Opinion ID: 712237
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: 14 April Jaynes claims that there was insufficient evidence to support her conviction for forgery, uttering and conspiracy. 15 In reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, we review the record de novo and consider all the evidence--both direct and circumstantial--and all reasonable inferences that can be drawn from it in the light most favorable to the government. United States v. Hooks, 780 F.2d 1526, 1531 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1128, 106 S.Ct. 1657, 90 L.Ed.2d 199 (1986). We must determine whether a reasonable jury could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., United States v. Williamson, 53 F.3d 1500, 1514 (10th Cir.) (citations omitted), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 218, 133 L.Ed.2d 149 (1995). Put another way, the evidence is insufficient to support a conviction if no reasonable juror could have reached the challenged verdict. Id. (citation omitted). The evidence necessary to support a verdict need not conclusively exclude every other reasonable hypothesis and need not negate all possibilities except guilt. United States v. Parrish, 925 F.2d 1293, 1297 (10th Cir.1991) (citations omitted). It only has to reasonably support the jury's finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. In reviewing a conviction for sufficiency of the evidence, we cannot weigh conflicting evidence or the credibility of witnesses since that duty is exclusively delegated to the jury. United States v. Davis, 965 F.2d 804, 811 (10th Cir.1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 910, 113 S.Ct. 1255, 122 L.Ed.2d 653 (1993). We must accept the jury's resolution of the evidence as long as it is within the bounds of reason. Grubbs v. Hannigan, 982 F.2d 1483 (10th Cir.1993) (citations omitted). In viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, we necessarily resolve any conflicts in the evidence in favor of the government and assume the jury found that evidence credible. Williamson, 53 F.3d at 1516. 16 Ms. Jaynes argues that her conviction was not supported by the evidence because there was insufficient evidence of any intent to defraud. An intent to defraud is a necessary element of each count charged in the indictment. 1 Ms. Jaynes claims that she lacked the requisite intent to defraud because her mother had told her and she believed that the checks were an inheritance from her grandfather and because she made no effort to hide her negotiation of the checks but openly signed her own name on the checks and deposited them into her own account. She claims the evidence showed only an honest mistake regarding her entitlement to the payments, not an intent to defraud the United States. 17 An intent to defraud the United States may be shown by an act which the actor knows will interfere with the government's regular payment of funds to a lawful recipient. United States v. Price, 795 F.2d 61, 63 (10th Cir.1986). An intent to defraud can be inferred from circumstantial evidence. See id. Signing a check in a name other than one's real name tends to establish fraudulent intent. United States v. Crim, 527 F.2d 289, 294 (10th Cir.1975), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 905, 96 S.Ct. 1497, 47 L.Ed.2d 755 (1976). 18 Although Ms. Jaynes testified that she honestly thought she was entitled to the annuity checks and did not intend to defraud anyone, the jury was not required to believe her. See, e.g., United States v. Hager, 969 F.2d 883, 888 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 964, 113 S.Ct. 437, 121 L.Ed.2d 357 (1992). There was sufficient circumstantial evidence from which a reasonable jury could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Jaynes had the intent to defraud the United States. For example, Ms. Jaynes's husband and Jamie Anglin, Ms. Jaynes's sister, both stated that they knew it was wrong to cash the checks, and Ms. Anglin testified that she told her sister so. Ms. Jaynes herself told Mr. Kingry, the Secret Service agent investigating the case, that she thought it was wrong when she took and deposited the checks. In her written statement to the Secret Service, Ms. Jaynes stated that she did not think it was the correct thing to do and thought it was most likely unlawful but hoped that it wasn't. Yet, by her own admission, she did nothing to determine whether or not she was entitled to keep the annuity checks until 1992 or 1993, when she called the Treasury Department but gave up after being put on hold. Such willful ignorance in the face of an admitted suspicion that what she was doing was wrong is the equivalent of guilty knowledge, and the jury could reasonably infer that her ignorance was motivated by sufficient guilty knowledge to constitute intent. See United States v. Stone, 987 F.2d 469, 472 (7th Cir.1993). 19 There was also evidence that Ms. Jaynes tried to hide her actions and make them appear legitimate. For example, after her mother died, Ms. Jaynes moved twice, yet she never had the checks sent to her new addresses. Instead, she or her husband had to make a special trip to her former home, which had been boarded up, to pick up the checks from the mailbox. When Agent Kingry asked her why she and her husband had not requested a change of address, she replied that she had not wanted to attract attention by making any change. 20 Ms. Jaynes admitted that she signed both her grandmother's name and her own name on the checks. There was evidence that the style of the handwriting for the two endorsements was different, from which the jury could infer that the endorsements were meant to give the appearance that two different people had signed the checks. 2 Ms. Anglin, Ms. Jaynes's sister, also testified that she had seen Ms. Jaynes writing Julia A. Jones several times on a piece of notebook paper, from which the jury could infer that Ms. Jaynes had practiced the signature to make it look like her grandmother's. 3 21 Although we might have reached a different conclusion from the evidence, we cannot say that there was insufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find Ms. Jaynes guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.