 2004 amendment to the Guidelines

increased the base offense level for his crime to 14.1

 This was

the base level in the 2006 Guidelines the district court used

when sentencing Turner in September 2007 to 33 months’

imprisonment. As Turner sees it, the district court violated the

Ex Post Facto Clause by applying the later edition of the

Guidelines and thereby increasing his Guideline range from

21–27 months to 33–41 months. Unlike his co-defendant

Andrews, see Andrews, 532 F.3d at 908, Turner preserved this

issue by making a proper objection at sentencing. 

 The government counters that the conspiracy continued

through 2005 when Andrews lied to the investigators in order to

conceal her role and Turner’s role in the fraud. Because the

base offense level for Turner’s conspiracy when he committed

the offense (through 2005) was the same as the Guideline base

offense level when he was sentenced (2007), the government

says there is no ex post facto problem. 

Turner’s argument and the government’s answer require us

to determine the duration of the conspiracy between him and

Andrews. Typically, questions about when a conspiracy ended

arise in cases in which the defendant raises a statute of

limitations defense, as in Grunewald v. United States, 360 U.S.

391 (1957), or in which the defendant objects that a coconspirator’s statement was hearsay because it was not made in

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 4 of 16
-5-

furtherance of an ongoing conspiracy, as in Krulewitch v. United

States, 336 U.S. 440 (1949), and Lutwak v. United States, 344

U.S. 604 (1953). Even though we must determine the duration

of a conspiracy in a different context – sentencing – cases such

as those just cited are controlling. 

The government says that the conspiracy continued through

2005 because the indictment alleged that one object of the

conspiracy was “to conceal the conspiracy itself and the acts

committed in furtherance thereof.” The government’s idea is

that “the language of the indictment is controlling.” Gov’t Br.

at 30. If this is supposed to mean that one need look only at the

indictment to determine the duration of the conspiracy, the

government is quite mistaken. The indictment in Lutwak, 344

U.S. at 617, charged a conspiracy to transport a woman across

state lines for the purpose of prostitution, and – like the

indictment in this case – alleged concealment of the crime as

part of the conspiracy. Yet the Supreme Court held that the

conspiracy did not continue after the transportation occurred.

The indictment in Grunewald charged that “one of the terms of

the illegal agreement was that continuing efforts would be made

‘to avoid detection and prosecution by any governmental

body.’” United States v. Grunewald, 233 F.2d 556, 565 (2d Cir.

1956). Yet the Supreme Court held that the conspirators’ acts

of concealment after the central object of the conspiracy had

been accomplished did not extend the life of the conspiracy.

Grunewald, 353 U.S. at 414; see Forman v. United States, 361

U.S. 416, 423–24 (1960), overruled on other grounds by Burks

v. United States, 437 U.S. 1 (1978). The portion of this court’s

opinion in United States v. Hitt, 249 F.3d 1010, 1015–16 (D.C.

Cir. 2001), upon which the government relies, simply strings

together citations and quotations from the cases. It does not,

indeed could not, disagree with Grunewald or Lutwak. 

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 5 of 16
-6-

But the government says it proved a conspiracy continuing

after 2001, the year Turner reaped the results of his fraud and

paid Andrews $1,000 for her help. The government’s evidence

consisted of Andrews’s lying to investigators in 2005. Was this

part of the conspiracy or had the conspiracy ended by then? The

indictment did not allege, and the government did not prove, any

express agreement between Turner and Andrews to conceal their

offense after they had pocketed the proceeds. Yet one might

reason that because a conspiracy cannot function except in

secrecy, an agreement to avoid detection was implicit. The

theory is plausible, but in Krulewitch and again in Lutwak and

once again in Grunewald the Supreme Court rejected the theory

“that in every conspiracy there is implicit an agreement as a part

thereof for the conspirators to collaborate to conceal the

conspiracy.” Lutwak, 344 U.S. at 616. The government’s

position here is identical to the position it took in Grunewald: “a

conspiracy to conceal is being implied from elements which will

be present in virtually every conspiracy case, that is, secrecy

plus overt acts of concealment.” 353 U.S. at 404. If this were

enough to keep the conspiracy alive after accomplishment of its

central objects, the statute of limitations would never run until

the conspirators’ death, conviction, or confession. “Sanctioning

the government’s theory,” the Court held in Grunewald, 353

U.S. at 402, “would for all practical purposes wipe out the

statute of limitations in conspiracy cases, as well as extend

indefinitely the time within which hearsay declarations will bind

co-conspirators.” 

