Opinion ID: 474866
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Jury Instructions on Violations of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2314

Text: 69 Defendant's final claim of error is that the trial court improperly instructed the jury regarding Counts Two, Six, Fourteen, Sixteen, Forty, and Forty-six. In those counts the grand jury charged that defendant violated 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2314 by having received checks through the mail, knowing these to have been stolen, converted, and taken by fraud. Defendant points out that the trial court instructed the jury that they could convict defendant for violating 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2314 if they found that the checks in question had been transported across state lines by defendant, knowing the same to have been stolen, converted, or taken by fraud. Again, defendant asserts that the charge complained of constituted a constructive amendment of the indictment. In United States v. Miller, 471 U.S. 130, 105 S.Ct. 1811, 1815, 85 L.Ed.2d 99 (1985), the Supreme Court noted that a number of longstanding doctrines of criminal procedure are premised on the notion that each offense whose elements are fully set out in an indictment can independently sustain a conviction. Among the doctrines cited to support this proposition was that an indictment count that alleges in the conjunctive a number of means of committing a crime can support a conviction if any of the alleged means are proved. Id. (citing Crain v. United States, 162 U.S. 625, 634-36, 16 S.Ct. 952, 954-56, 40 L.Ed. 1097 (1896)). Thus, we hold that an impermissible variance does not occur when, although an indictment charges several acts in the conjunctive, the district court charges the jury in the disjunctive. See, e.g., United States v. Johnson, 767 F.2d 673, 674 (10th Cir.1985).