Opinion ID: 739316
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Appellant Shanklin's Statute of Limitations Defense

Text: 21 Shanklin claims that he was prosecuted in violation of the applicable five-year statute of limitations. See 18 U.S.C. § 3282. With respect to the conspiracy count only, we agree. Our review is plenary. United States v. Workinger, 90 F.3d 1409, 1412 (9th Cir.1996) (citation omitted). 22 To satisfy the statute of limitations for mail fraud, the government must prove that the predicate mailing occurred in the five years before the indictment. United States v. Ashdown, 509 F.2d 793, 798 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 829, 96 S.Ct. 48, 46 L.Ed.2d 47 (1975). To satisfy the statute for conspiracy, the government must prove that a conspirator committed an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy in the five years before the indictment. See Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 396-97, 77 S.Ct. 963, 969-70, 1 L.Ed.2d 931 (1957). 23 Shanklin was indicted on September 14, 1994. Accordingly, the government was required to show that both the mailing element of the mail fraud count and at least one overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy occurred in a span of five years before that date. The government claims to have met this burden with respect to both offenses based on the September 19, 1989 letter from the GLO stating that the lease to tract 350 had been maintained. Shanklin argues that the GLO letter cannot serve as the predicate for either crime, and that the government failed to prove any other mailing or overt act within the limitations period.
24 Shanklin argues that the GLO letter cannot provide the basis for the mail fraud prosecution because the letter was not an integral part of the alleged scheme. See United States v. Vontsteen, 872 F.2d 626, 628 & n. 2 (5th Cir.1989) (reversing mail fraud conviction because the mailed invoices were not integral to the scheme) (citation omitted). Shanklin contends that the statutory period expired five years after the last relevant mailing mentioned in the indictment: the submission of a false morning field report to the GLO on July 27, 1989. In his view, the GLO letter of September 19 merely confirmed that the alleged scheme had been completed successfully. 25 We observe at the outset that the mailing in a federal mail fraud prosecution need not be sent by the defendant or his co-conspirator. It may be sent by a victim of the plot or an innocent third party, so long as the mailing is incident to an essential part of the scheme, ... or a step in [the] plot. Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705, 710-11, 109 S.Ct. 1443, 1448, 103 L.Ed.2d 734 (1989) (mailing element supplied by duped used-car retailers submitting title applications to state motor vehicles bureau). See also United States v. Pepper, 51 F.3d 469 (5th Cir.1995) (mailing element satisfied by defrauded investors' mailing money to defendant). 26 The success of the fraud alleged in this case depended upon an affirmative response from the GLO. The scheme's purpose was to secure from the state of Texas the continued right to exploit the mineral resources of tract 350. In our view, a written confirmation from the GLO was integral to the success of the scheme; it was a necessary step in the plot. 27 Vontsteen, relied on by Shanklin, does not lead us to a different conclusion. In Vontsteen we held that the mailing of invoices by the victims of a completed fraud could not satisfy the mailing element. However, we recognized that we might have reached the opposite conclusion had the invoices been legally operative documents that helped the defendant to complete the fraud. The GLO letter was precisely the sort of legally operative document that we had in mind; it represented title to the mineral resources of tract 350. As such, it was part and parcel of the fraudulent scheme. The GLO letter thus satisfied the mailing element. The government had five years from the mailing to indict Shanklin, and it beat the deadline by less than a week.
28 Shanklin claims that the September 19, 1989 mailing by the GLO was not the overt act of a conspirator, and thus cannot be considered the last overt act of the conspiracy for limitations purposes. The previous overt acts alleged by the government were Manges' payment of $3,700 to Jack Giberson and Myers' submission of a false affidavit to the GLO. Both these events took place on July 31, 1989--more than five years before Shanklin was indicted. Consequently, he contends that the conspiracy charge was untimely. 29 The text of the federal conspiracy statute supports Shanklin's argument. It provides in part: 30 If two or more persons conspire ... to commit any offense against the United States, ... and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. 31 18 U.S.C. § 371. The statute thus explicitly provides that for the crime of conspiracy to be complete, one or more of the conspirators must have performed an overt act to bring about the object of the conspiracy. This language cannot be stretched to include the posting of a letter by a non-conspirator. 32 We have echoed the statutory text: a conspiracy conviction requires proof of [t]he commission of at least one overt act by one of the conspirators within [the five-year statutory] period in furtherance of the conspiratorial agreement. United States v. Davis, 533 F.2d 921, 926 (5th Cir.1976). As the Supreme Court has explained: 33 The function of the overt act requirement in a conspiracy prosecution is simply to manifest that the conspiracy is at work, and is neither a project still resting solely in the minds of the conspirators nor a fully completed operation no longer in existence. 34 Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298, 334, 77 S.Ct. 1064, 1085, 1 L.Ed.2d 1356 (1957) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). In this case, the government failed to show that the conspiracy was still a going concern in the five years prior to the indictment. Accordingly, the indictment was untimely, and Shanklin, having preserved his objection, is entitled to reversal on Count One. 3