Nothing we have written thus far is inconsistent with

Forman v. United States, 361 U.S. at 423–24. The main charge

in Forman was a conspiracy to evade income taxes. The Court

seemed to agree – the opinion is a bit opaque on this point – that

a “subsidiary conspiracy” to conceal the conspiracy would not

extend the conspiracy’s life. But the court added that the

“essence of the conspiracy” to evade taxes was concealing

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 6 of 16
-7-

2

In trying to squeeze this case into the Forman

framework, the dissent asserts that the “essence” of the

conspiracy here was concealing the “rightful” beneficiary’s

identity. That is an exceedingly odd formulation. One would

have thought that the “essence” or main objective was getting

hold of the insurance proceeds. Of course Turner and Andrews

wanted to avoid detection, and of course, after Turner got the

money, disclosure of the “rightful” beneficiary would have done

him and Andrews in. But extending the life of a conspiracy on

that basis is exactly what the Supreme Court refused to do in

Grunewald and Lutwak and Krulewitch. All the dissent has

managed in so many words is to restate the same theory those

decisions reject. 

income and to be successful the concealing had to continue until

the statute of limitations ran. Id. at 420, 424. Thus, a jury could

have found that the conspiracy in Forman continued even after

the tax returns were filed, but it could not base this finding on

some subsidiary conspiracy to conceal the main conspiracy.2

We admit that the Forman line is a bit elusive. Grunewald itself

is not all that clear. The Court in Grunewald hinted – but did not

hold – that the conspiracy there might have been extended if,

rather than an implied agreement, there had been “an express

original agreement among the conspirators to continue to act in

concert in order to cover up, for their own self-protection, traces

of the crime after its commission.” 353 U.S. at 404; see Pyramid

Secs. Ltd. v. IB Resolution, Inc., 924 F.2d 1114, 1118 (D.C. Cir.

1991). The distinction between an “express” agreement to

conceal and one that is inferred is not so easily justified – both

would have the effect of indefinitely extending the limitations

period and, as the Court recognized, such a subsidiary

agreement is implicit, if not explicit, in every conspiracy. See

Grunewald, 353 U.S. at 403-04; Lutwak, 344 U.S. at 616;

Krulewitch, 336 U.S. at 444. 

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 7 of 16
-8-

However murky the distinction just mentioned, it is one that

is of no consequence in this case. As we have discussed, the

only possible way to find an agreement between Turner and

Andrews to conceal their conspiracy is to infer its existence

from Andrews’s encounter with the agents in 2005. That puts

the case squarely within the Krulewitch-Lutwak-Grunewald

pattern and leads to the conclusion that the conspiracy did not

continue after 2001. We therefore disagree with the district

court’s ruling that the conspiracy continued through January

2006. 

This brings us to the question whether sentencing Turner

under the newer Guidelines violated the Ex Post Facto Clause.

The Guidelines in effect in 2001 yielded a sentencing range for

Turner of 21 to 27 months’ imprisonment. Under the later

Guidelines the district court came up with a sentencing range of

33 to 41 months. These disparities render Turner’s case

analogous to Miller v. Florida, 482 U.S. 423, 424 (1987). In

Miller, the defendant’s “presumptive sentence” under the

Florida guidelines in effect when he committed the offense was

3 1⁄2 to 4 1⁄2 years’ imprisonment. By the time the court

sentenced the defendant, revisions in the state’s guidelines had

increased his presumptive sentence to 5 1⁄2 to 7 years’

imprisonment. The trial court imposed a 7-year sentence. The

Supreme Court held that the newer guidelines constituted an ex

post facto law because the defendant had been “substantially

disadvantaged.” Id. at 432. It was no answer to say that the

defendant might have received the same sentence under the old

version of the guidelines. Id. at 432. While the Florida trial

court was not bound to give the presumptive sentence, the

court’s discretion to give a different sentence was quite limited,

and so as a practical matter the change in the guidelines

increased the defendant’s sentence. Quoting Weaver v. Graham,

450 U.S. 24, 36 (1981), the Court concluded that the new

guidelines made “more onerous the punishment for crimes

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 8 of 16
-9-

committed before [their] enactment.” Miller, 482 U.S. at 435.

