Opinion ID: 779007
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The mailings underlying two of the mail fraud counts

Text: 62 Caldwell challenges the two mail fraud counts based on his letters notifying board members about the special board meeting that Caldwell called for the purpose of submitting his employment contract and the CSG consulting contract for the board's approval. Relying on Parr v. United States, 363 U.S. 370, 80 S.Ct. 1171, 4 L.Ed.2d 1277 (1960), and Curry, Caldwell contends that his convictions on the two counts must be reversed because these two mailings were required by Magnolia Venture's bylaws and were not shown to be false. In Parr, the Supreme Court held that members of a school board could not be held liable for mail fraud based on mailings that were required under state law unless the mailings were false or fraudulent. See 363 U.S. at 391-92, 80 S.Ct. 1171. Applying the Parr holding in Curry, this court held that the defendant could not be convicted of mail fraud based on affidavits that he mailed pursuant to Louisiana's statute governing campaign-finance disclosure unless the government proved that the affidavits were false and that the defendant either intended to defraud the state agency to which they were mailed or mailed them in a deliberate attempt to prevent discovery of his scheme to defraud. 681 F.2d at 412. 63 Pointing out that Parr and Curry both involved mailings required under state law, the government argues that extending Parr to all matters which are required by the bylaws of a corporation would create an exception that would swallow up most of the mail fraud statute's reach, because [v]irtually all economic activity can be traced back to a bylaw requirement of some business. We agree that permitting the applicability of the mail fraud statute to depend on corporate-created rules is neither required under Parr nor desirable. Furthermore, even assuming the mailings notifying the board members of the special meeting were required under law as contemplated by the Parr Court, the Parr exception is nevertheless inapplicable because these mailings would not have been made but for Caldwell's alleged scheme to defraud. In Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705, 109 S.Ct. 1443, 103 L.Ed.2d 734 (1989), the Supreme Court recognized this limitation on the Parr rule: 64 Whereas the mailings of the tax documents in Parr were the direct product of the school district's state constitutional duty to levy taxes and would have been made regardless of the defendants' fraudulent scheme, the mailings in the present case, though in compliance with Wisconsin's car-registration procedure, were derivative of Schmuck's scheme to sell doctored cars and would not have occurred but for that scheme. 65 Schmuck, 489 U.S. at 713 n. 7, 109 S.Ct. 1443 (internal citation omitted); see also United States v. Krenning, 93 F.3d 1257, 1264 (5th Cir.1996) (finding that the innocent mailings exception of Parr did not apply because [e]ven assuming there existed a statute requiring Sovereign Insurance to mail the policies and related documents to the insureds[,] ... [t]he continuing need to mail policies out to new customers was ... entirely derivative of the Defendants' decision to fraudulently operate an insolvent insurance company); United States v. Bright, 588 F.2d 504, 509-10 (5th Cir.1979) (Under state law, the mailings in Parr would have occurred irrespective of the defendants' embezzlement ... Here, by contrast, ... [i]f [the defendants] had not decided to defraud the estate of their late cousin, they would not have had to comply with the state law requiring them to file the creditors' notice.). 66 Caldwell called the special meeting that was the subject of the two challenged mailings for the specific purpose of securing the board's approval of his employment contract and of CSG's consulting contract, both of which were essential to the success of Caldwell's alleged scheme. Unlike the situation in Parr, Caldwell's mailings notifying the board members of the special meeting would not have been necessary absent the fraudulent scheme and, accordingly, are proper bases of the mail fraud counts. 14 67 Caldwell also attacks his convictions with several claims of error in the district court's evidentiary rulings and jury charge. Many of these claims are essentially reassertions of his challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the scheme element of mail fraud (or are more appropriately framed as such) and thus have been addressed above. As to Caldwell's other challenges to the district court's evidentiary rulings and jury charge, we find no reversible error.