Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/100148/milanovich-vs-united-states
Timestamp: 2017-03-23 19:30:56
Document Index: 701849769

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 641', '§ 641', '§ 2113', '§ 641', '§ 641', '§ 2', '§ 576']

Milanovich Vs United States - Citation 100148 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
Save as PDF Add a Tag Add a Note Semantics Visualize Milanovich Vs. United States - Court Judgment	LegalCrystal Citationlegalcrystal.com/100148CourtUS Supreme CourtDecided OnMar-20-1961Case Number365 U.S. 551AppellantMilanovichRespondentUnited StatesExcerpt:
milanovich v. united states - 365 u.s. 551 (1961)
petitioners, husband and wife, were both convicted in a federal district court for stealing government property in violation of 18 u.s.c. § 641, and the wife was convicted also on a separate count for receiving and concealing part of the same property in violation of the same section. on the larceny conviction, the husband was sentenced to imprisonment for five years and the wife for ten years. in addition, the wife received..... Judgment:
the judgment as to the husband is affirmed, but the judgment as to the wife is set aside, and the cause is remanded to the District Court for a new trial. Pp.
365 U. S. 552
(a) The wife could not validly be convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 641 both for stealing government property and for receiving and concealing the same property.
(b) The trial judge erred in not charging that the jury could convict the wife of either larceny or receiving, but not of both. Pp.
(c) Since there is no way of knowing whether a properly instructed jury would have found the wife guilty of larceny or of receiving or of neither, the mere setting aside of the shorter concurrent sentence for receiving did not suffice to cure any prejudice resulting from the judge's failure to instruct the jury properly. Pp.
The petitioners are husband and wife. They were both convicted in a Federal District Court for stealing several thousand dollars in currency from a commissary store at a United States Naval Base. The wife was convicted also on a separate count for receiving and concealing the stolen currency. [
] Both petitioners were sentenced to prison on the larceny conviction, the husband for a term of five years and the wife for a ten-year term. In addition, the wife received a five-year concurrent sentence on the receiving count.
Throughout the trial, counsel for the petitioners consistently maintained the position that a thief could not be convicted of receiving from himself. [
] Although directing
an acquittal on the receiving count in the husband's case, the trial judge overruled a similar motion on behalf of the wife. Counsel then clearly indicated his intention to request that the jury be instructed that it could not find the wife guilty of both stealing and receiving. [
] The trial judge responded by pointing out that the Fourth Circuit had decided, in
Aaronson v. United States,
175 F.2d 41, that it is possible that, as long as the person did not actually participate in the actual taking of the goods, that same person may be found guilty of receiving and concealing, and may also be found guilty as an accessory before the fact or as an aider and an abetter of the actual charge of theft. Faced with this controlling Fourth Circuit authority, counsel did not engage in the futile exercise of submitting a more formal request for such instructions.
When the case reached the Court of Appeals, that court put aside its decision in the
case, in the light of this Court's decision in
, which had been announced in the meantime. In
we held that a defendant could not be convicted and cumulatively sentenced under 18 U.S.C. § 2113 for both robbing a bank and receiving the proceeds of the robbery. Relying on that decision, the court set aside the sentence imposed upon the wife for receiving. 275 F.2d 716. It was the court's view that,
275 F.2d at 719. Although
involved a different section of the criminal code, the court found
In this view, we think that the Court of Appeals was correct. As the court recognized, the question is one of statutory construction, not of common law distinctions.
Compare Metcalf v. State,
98 Fla. 457, 124 So. 427;
59 Ohio St. 350, 52 N.E. 826;
62 Wis. 49, 21 N.W. 232;
Regina v. Hilton,
Bell C.C. 20, 169 Eng.Rep. 1150,
with Allen v. State,
76 Tex.Cr.R. 416, 175 S.W. 700;
2 Den.C.C. 458, 169 Eng.Rep. 582;
Regina v. Coggins,
12 Cox C.C. 517. With respect to the receiving statute before us in
we decided that "Congress was trying to reach a new group of wrongdoers, not to multiply the offense of the . . . robbers themselves," 358 U.S. at
. We find nothing in the language or history of the present statute which leads to a different conclusion here. As in
the provision of the statute which makes receiving an offense came into the law later than the provision relating to robbery. [
It is now contended that setting aside the sentence on the receiving count was not enough -- that the conviction on the larceny count must also be reversed, and the case remanded for a new trial. The argument is that, although the evidence was sufficient to support a conviction for either larceny or receiving, [
] the judge should have instructed
We think that the point is well taken. In
we were not concerned with the correctness of jury instructions, since that case arose out of a collateral proceeding to correct an illegal sentence where the petitioner was asking only that the cumulative punishment imposed for receiving be set aside. In this case, by contrast, a direct review of the conviction brings here the entire record of the trial. We hold, based on what has been said as to the scope of the applicable statute, that the trial judge erred in not charging that the jury could convict of either larceny or receiving, but not of both.