In the federal system, the courts of appeals relied on Miller to

hold that applying post-offense Guideline revisions would

violate the Ex Post Facto Clause if the revisions increased a

defendant’s sentencing range. See United States v. Seacott, 15

F.3d 1380, 1384–86 (7th Cir. 1994) (collecting cases). 

Since Miller, the Supreme Court has rendered the federal

Sentencing Guidelines advisory only. United States v. Booker,

543 U.S. 220 (2005). The Seventh Circuit believes Booker

alters the ex post facto analysis. See United States v. Demaree,

459 F.3d 791, 795 (7th Cir. 2006). The court of appeals

concluded “that the ex post facto clause should apply only to

laws and regulations that bind rather than advise, a principle

well established with reference to parole guidelines whose

retroactive application is challenged under the ex post facto

clause.” Id. at 795 (citing Garner, 529 U.S. at 251, 255–56; Cal.

Dep’t of Corr. v. Morales, 514 U.S. 499, 509 (1995)). The court

gave two other reasons. One was that after Booker district

judges have “unfettered” freedom to impose sentences outside

the sentencing range and sentences within the range are not

presumptively reasonable. Demaree, 459 F.3d at 795. The

second was that if new Guidelines could not be used because of

an ex post facto problem, district judges would get around the

problem by saying that they were just taking into account the

information that led to the new Guideline. Id. 

As to Demaree’s second reason, we reject the idea that

district judges will misrepresent the true basis for their actions.

As to Demaree’s first reason, the Supreme Court has since

confirmed that appellate courts may apply a presumption of

reasonableness to a district court sentence calculated in

conformity with the Guidelines. United States v. Rita, ___ U.S.

___, 127 S.Ct. 2456 (2007); see United States v. Dorcely, 454

F.3d 366, 376 (D.C. Cir. 2006). As a result, judges are more

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 9 of 16
-10-

likely to sentence within the Guidelines in order to avoid the

increased scrutiny that is likely to result from imposing a

sentence outside the Guidelines. See, e.g., Graham C. Mullen &

J.P. Davis, Mandatory Guidelines: The Oxymoronic State of

Sentencing After United States v. Booker, 41 U. Rich. L. Rev.

625 (2007). It is hardly surprising that most federal sentences

fall within Guidelines ranges even after Booker – indeed, the

actual impact of Booker on sentencing has been minor. See

UNITED STATES SENTENCING COMMISSION, FINAL REPORT ON

THE IMPACT OF UNITED STATES V. BOOKER ON FEDERAL

SENTENCING 57 (2006); UNITED STATES SENTENCING

COMMISSION, FINAL QUARTERLY DATA REPORT FISCAL YEAR

2007 1 (2008). Practically speaking, applicable Sentencing

Guidelines provide a starting point or “anchor” for judges and

are likely to influence the sentences judges impose. See United

States v. Settles, 530 F.3d 920, 923–24 (D.C. Cir. 2008);

Stephanos Bibas, Plea Bargaining Outside the Shadow of Trial,

117 Harv. L. Rev. 2463, 2515–19 (2004); see also Demaree, 459

F.3d at 792. 

In addition, under the law of this circuit the existence of

discretion does not foreclose an ex post facto claim, as Demaree

supposed. “The controlling inquiry,” we held in Fletcher v.

Reilly, 433 F.3d 867, 876 (D.C. Cir. 2006), is how the parole

authority “exercises discretion in practice” and whether “the

exercises of discretion . . . actually ‘create [ ] a significant risk

of prolonging [an inmate’s] incarceration’” (quoting Garner,

529 U.S. at 251). The proper approach is therefore to conduct

an “as applied” constitutional analysis, see Miller, 482 U.S. at

435, not the sort of facial analysis conducted in Demaree. When

the district court sentenced Turner to 33 months’ imprisonment,

it did not pull the number out of thin air. Turner’s sentencing

range under the Guidelines then in effect was 33–41 months, see

U.S. SENTENCING GUIDELINES MANUAL, Sentencing Table, or

so the court thought. It is obvious that the court decided to

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 10 of 16
-11-

sentence Turner at the low end of the 2006 Guideline sentencing

range. Had the court used the 2000 Guidelines, Turner’s

sentencing range would have been 21–27 months, and it is likely

that Turner’s sentence would have been less than 33 months.

