Opinion ID: 310289
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The propriety of the conspiracy charge and conviction.

Text: 36 Sec. 207(a) prescribes a penalty for an ex-employee who acts as attorney for a client, under specified circumstances, if he acts knowingly, but does not prescribe a penalty for the client, whether he acts knowingly, wilfully, or otherwise. 37 The essential question presented is whether, when a client agrees with an ex-employee of the government that the ex-employee shall act as attorney or agent in a matter from which he is foreclosed by Sec. 207(a), and the client (as well as the ex-employee) has guilty knowledge and purpose, both may properly be found guilty of conspiring to cause a violation of Sec. 207(a). 38 Count IV was arguably broader in that it charged a conspiracy among Nasser, Hauff, Circella, and unknown others, to have Nasser act as attorney for Hauff and Circella. There was evidence that Hauff brought Circella to Nasser to obtain representation and that Nasser arranged with Roche to appear for Circella, under circumstances from which it could be inferred that Nasser was really acting as the attorney. We do not understand, however, that the government attempts to sustain the conviction on the theory that the jury found that Nasser and Hauff conspired to have Nasser act unlawfully as attorney for Circella, i. e., ex-employee and A conspiring to have B employ the ex-employee as his attorney in a forbidden matter. 39 Such an interpretation of the verdict would be dubious in that the jury could not agree that Nasser acted unlawfully for Circella. Moreover the case was not really argued nor submitted on that theory. The instructions permitted a verdict of guilty on Count IV if the jury found that Hauff knowingly and wilfully agreed that Nasser act as his attorney. There was no instruction that in order to find Nasser and Hauff guilty, the jury must find that Nasser and Hauff knowingly and wilfully agreed that Nasser act unlawfully as attorney for Circella. 40 In enacting Sec. 207(a), Congress made it an offense for the ex-employee knowingly to act as agent or attorney for a client in a matter of the type specified. Agreement by the client that the ex-employee act as attorney is impliedly required. So far as Sec. 207(a) goes, it is immaterial whether the client had knowledge of the facts which would make the ex-employee guilty of the offense, and the client is not made guilty of an offense under any circumstances. The government argues that if the client has guilty knowledge, an element it need not prove under Sec. 207(a), the agreement that the ex-employee shall act for the client becomes a conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 371. Thus the ex-employee, when he acted as attorney for a client who had guilty knowledge, would be guilty not only of a violation of Sec. 207(a), and exposed to a $10,000 fine and two years' imprisonment, but also of a violation of Sec. 371, and exposed additionally to a $10,000 fine and five years' imprisonment, and the client would be guilty of the latter and exposed to that penalty. 41 Of course it is possible that an ex-employee may violate Sec. 207(a) when his client is ignorant of the fact that the ex-employee was such, or had participated in the matter as such, but we are strongly inclined to believe, in the nature of things, that where an ex-employee acts knowingly and unlawfully, his client will often know the facts. The client's knowledge of those facts will frequently have been the motive for the retainer. 42 Appellants argue that the case falls within one of the exceptions to the rule that a substantive offense and a conspiracy to commit it are separate and distinct offenses: (1) where the agreement of two persons is necessary for the completion of the substantive crime and there is no ingredient in the conspiracy which is not present in the completed crime (the Wharton rule); and (2) where the definition of the substantive offense excludes from punishment for conspiracy one who voluntarily participates in another's crime. Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 643, 66 S. Ct. 1180, 1182, 90 L.Ed. 818 (1946). 43 The Wharton rule operates to prevent conviction both of conspiracy and the substantive offense where the substantive offense could not have been committed without concerted action, so that the conspiracy is really identical with or included within the substantive offense. This is most clearly illustrated in dueling, adultery, and bigamy. See Perkins, Criminal Law 535 (1957). The government points out that in our case, the guilty knowledge of the client is an essential ingredient of conspiracy, but not of the substantive offense. 44 The second exception really turns upon a construction of legislative intent. In Gebardi v. United States, 287 U.S. 112, 53 S.Ct. 35, 77 L.Ed. 206 (1932), cited in Pinkerton, the Supreme Court had before it the Mann Act, now 18 U. S.C. Sec. 2421. One defendant was a man who had clearly violated the Act by transporting a woman for an immoral purpose. The other defendant was the woman, who had consented to the journey and the purpose. They were convicted of conspiracy, and the Supreme Court reversed. Having construed the Mann Act so as not to punish the woman transported even though she consented, the Court concluded there was an affirmative legislative policy to leave her acquiescence unpunished, precluding punishment via the conspiracy statute. And in the absence of any proof that the man conspired with others than the woman transported, his conviction could not stand. 45 We see, as the government argues, that there are bases for difference between the legislative attitude toward a woman transported for immoral purposes with her consent and toward a person who purposefully, in order to advance his own interests, seeks representation from an ex-employee of the government in a matter in which the latter participated when he was an employee. But in evaluating the intent of Congress in failing to prescribe a penalty in Sec. 207(a) for the client, regardless of his degree of guilty knowledge or culpable intent, we think it more reasonable to read the omission as precluding punishment for the client than as leaving punishment for the client with guilty knowledge, up to a much greater maximum than that provided by Sec. 207(a) for the ex-employee, to the operation of the conspiracy statute. 3 We conclude that Hauff could not be guilty of conspiracy with Nasser, nor Nasser with Hauff, solely by reason of their agreement, knowing and wilful, that Nasser act as attorney for Hauff in the forbidden matters. 46 Here, too, accepting the evidence that Hauff knew that Nasser's representation of him was unlawful, it happens there was evidence that Hauff participated in devices to conceal the offense. The extent to which the Gebardi reasoning would apply to a charge as principal, under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2, as accessory after the fact under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3, or misprision of felony under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 4, need not be considered here, those charges being absent. 47