This is a prosecution brought under 18 U.S.C. § 641, [
] upon an indictment containing several counts. One charged the defendant Virginia Milanovich, petitioner herein, with the theft of government property; another charged her with receiving the stolen property with an intent to convert it to her own use. Both counts were allowed to go to the jury, which explicitly found the defendant guilty on each of the two counts.
This was the evidence on which the jury must have based their verdict against the defendant. She and her husband, as owners of an automobile, transported three others under an arrangement whereby the three were to break into a United States naval commissary building with a view to stealing government funds. Defendant and her husband were to remain outside for the return of their accomplices after the accomplishment of the theft. In fact, for one reason or another, husband and wife drove off without awaiting the return of their friends. Not finding the automobile where they had left it, the thieves buried the booty. No share of the stolen money ever touched the hand of petitioner or was in any sense received by her until seventeen days later when, after she had removed some of the booty from the base, it was soon after discovered by FBI agents during a legal search of the premises. Since she herself was not an active participant in the breaking in and thieving, she was amenable to § 641 because she, as an accessory, was legally deemed a principal under 18 U.S.C. § 2. [
] On this basis, the trial judge submitted the case to the jury and the jury was enabled to find her guilty of the substantive offense of stealing government property, as well as to return a verdict of guilty on the receiving charge. The trial judge then sentenced the defendant on each of the counts. Because of the extensive criminal record of the defendant, he imposed a sentence of ten years on the thieving count and five years on the receiving count, the sentences to run concurrently.
The Court of Appeals, drawing on our decision in
, deemed it necessary to set aside the sentence imposed on the receiving count. It read
as holding that the crime of receiving was solely directed to those who were not convicted of stealing; the latter conviction was therefore invalidated. The Court, likewise relying on
today holds that, since the jury should have been instructed that they had power to return a verdict of guilty on only one count, the proceedings against the defendant must start all over again, since a reviewing court cannot predict what the jury would have done under proper instructions.
Both of these conclusions rest, I believe, on a wholly unwarranted reliance on
They disregard the only issue that was before the Court in that case, and thereby misconceive its holding. Today's decision reflects the common law doctrine of merger and the consequences of such merger on the requirements of criminal procedure -- specifically, what separate counts may be laid in an indictment and the duty of a trial judge in charging the jury the kind of a verdict they may return to an indictment of multiple counts.
It is hornbook law that a thief cannot be charged with committing two offenses -- that is, stealing and receiving the goods he has stolen.
E.g., Cartwright v. United States,
146 F.2d 133;
State v. Tindall,
213 S.C. 484, 50 S.E.2d 188;
2 Wharton, Criminal Law and Procedure, § 576;
State of Montana v. Webber,
112 Mont. 284, 116 P.2d 679. And this is so for the commonsensical, if not obvious, reason that a man who takes property does not at the same time give himself the property he has taken. In short, taking and receiving, as a contemporaneous -- indeed a coincidental -- phenomenon, constitute one transaction in life and, therefore, not two transactions in law. It also may well be that a person who does not himself take but is a contemporaneous participant
as an aider and abettor in the taking is also a participant in a single transaction, and therefore has committed but a single offense.
12 Cox C.C. 517;
Rex v. Owen,
1 Moody C.C. 96, 168 Eng.Rep. 1200. In such a case, the jury must be told that the taking and receiving, being but a single transaction, constitute, of course, only one crime.
See Commonwealth v. Haskins,
128 Mass. 60. (This, of course, does not bar Congress from outlawing and punishing as separate offenses the severable ingredients of one compound transaction.