Turner did not have to show definitively that he would have

received a lesser sentence had the district court used the 2000

Guidelines. See Miller, 482 U.S. at 432. It is enough that using

the 2006 Guidelines created a substantial risk that Turner’s

sentence was more severe, thus resulting in a violation of the Ex

Post Facto Clause. See Miller, 482 U.S. at 433.

We therefore must remand for resentencing. We have

considered and rejected Turner’s other arguments, including his

claim that he should have been sentenced to home confinement

because of his medical condition. On remand the district court

will of course consider Turner’s medical condition as it exists at

time of resentencing.

So ordered.

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 11 of 16
TATEL, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part: Although I 

share my colleagues’ concerns about the implications of the 

government’s argument, I cannot so easily dismiss Forman v. 

United States, 361 U.S. 416 (1960), overruled on other 

grounds by Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1 (1978). 

In Forman the Supreme Court considered whether the 

applicable six-year statute of limitations barred the 

government from prosecuting a tax evasion conspiracy seven 

years after the filing of the last fraudulent tax return. The 

conspirators were two partners in a pinball machine business 

who robbed the machines at the most profitable locations, 

concealed the money from the location owners who were 

entitled to a cut, and omitted the “holdout income” from the 

partnership’s books and tax returns. Forman, 361 U.S. at 

418-19. At the same time, Forman’s business partner, Seijas, 

kept diaries recording his share of the purloined profits but 

paid no individual income tax on them. Id. at 419. The 

indictment charged the partners with conspiracy to evade 

Seijas’s individual income taxes and to provide false 

statements to the Treasury Department to conceal his true 

income tax liability. Id. at 417. A jury convicted the partners 

on both counts. Id. 

On appeal the Ninth Circuit acknowledged record 

evidence that Forman participated in a conspiracy to evade 

Seijas’s income taxes, that he made false statements 

concealing the evasion within the six years immediately prior 

to the indictment, and that concealment of the holdout income 

continued until Seijas turned his diaries over to federal agents 

just before the filing of the indictment. Forman v. United 

States, 259 F.2d 128, 133-34 (9th Cir. 1958). But finding that 

the case had been submitted to the jury on a theory foreclosed 

by Grunewald v. United States, namely that “a subsidiary 

conspiracy to conceal may . . . be implied from circumstantial 

evidence showing merely that the conspiracy was kept a 

secret,” 353 U.S. 391, 402 (1957), it reversed the conviction. 

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 12 of 16
2 

Forman, 259 F.2d at 134-35. On rehearing, however, the 

Ninth Circuit agreed with the government that a permissible 

alternative theory could support a conviction, so it remanded 

for a new trial. Forman v. United States, 261 F.2d 181, 183 

(9th Cir. 1959). Specifically, it concluded that the overt acts 

charged in the six-year period before the indictment “could 

well have been in furtherance of and during a conspiracy 

having as its objective not the concealment of the 

conspirators’ conspiracy but tax evasion” itself. Id. 

The Supreme Court affirmed, agreeing that the 

government could attempt to prove in a new trial that the 

conspiracy continued seven years after the last fraudulent tax 

return. Forman, 361 U.S. at 422-24. Critically for our 

purposes, the Court relied not on the existence of a 

“subsidiary conspiracy” between the partners in the ensuing 

years to conceal their already-completed crime, but rather on 

the possibility that the tax evasion conspiracy itself continued 

until that date. Id. Because the filing of fraudulent tax returns 

was “but the first step in the process of evasion,” id. at 423-

24, and because the partners would be unable to achieve their 

objective until the government could no longer collect taxes 

on the withheld income, id. at 424, the Court concluded that 

the indictment alleged and that evidence supported “one 

continuing conspiracy” of tax evasion, id. In other words, the 

Court held, the conspiracy could continue until seven years 

after the filing of the last fraudulent tax return because the 

acts of concealment furthered the conspiracy’s very objective. 

