Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/486/823/287411/
Timestamp: 2019-06-18 00:45:53
Document Index: 220236120

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1001', '§ 2703', '§ 1001', '§ 1001', '§ 2703', '§ 1001', '§ 2703', '§ 2701']

United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Henry W. Cogwell, Defendant-appellant.united States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Charles Edward Bey et al., Defendants-appellants, 486 F.2d 823 (7th Cir. 1973) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Seventh Circuit › 1973 › United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Henry W. Cogwell, Defendant-appellant.united States...
United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Henry W. Cogwell, Defendant-appellant.united States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Charles Edward Bey et al., Defendants-appellants, 486 F.2d 823 (7th Cir. 1973)
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit - 486 F.2d 823 (7th Cir. 1973)
Argued Sept. 14, 1973. Decided Oct. 30, 1973
Defendants Bey, Cogwell, Fort, Jackson and Pugh1 appeal their jury convictions for conspiring to make false statements to the Office of Educational Opportunity, to obtain fraudulently monies which were the subject of a poverty program grant, and to defraud the United States through falsification and concealment of material facts. Defendant Jackson also appeals his convictions for knowingly making false statements in contravention of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 by signing the time and attendance sheets of program trainees with the knowledge that they were neither at the training centers nor at job interviews (9 counts), and for misapplying grant funds by endorsing the names of trainees to stipend checks knowing that they received neither the checks nor the proceeds and causing the fraudulent endorsement of the checks in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 2703 (2 counts). Defendant Bey additionally appeals his conviction for knowingly making false statements, contrary to 18 U.S.C. § 1001, by signing check receipts with the knowledge that the trainees did not receive the checks or the proceeds (6 counts). Defendant Cogwell further appeals his convictions for knowingly making false statements, unlawful under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, by signing the time and attendance sheets of trainees with the knowledge that they were neither at the training centers nor at job interviews (2 counts) and by signing check receipts knowing the trainees neither received the checks nor the proceeds (4 counts). Cogwell also appeals his conviction for misapplying grant funds by endorsing the names of trainees to stipend checks and causing the fraudulent endorsement of them in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 2703 (4 counts).
Defendants contend that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the jury's findings. With respect to the substantive counts, it was stipulated that Bey and Cogwell had written names other than their own to check receipts, that Jackson and Cogwell had written names other than their own to time and attendance sheets, and that Jackson and Cogwell had written endorsements to checks payable to trainees. The trial court instructed the jury, with the approval of counsel, that the determinative facts of legal liability in this case were, under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, whether the trainees in question received either their checks or the proceeds and, under 42 U.S.C. § 2703, whether the trainees involved were not present at the center or at job interviews. Defendants Bey, Cogwell and Jackson claim the government failed to prove its case because it did not present direct evidence from the trainees whose names were signed by Bey, Cogwell and Jackson that they received neither their checks nor the proceeds, or that they were not in class or at interviews. Defendants argue that the direct testimony of Duffy and Hall, named payees on a check and receipt in question, respectively, failed to add any material evidence beyond the stipulation and was therefore of no probative value. Defendants further claim that even if direct testimony is unnecessary to finding a course of unlawful conduct at Center 1, it would still be improper to infer the occurrence of unlawful activity at Center 2, where Bey, Cogwell and Jackson were staff members. With respect to the conspiracy count, the defendants contend that the failure to show a course of conduct to support the substantive charges is equivalent to a failure to prove concerted action necessary to find a conspiracy. Upon our examination of the evidence, we find that the jury, after weighing the evidence, determining the credibility of the witnesses, and drawing reasonable inferences, had substantial support for its findings.
It is axiomatic in determining sufficiency of the evidence that an appellate court view the evidence and the reasonable inferences which can be drawn in the light most favorable to the government. Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 80, 62 S. Ct. 457, 86 L. Ed. 680 (1942). This determination must be made considering all the evidence, including that of the defendants. United States v. Tubbs, 461 F.2d 43, 45 (7th Cir. 1972). However, this determination is not limited to a consideration of direct evidence, excluding circumstantial evidence of unlawful conduct at both centers. Circumstantial evidence is as pertinent as direct evidence to the establishment of guilt or innocence. Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121, 149, 75 S. Ct. 127, 99 L. Ed. 150 (1954). It is only required that circumstantial evidence be sufficiently relevant to have probative value. See, United States v. Delay, 440 F.2d 566, 568 (7th Cir. 1971); United States v. Lynch, 366 F.2d 829, 831 (7th Cir. 1966). This court has specifically stated: "Participation in a criminal conspiracy need not be proved by direct evidence . . . . [T]he conspiracy may be shown by circumstantial evidence or permissible inferences or deductions from the facts. Such a showing is nonetheless substantial." United States v. Zuideveld, 316 F.2d 873, 877-878 (7th Cir. 1963); Blumenthal v. United States, 332 U.S. 539, 549-550, 68 S. Ct. 248, 92 L. Ed. 154 (1947). Thus, it is unnecessary for the government to present testimony from the trainees named in the check endorsements and receipts and in the time and attendance sheets to sustain either the conspiracy or substantive counts, so long as the government presents sufficient, relevant circumstantial evidence to prove concert of action in the commission of unlawful acts, from which a common design can be inferred. United States v. Zuideveld, supra.
