Opinion ID: 774781
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: 27 1. Bringing Counterfeit Currency into the United States. Count III of the superseding indictment charges Howick with bringing counterfeit currency into the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 472. In relevant part, the statute provides for a criminal sanction against any person who brings into the United States or keeps in possession or conceals  counterfeit currency. 18 U.S.C. §§ 472. 28 At the close of evidence, Howick moved for a judgment of acquittal with regard to Count III pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29(a). He argued that a conviction on this Count would require a showing by the government that Howick had personally transported counterfeit currency across the border, a fact the government concededly had not demonstrated. The government opposed the motion, arguing that a conviction could be predicated on the evidence that Howick had caused the relevant documents to be brought into the country by requesting them from Pfahl. The district court elected pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29(b) to withhold its ruling until after the jury returned its verdict. 29 During deliberations, the jury inquired into this very issue, asking the court whether a conviction on Count III required a physical bringing in of counterfeit currency, or whether causing documents to be brought into the country would suffice. According to the district court, Howick requested that no further instructions be given regarding the offense and the court agreed, telling the members of the jury only that they should apply their common sense. United States v. Howick, 96 F. Supp. 2d 1099, 1100 (D. Mont. 2000). The jury returned a verdict of guilty. 30 Afterward, the district court issued an order rejecting Howick's Rule 29 motion, concluding that section 472 does not require a `physical' bringing in of the counterfeit . . . items. Id. Howick now appeals that order. Our review is de novo. United States v. Pacheo-Medina, 212 F.3d 1162, 1163 (9th Cir. 2000). 31 We agree that the government need not show physical transportation of counterfeit currency into the United States to establish criminal liability. We look first to 18 U.S.C. §§ 2(b), which provides: Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal. 32 Admittedly, the superseding indictment did not charge Howick expressly with causing documents to be brought into the country, but, as we have previously explained, this omission does not foreclose a subsequent conviction on a causation theory. In keeping with the provisions of§§ 2, it has long been held that an indictment need not specifically charge . . . `causing' the commission of an offense against the United States, in order to support a jury verdict based upon [such] a finding . . . . All indictments must be read in effect, then, as if the alternatives provided by 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 were embodied in each count thereof. United States v. Armstrong, 909 F.2d 1238, 1241 (9th Cir. 1990) (quoting United States v. Lester, 363 F.2d 68, 72 (6th Cir. 1966)). 33 Accordingly, we conclude that the district court correctly determined that a section 472 offense may be established by evidence that a defendant caused counterfeit documents to be brought into the country. Since the superseding indictment may be read to have so charged, the prosecution so argued, and the jury so found, we reject Howick's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence on this ground. 34 2. The Counterfeit Documents. Howick also moved for judgment of acquittal on Counts II and III of the indictment--charging him with possessing counterfeit currency and with bringing it into the country, respectively--on the ground that the subject documents were not sufficiently similar to actual currency to support a conviction. Reviewing de novo, Pacheo-Medina, 212 F.3d at 1163, we will reject a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence if, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could find the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. United States v. Iriarte-Ortega, 113 F.3d 1022, 1024 n.2 (9th Cir. 1997). 35 Both Counts II and III of the indictment, based on the counterfeit gold and silver certificates, alleged violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 472, which provides: 36 Whoever, with intent to defraud, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or with like intent brings into the United States or keeps in possession or conceals any falsely made, forged, counterfeited, or altered obligation or other security of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than fifteen years, or both. 37 We have previously held that a conviction under section 472 must be predicated on documents that bear such a likeness or resemblance to genuine currency as is calculated to deceive an honest, sensible and unsuspecting person of ordinary observation and care when dealing with a person supposed to be upright and honest. United States v. Johnson, 434 F.2d 827, 829 (9th Cir. 1970) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also United States v. Taftsiou, 144 F.3d 287, 290 (3d Cir. 1998). 38 According to Howick, the gold and silver certificates did not satisfy this standard because they possessed flaws rendering them obviously fake, namely: the one-hundred dollar certificates, purporting to be Series 1935, had oversized portraits of Benjamin Franklin, a design that appears only on genuine currency marked Series 1996 or later; the certificates were printed on paper that lacked the very small nylon fibers embedded throughout that are found in actual currency; the certificates were not printed by the intaglio method used by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing on behalf of the United States Treasury; and the serial numbers were printed on the certificates, whereas the serial numbers on actual currency are, in effect, stamped into the paper. 39 Howick's challenge falls well short of establishing insufficiency of the evidence with regard to Counts II and III. The certificates' defects may have been apparent to a skeptical examiner trained in the detection of counterfeit currency, but they could easily have been overlooked by an ordinary person who had no grounds for suspicion. It is not common practice to verify that the money in one's pocket bears a design in accordance with its Series date, or to run one's fingers across the bills' corners to find the hallmarks of the intaglio printing method. Bogus currency that can be detected by such means may therefore still be calculated to deceive an honest, sensible and unsuspecting person of ordinary observation and care when dealing with a person supposed to be upright and honest. Johnson, 434 F.2d at 829. 40 Accordingly, we conclude that a rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the offenses charged in Counts II and III of the indictment, and therefore affirm Howick's convictions on those Counts. 41 3. The Fictitious Documents. More difficult to resolve is Howick's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting Count I of the superseding indictment. The substance of the challenge is the same--that the relevant documents are clearly fake and therefore cannot support a conviction--but both the factual and legal circumstances are different in the following respects: Howick's factual claim that the documents are obviously false is considerably stronger, but the legal question whether, and if so to what degree, the relevant documents must appear genuine to be unlawful is as yet unsettled. 42 Count I of the superseding indictment, based on the $100,000,000 and $500,000,000 federal reserve notes, charged Howick with possession of fictitious obligations, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 514, as opposed to counterfeit obligations covered by section 472, as were at issue in Counts II and III. The fictitious obligation statute provides: 43 Whoever, with the intent to defraud . . . passes, utters, presents, offers, brokers, issues, sells, or attempts or causes the same, or with like intent possesses, within the United States; . . . any false or fictitious instrument, document, or other item appearing, representing, purporting, or contriving through scheme or artifice, to be an actual security or other financial instrument issued under the authority of the United States, a foreign government, a State or other political subdivision of the United States, or an organization, shall be guilty of a class B felony. 44 18 U.S.C. §§ 514(a)(2). 45 Section 514 is a rather new statute; under it, prosecution appears to be infrequent. It differs from the pre-existing counterfeit statute, section 472, which reachesfalsely made, forged, [and] counterfeit obligations, in that section 514, reaches false or fictitious obligations, so long as they appear to be actual. Plainly, section 514 was intended to criminalize a range of behavior not reached by section 472. 46 We find the legislative history of section 514 helpful in illuminating more precisely the differences between that provision and section 472. The need to criminalize possession of fictitious, as opposed to counterfeit, documents was explained in 1995 by then-Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who introduced the legislation: 47 Mr. President, I am today introducing the Financial Instruments Anti-Fraud Act of 1995. 48 This legislation combats the use of factitious 5 financial instruments to defraud individual investors, banks, pension funds, and charities. These fictitious instruments have been called many names, including prime bank notes, prime bank derivatives, prime bank guarantees, Japanese yen bonds, Indonesian promissory notes, U.S. Treasury warrants, and U.S. dollar notes. . . . 49