Opinion ID: 352530
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Nevada crime of graft.

Text: 111 Summa argues that the judge erred in not including an instruction based on Nevada's criminal grafting statute. 5 It maintains that if the jury concluded that the gist of the statement was that Maheu had committed a crime, then Summa was entitled to an instruction defining the crime of grafting. The court refused on the grounds that it was highly unlikely that an average person who heard the words would come to the conclusion that Hughes was referring to that criminal statute and that if Maheu had violated that statute, he would at the same time have also committed one of the other statutory crimes of theft about which instructions were given. On this point, we must disagree with the trial court. 112 Precisely which criminal statute Maheu may have violated was not the issue. The question (assuming that the jury interpreted the gist of the statement to be that Maheu committed a crime of theft) was whether Maheu had engaged in conduct which violated some criminal theft statute. Once the trial court instructed the jury on certain specific crimes i. e., larceny, false pretenses and embezzlement it was error to refuse to allow the jury to consider whether proof of another crime based upon the improper taking of money by a fiduciary would justify Hughes' words. Grafting is a crime which, like embezzlement, involves misappropriation directed by an agent against his principal. Because a charge of theft may be reasonably interpreted as charging any form of criminally punishable misappropriation, the requested grafting instruction was proper. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 581A, Comment f (1976). 113 Because the jury returned only a general verdict, one cannot determine whether it found that the gist of the statement was that Maheu committed a crime or merely that he was dishonest. If the jury did decide that the statement meant that Maheu had committed a crime, then the general instruction on the principal-agent relationships and non-agency contractual relationships would not have been relevant and would not alleviate any error caused by omitting the grafting instruction. 114 Nor did the general instructions on false pretenses, or larceny or embezzlement include precisely the same elements as are required for a grafting conviction. The four instances which Summa claimed justified such an instruction the so-called Herman Greenspun, Edward Morgan, Charles Blaisdell and Rainbow Acres transactions provide clear examples of this problem. In none of those was Maheu necessarily accused of (1) making a false representation to anyone with the specific intent to defraud the owner of his property (false pretenses); (2) fraudulently appropriating money or property entrusted to him (embezzlement); or (3) stealing, that is, taking the personal property of another with the specific intent to deprive the owner permanently of his property (larceny). Instead, Summa maintained that in each of those four specific incidents (three of which clearly took place in Nevada), Maheu received a kickback for arranging certain business deals on behalf of Summa. Such kickback arrangements would result in profit to Maheu at Summa's expense, Maheu having failed to pay the kickbacks to Summa, and the facts as Summa claims that they existed would have been sufficient to prove the crime of graft in Nevada. For this reason also, the instruction should have been given. 115