 Indeed, even the Grunewald Court recognized that a 

conspiracy could extend in this manner, though it found that 

the government hadn’t proceeded on such a theory in that 

case. There the Court stated that “acts of concealment done 

in furtherance of the main criminal objectives of the 

conspiracy” can prolong the conspiracy because “successful 

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 13 of 16
3 

accomplishment of the crime necessitates concealment”; by 

contrast, “acts of concealment done after these central 

objectives have been attained, for the purposes only of 

covering up after the crime,” cannot prolong the conspiracy. 

Id. at 405. In Grunewald the Court suggested that this 

distinction may turn more on the scope of the conspiracy 

alleged and proven to the jury than on the particular acts of 

concealment. Thus, although the Court disagreed that acts 

concealing a conspiracy to obtain rulings that temporarily 

barred prosecution for tax evasion furthered the conspiracy 

beyond the date the defendants obtained the rulings, it 

emphasized that the very same acts could continue the 

conspiracy if its objective were to evade tax liability 

permanently rather than simply to obtain temporary noprosecution rulings. See id. at 408-11. Indeed, the Court 

reversed the defendant’s conviction only because it doubted 

that this second theory of the conspiracy’s objectives had 

been submitted to the jury. Id. at 411. 

Dismissing Forman’s relevance, this court concludes that 

the case before us must fall in the Grunewald line of cases 

because “the only possible way to find an agreement between 

Turner and Andrews to conceal their conspiracy is to infer its 

existence.” Maj. Op. at 8. Perhaps the court means that 

proving a subsidiary conspiracy to conceal the principal 

criminal conspiracy after the latter realizes its objectives 

requires direct evidence of an agreement to conceal that is 

lacking here. If so, I agree, but Forman’s holding and 

Grunewald’s reasoning require that we answer a second 

question: whether the concealment could continue the 

principal conspiracy itself by furthering its very objectives. 

Sidestepping this question, my colleagues observe that the tax 

evasion conspiracy in Forman continued because the 

“‘essence’” of tax evasion is concealment, Maj. Op. at 6-7 

(quoting Forman, 361 U.S. at 420), without considering 

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 14 of 16
4 

whether the “essence” of the conspiracy here could amount to 

concealment as well. I believe the answer to that question is 

yes. Just as “the ‘essence of [a] conspiracy’ to evade taxes 

[is] concealing income,” Maj. Op at 6-7 (quoting Forman, 

361 U.S. at 420), the essence of the conspiracy here is 

concealing the identity of the rightful beneficiary of federal 

insurance proceeds. 

I see no basis for distinguishing this case from Forman. 

As in Forman, where the government charged the defendants 

with conspiring to make false statements for the purpose of 

“concealing from the Treasury Department” the conspirators’ 

true tax liability, 259 F.2d at 129-30, the government here 

charged Turner and Andrews with conspiring to “defraud the 

United States by impairing, impeding, and defeating the 

lawful functions and duties” of the agencies charged with 

implementing and overseeing the federal life insurance 

program, Indictment ¶ 7(a). At trial, the government 

produced evidence that these agencies have ongoing duties 

and investigatory authority to ensure that federal life 

insurance proceeds are properly distributed, as well as 

authority to recover wrongful distributions. The government 

also produced evidence that the agencies actually conducted 

such an investigation and that overt concealment occurred 

during 2005. In other words, the indictment charged and the 

government offered evidence that the original receipt of 

insurance proceeds was “but the first step in the process of” 

defrauding the United States government, Forman, 361 U.S. 

at 423-24, and that the ongoing concealment advanced this 

broader goal. 

I share my colleagues’ concern that, under the 

government’s theory, the statute of limitations might never 

run “until the conspirators’ death, conviction, or confession,” 

Maj. Op. at 6—provided, of course, that the conspirators 

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 15 of 16
5 

engage in overt acts of concealment in the meantime. Indeed, 

just as in Forman, the government could charge virtually any 

conspiracy to commit a property crime as one that necessarily 

entails continuing concealment. See, e.g., Grunewald, 353 

U.S. at 405 (“[R]epainting a stolen car would be in 

furtherance of a conspiracy to steal [because] the successful 

accomplishment of the crime necessitates concealment.”). 

But these are the consequences of the Supreme Court’s 

holding in Forman and its reasoning in Grunewald. Because 

I feel bound by both, I reluctantly dissent. 

USCA Case #07-3107 Document #1152663 Filed: 12/05/2008 Page 16 of 16