The defendant relies on Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S. Ct. 1620, 20 L. Ed. 2d 476 (1968), a case involving a joint trial for armed postal robbery. A postal inspector testified that a codefendant, Evans, had confessed to him that Bruton and Evans had committed the robbery; Evans did not testify. The trial court instructed the jury to disregard Evan's confession in considering Bruton's culpability. The Supreme Court found this insufficient, holding that "in the context of a joint trial we cannot accept limiting instructions as an adequate substitute for petitioner's constitutional right of cross-examination." Id. at 137, 88 S. Ct. at 1628. The rationale of the decision was clearly expressed: "The risk of prejudice in petitioner's case was even more serious than in Douglas [Douglas v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 15, 85 S. Ct. 1074, 13 L. Ed. 2d 934 (1957)] because . . . the powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements of a codefendant, who stands accused side-by-side with the defendant, are deliberately spread before the jury in a joint trial." Id. at 127, 135-136, 88 S. Ct. at 1623, 1628. The evil which the sixth amendment was designed to prevent is illustrated in Douglas, where the prosecutor read a document purporting to be an accomplice's confession which incriminated the defendant. The Supreme Court noted that the accomplice's assertion of his right against compulsory selfincrimination "created a situation in which the jury might improperly infer both that the statement had been made and that it was true." 380 U.S. at 419, 85 S. Ct. at 1077. Since the prosecutor was not a witness, the inference that the accomplice made the statement could not be tested by cross-examination. Similarly, the accomplice could not be cross-examined on a statement imputed to him. Id.
The right of cross-examination, however, is not absolute. There is no violation of sixth amendment rights where the testimony is sufficiently clothed with "indicia of reliability which have been widely viewed as determinative of whether a statement may be placed before the jury though there is no confrontation of the declarant." Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. 74, 89, 91 S. Ct. 210, 220, 27 L. Ed. 2d 213. In Dutton, which also involved the coconspiracy exception to the hearsay rule, the Supreme Court upheld the trial court's admission of testimony by a fellow inmate of a codefendant who did not testify at the defendant's trial. The inmate related a statement of the codefendant from which the jury could infer the defendant's guilt. The Supreme Court found that the defendant was not deprived of any right of confrontation as to whether the codefendant actually made the statement to the witness, since the witness was cross-examined, and that the circumstances under which the statement was made indicated the content of the statement was true.
Applying this two-fold test to the facts in this case, we find that the circumstances indicate that the challenged statements possess sufficient reliability to satisfy the demands of the sixth amendment. The statements in question did not involve the use of a confession made under the coercive circumstances of an official interrogation, as did Bruton. Although the statements were damaging, like the one in Dutton, they were in no sense crucial or devastating. See, Bruton v. United States, supra. There was no indication of prosecutorial misconduct or wholesale denial of cross-examination. See, Douglas v. Alabama, supra; Brookhart v. Janis, 384 U.S. 1, 86 S. Ct. 1245, 16 L. Ed. 2d 314 (1966). At trial, the prosecution presented more than a dozen witnesses, all of whom were subject to cross-examination. Perhaps the most damaging evidence was the testimony of three eyewitnesses to the May 24, 1968 mass meeting. In view of the extent of the testimony inculpating Fort, these two statements, again like the one in Dutton, were "of peripheral significance at most." Dutton v. Evans, supra, 400 U.S. at 87, 91 S. Ct. 219.
