Opinion ID: 347528
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the intent of the grand jury

Text: 645 It is also rather clear, if one studies the indictment, that the Grand Jury never intended to include the charge of obstructing justice by delaying the investigation through a defrauding of the CIA as part of the obstruction of justice alleged in Count 2. A mere reading of Count 1 plainly shows that the Grand Jury charged that one object of the conspiracy was to defraud the . . . CIA, but after that allegation was made in Count 1, the Grand Jury made absolutely no mention of the CIA in Count 2. So the Grand Jury was thoroughly aware of the facts. Had it intended to include such activities in the obstruction of justice count all that was required was to insert in the indictment: 646 by defrauding the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency of the United States 647 after the phrase September 15, 1972. Such would be a general factual allegation and obviously is not an evidentiary particularization. But no such allegation was made. 648 Because of the extreme prominence of the CIA activities in the charged offenses one cannot argue that the grand jury forgot them. It rather appears that it considered that Count 1 sufficiently set forth the offense they wished to indict upon, particularly because it alleged a consummated conspiracy. The Grand Jury could thus have been motivated not to follow the practice, which is much objected to by some, of charging both a consummated conspiracy and a substantive offense to commit the same crime. 649 This result may also have been dictated by the peculiar statutory status of the offense of defrauding an agency of the United States. There is no such general substantive offense in the federal statutes. Such acts are only covered in the conspiracy statute which makes it an offense to conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof . . . 25 The statute thus places defrauding a United States agency in a different category from any other offense against the United States. The only offense is conspiracy to defraud the United States. Merely defrauding the United States is not a substantive offense. It may have been because of this peculiar status of the offense that the Grand Jury was motivated not to complicate Count 2, but my colleagues seek to load everything into Count 2. In doing so they plainly commit error. 650 The failure of the indictment to include perjury in its factual charges alleged in Count 2 is another indication that the Grand Jury intentionally excluded misuse of the CIA from Count 2. Misuse of the CIA and perjury were both specifically alleged as objects of the conspiracy charged in Count 1 and both were equally probative on the issue of obstructing justice, but the Grand Jury never included either charge in Count 2. Had the Grand Jury intended the perjuries to be included in the factual elements of the obstruction charge it would have alleged perjury at least. All that would have been needed was the one word added to the indictment. And it cannot be said that the Grand Jury overlooked perjury because all the other twelve counts of the indictment did include some allegation of perjury or misstatement. The conclusion is thus irrefutable that the Grand Jury did not intend to include in Count 2 accusations of offenses that were made elsewhere in the indictment but which were completely omitted from Count 2. 651 Another reason which makes it clear why the Grand Jury did not intend to include defrauding the CIA in Count 2 is that Parkinson was named as a defendant in that count and there was never any suggestion of any evidence linking him to the alleged efforts to delay the investigation by defrauding the CIA. And since Parkinson could not be so charged, and the indictment did not so charge, it follows that the other co-defendants were not so charged because it was a joint count. Thus, when the court instructed the jury that Parkinson and all the others could be convicted of obstructing justice solely because of the alleged misuse of the . . . CIA, it was authorizing a guilty verdict against Parkinson and all the other defendants for an offense with which none of them had been charged. That cannot be done. Rather, it is being done, but it should not be done. 652 Acutely conscious of the evidentiary limitations, the Grand Jury drafted a neat count in which the offense was stated to have been committed by making cash payments, offers of other benefits, and by other similar means. Its handiwork should not be marred by an improper instruction and an unsound appellate affirmance that would be impossible to live with.