The case before us presents a totally different situation -- not a coincidental or even a contemporaneous transaction, in the loosest conception of contemporaneity. Here, we have two clearly severed transactions. The case against the defendant -- and the only case -- presented two behaviors or transactions by defendant clearly and decisively separated in time and in will. The intervening seventeen days between defendant's accessorial share in the theft and her conduct as a recipient left the amplest opportunities for events outside her control to frustrate her hope of sharing in the booty, or ample time for her to change her criminal purpose and avail herself of a
Two larcenies, separated in time, would not be merged; what legal difference between the two situations here?
One can say with confidence that
is no warrant for the conclusion pronounced by the Court. There was not the remotest suggestion in the petition that brought that case here, in the briefs that were submitted before argument, in the oral argument, or in the opinion which formulated the decision, that the case was concerned with the power of the court to submit the several counts to the jury and the right of the jury to convict on separate counts for conduct charging separate transactions clearly separated in fact. In Heflin, the jury convicted defendant on separate counts of bank robbery and receiving stolen money. We held that we could find "no purpose of Congress to pyramid penalties for lesser offenses following the robbery," and therefore ruled against the cumulation of punishments, but found no impropriety in submitting both counts to the jury. I find not a word, not a hint, not a subtle innuendo suggesting that the case dealt with criminal procedure -- that is, with submission of different counts to a jury, with the appropriateness of the judge's charge to the jury, or with the right of a jury to bring in separate verdicts on separate counts on the basis of evidence justifying such submission and such verdicts.
is one of a recent series of cases having to do with what the Court, in
, called "fragmentation of crimes for purposes of punishment." Beginning with
, these cases concerned the propriety of cumulative sentences within different statutory frameworks. [
-84. In not one of these cases will there be found a word having to do with how crimes should be charged, how submitted to the jury, or what verdicts the jury may return.
like the rest of these cases, was concerned with the duty of the trial judge in sentencing after the jury was through with its job. Indeed, in all these cases, there were several counts on which the jury found a verdict and the issue arose not as to the propriety of leaving all the counts to the jury, but what sentence should be imposed after the verdict had been returned.
the doctrine that an aider and abettor to a theft who at an appreciably later time receives some of the stolen goods may not be charged on separate counts for both transactions, or that a judge may not leave both counts for a jury verdict of guilt on either one or both, when no such question was in issue or adverted to in
is to disregard the whole philosophy of our law based on precedents. It is to base reliance on a case for a new doctrine when that case affords no sustenance for it.
I agree with the District Court in the imposition of two sentences to run concurrently. [
the defendant pleaded guilty to an indictment under the Mann Act which charged him in two counts with transporting two women, respectively, for immoral purposes on one trip. This Court held that Congress did not intend to make
two counts of an indictment charging, respectively, entering a bank with intent to rob and robbery were submitted to the jury, which returned verdicts of guilty on both. The Court held that the sentences could not be cumulated, and remanded the case to the District Court for resentencing, but made no reference to the fact that two counts were laid and found by the jury.
With all deference, I must point out that, in support of its view as to Mrs. Milanovich, the Court has quoted merely an excerpt from a statement of this petitioner's counsel,
, note 2, made in chambers on his motion to require the United States Attorney to elect as between the two counts of aiding and abetting, and receiving. Admittedly, this motion was not well taken. However, during that presentation, counsel stated: "we
ask the Court to instruct the jury" that it cannot find petitioner guilty on both counts. (Emphasis supplied.) But, after the motion to elect was denied, no such instruction was offered, nor was there made on that ground any objection to the charge omitting such instruction. Now petitioners have chosen to abandon a claim of error in the denial of their motion to elect, and rely instead upon error in the charge, although no objection had been made on that ground.
The Court does not mention the dilemma which its ruling produces. It says the jury should have been instructed that a guilty verdict could be returned on either count, but not both. This would require the jury to return a not guilty verdict on one count. Here, where the jury had in fact found Mr. Milanovich guilty of both offenses, it could yet be required to return a false verdict,
false in fact, even if true in law, on one of them. Except for its imperfect analogy to the case of factually inconsistent counts charging lesser-included offenses of the main count (as in first degree murder), in which the trial judge gives the jury instructions to be applied successively, the rule suggested today is unheard of in our jurisprudence. For here, the jury is invited to consider counts not factually inconsistent, and in such sequences as it chooses, with no more reason to convict on one rather than another except its election on how to characterize the grounds supporting petitioner's imprisonment. Since such a result is required by the present disposition, it would have been better to rule that the prosecutor must elect between the counts, as petitioner originally wished.