At trial, seven Chicago policemen testified that in the course of several hundred visits to the centers from September 1967 to June 1968, they observed only limited trainee attendance and practically no instruction. Their testimony was at variance with the time and attendance sheets and circumstantially suggested the falsification of the sheets and the misapplication of grant funds. Defendants contend that these visits were searches in violation of their fourth amendment rights and that testimony of observations at the centers should have been excluded. McGinnis v. United States, 227 F.2d 598 (1st Cir. 1955); cf., Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 485, 83 S. Ct. 407, 9 L. Ed. 2d 441 (1968). Defendants assert that the fourth amendment standard of an unreasonable search is tested by the individual's reasonable expectation of privacy. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S. Ct. 507, 19 L. Ed. 2d 576 (1967). Specifically, they argue that in assessing whether the defendants' expectations are constitutionally justifiable, this court should focus on whether specially recruited youths could reasonably assert an expectation of privacy in their activities and should disregard the occurrence of those activities within the context of a federally-funded educational program. However, "the specific content and incidents of [fourth amendment rights are] shaped by the context in which they are asserted," Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 9, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1873, 20 L. Ed. 889 (1968), and we must therefore consider all the relevant circumstances in determining the reasonableness of a search. From our examination of the facts, we find that the defendants had no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Katz establishes that "what a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his home or office, is not the subject of Fourth Amendment protection." Katz v. United States, supra, 389 U.S. at 351, 88 S. Ct. at 511. Defendants were voluntary participants in an educational program subject to continual monitoring by United States government officials as well as T.W.O. officers. They cannot, therefore, reasonably claim the same expectancy of privacy which might shroud their purely personal activity. Further, the locations do not suggest an expectation of privacy. The training centers were generally accessible to anyone having an interest in the program, including some nonparticipants. The centers were not subject to the legal control of any of the defendants, and training centers are not intrinsically so closely associated with the individual as to give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy. Cf., Piazzola v. Watkins, 442 F.2d 284 (5th Cir. 1971); Wheeler v. Goodman, 330 F. Supp. 1356 (D.D.C. 1971). The nature of the activity belies an expectation of privacy. Educational classes are inherently group activities open to the full view of fellow participants, instructors, and administrative and supervisory personnel. The manner of the police presence also negates an expectation of privacy among knowledgeable gang members. The participants were fully aware of their observation by uniformed policemen. Cf., Katz v. United States, supra. If the defendants had no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding activity at the training centers, the police observations of the activity are admissible. See, United States v. Horton, 328 F.2d 132 (3rd Cir. 1964), cert. den., 377 U.S. 970, 84 S. Ct. 1651, 12 L. Ed. 2d 739 (1964).
There is a second reason why the police visits do not descend to the level of unreasonableness proscribed by the fourth amendment. Investigation necessary to ensure proper effectuation of a tax-supported program is regarded as so essential to the fulfillment of a public trust that it is deemed reasonable. Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309, 91 S.Ct 381, 27 L. Ed. 2d 408 (1971). The O.E.O. grant to T.W.O. envisioned civic involvment in the supervision of the program,6 in accordance with the statutory mandate of O.E.O.7 Both T.W.O. and O.E.O. invited the Chicago Police Department to attend weekly monitoring meetings of the program in order "to give the police department access to the program so they could understand the contents, and if they had any questions, they could raise them at that time."8 It is doubtful that the police would have sufficient information to formulate questions or to participate effectively in the weekly evaluation sessions unless it was contemplated by O.E.O. and T.W.O. that the police would observe the operation of the program. This is supported by the testimony of T.W.O.'s president and executive director (both of whom participated in the weekly meetings with the police) that despite the hundreds of police visits to the centers, they had no recollection of requesting the police to cease the visits. O.E.O. involved the police in other aspects of its evaluation of the program. O.E.O.'s chief investigator at the time testified that he encouraged police cooperation and that his visits to the centers with the police resulted in changes in the conditions of the grant. While the exact role of the police in the program is unclear, the police apparently functioned as an investigatory adjunct to O.E.O.'s evaluation system, see, Wyman v. James, supra at 323, 91 S. Ct. 381, aiding the agency in "assuring that the intended and proper objects of the tax-produced assistance [here the trainees] are the one [s] who benefit from the aid it dispenses." Id. at 319, 91 S. Ct. at 386. The Supreme Court's conclusion is equally apt: "Surely it is not unreasonable, in the Fourth Amendment sense, or in any other sense of that term, that the State have at its command a gentle means, of limited extent and of practical and considerate application of achieving that assurance." Id. As in Wyman, there was no snooping, no visitation outside of working hours, and no entry under false pretenses. Id. at 321, 91 S. Ct. 381. During the hundreds of visits, there was only one forcible entry, when Officer Houtsma sought a suspect in an office, and that event was completely extraneous to the trial testimony. Generally, the visits lasted thirty minutes and occurred between three and five times per week, though on occasion both frequency and duration increased markedly. During the visits, the police observed the activity in the classrooms. While there is conflicting evidence on the effect of the police visits on the educational program, we accept the logic of the trial judge: if interference was a serious problem, it is inconceivable that nobody ever told the police that their visits three to five times a week were interfering with the operation of the school and that they were to please stay out. Mere observation by policemen is inherently less disruptive to the beneficiaries of a public program than an interrogational visit focusing on personal relationships, beliefs and behavior. See, Wyman v. James, Id. We conclude that the police conduct conformed to the limits set forth in Wyman and therefore did not constitute an unreasonable search.
Finally, a search to which voluntary consent is given is not an unlawful search, and evidence obtained through the search is admissible. See, Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U.S. 543, 88 S. Ct. 1788, 20 L. Ed. 2d 797 (1968). While consent to a search is not lightly inferred and depends on the facts of each case, United States v. Durham, 475 F.2d 208 (7th Cir. 1973) (Pell, J., concurring), the circumstances here indicate that T.W.O., the grant recipient and lessee of the centers, impliedly consented to the several hundred police visits which occurred during the eight-month period. The President of T.W.O., Rev. Arthur Brazier, and T.W.O.'s executive director, Leon Finney, were experienced community organizers sufficiently sophisticated at dealing with government officials to obtain a grant of almost one million dollars. They met weekly with high-ranking police officers at the monitoring meetings. Despite their frequent opportunities to object to the visits, Brazier testified that his only response was to complain at some of the meetings that policemen "ought to be more responsible." Similarly, Finney complained of police harassment of gangs in general. Significantly, both complaints were directed to police conduct rather than to police presence. The decision to consent tacitly was based neither on intimidation nor ignorance but on T.W.O.'s inability to protest successfully past police practices. Nothing in the record indicates that T.W.O. was acquiescing to a police claim of lawful authority, cf. Amos. v. United States, 255 U.S. 313, 317, 41 S. Ct. 266, 65 L. Ed. 654 (1921); Bumper v. North Carolina, supra, 391 U.S. at 549, 88 S. Ct. 1788 for there is no evidence of any police claim. Since T.W.O. was the administrator of the program in which defendants participated and the lessee of the premises to which defendants were invited, and since the defendants had no reasonable expectation of privacy from T.W.O. with respect to classroom activity, we find that T.W.O.'s implied consent validated the police observation of the program activity.
The Office of Educational Opportunity is an agency of the federal government operating pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 2701-2994
Fort asserts that his sixth amendment rights are violated unless the statements attributed to him are admissible against him. He then argues that the coconspiracy exception to the hearsay rule is not intended to encompass "double hearsay"-statements from one coconspirator which relate statements of another coconspirator. Defendant thus erroneously equates the confrontation clause of the sixth amendment and the evidentiary hearsay rules. Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. 74, 86, 91 S. Ct. 210, 27 L. Ed. 2d 213 (1970). Justice White cogently answered this argument in California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 90 S. Ct. 1930, 26 L. Ed. 2d 489 (1970):
While it may be readily conceded that hearsay rules and the Confrontation Clause are generally designed to protect similar values, it is quite a different thing to suggest that the overlap is complete and that the Confrontation Clause is nothing more or less than a codification of the rules of hearsay and their exceptions as they existed historically at common law. Our decisions have never established such a congruence; indeed we have more than once found a violation of confrontation values even though the statements in issue were admitted under an arguably recognized hearsay exception. The converse is equally true; merely because evidence is admitted in violation of a long-established hearsay rule does not lead to the automatic conclusion that confrontation rights have been denied. Id. at 155-156, 90 S. Ct. at 1933 [citations and footnote omitted].
Although the admissibility of the statements against Fort is not determinative of the sixth amendment issue he raises, it is well-settled that where a witness testifies that one coconspirator related the statement of a second coconspirator and both statements were made in the course of and in furtherance of the conspiracy, the evidence of the out-of-court statement by the second coconspirator (as well as that of the first coconspirator) is fully admissible against the second coconspirator and his fellow coconspirators. United States v. Aloisio, 440 F.2d 705, 708-709 (7th Cir. 1971), cert. den., 404 U.S. 824, 92 S. Ct. 824, 92 S. Ct. 49, 30 L. Ed. 2d 51 (1972); United States v. Santos, 385 F.2d 43 (7th Cir. 1967), cert. den., 390 U.S. 954, 88 S. Ct. 1048, 19 L. Ed. 2d 1148 (1968); see, Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 128 n. 3, 88 S. Ct. 1620, 20 L. Ed. 2d 476 (1968).