Opinion ID: 2183692
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the question whether defendant made false entries

Text: General Laws 1956 (1989 Reenactment) § 19-19-1, as amended by P.L. 1990, ch. 435, § 1 reads in pertinent part as follows: Every president    of any    loan and investment company    who, without authority of the directors or trustees    makes any false entry in any book, report, or statement of the depository, with intent    to deceive    the director of business regulation, or any agent appointed by the director to examine the affairs of that depository    upon conviction thereof, shall be fined    or be imprisoned. Counts 7, 8, 13 to 15, 17, 18, and 22, referred to by the parties as group-1 counts, allege that defendant did make false entries in the books and records of Heritage. The defendant argues that the trial justice erred in refusing to grant his motion for judgment of acquittal in respect to these counts on the ground that there was either no proof or insufficient proof that he actually made the false entries. If one assumes that defendant is correct concerning the absence or insufficiency of proof that he physically made the false entries, one is presented with the question concerning whether it was sufficient for the state to prove that defendant caused the entries to be made even though the statute and the indictment respectively use the terms makes and did make. Although no other Rhode Island case has dealt with this precise question, the Supreme Court of the United States did confront such a question in United States v. Giles, 300 U.S. 41, 57 S.Ct. 340, 81 L.Ed. 493 (1937). In that case the defendant was charged with a violation of a federal statute that provided a penalty to any `officer    or employee of any Federal reserve bank    who makes any false entry in any book, report or statement of such Federal reserve bank.' Id. at 43, 57 S.Ct. at 341, 81 L.Ed. at 494-95. There the defendant, who had been a paying and receiving teller, had withheld certain deposit slips to cover up a shortage in his account. His withholding the deposit slips caused bookkeepers to make false entries that failed to reflect the true balances of the depositors. He asked the trial court for a directed verdict on the ground that there was no evidence that he actually made any false entries. The Court rejected this argument with the following observation: The word `make' has many meanings, among them `[t]o cause to exist, appear or occur,' Webster's International Dictionary, 2nd ed. To hold the statute broad enough to include deliberate action from which a false entry by an innocent intermediary necessarily follows, gives to the words employed their fair meaning and is in accord with the evident intent of Congress. To hold that it applies only when the accused personally writes the false entry or affirmatively directs another so to do would emasculate the statute  defeat the very end in view. Id. at 48-49, 57 S.Ct. at 344, 81 L.Ed. at 497-98. (Emphasis added.) The Court emphasized that Congress was not seeking to punish the bookkeeper who copies items into the books but the officer who conceived of and carried out the fraudulent scheme that the false entry was designed to conceal. Id. at 49, 57 S.Ct. at 344, 81 L.Ed. at 498. The Giles case bears a remarkable similarity to the case at bar. The evidence in the case, viewed in the light most favorable to the state, as would be required on a motion for judgment of acquittal, would give rise to the clear inference that the false entries were caused to be made by defendant through directions given to the employees who actually prepared the documents and made the entries. It is true that in respect to two of the counts, there was some evidence that Iannuccilli recognized defendant's signature. For purposes of this portion of the opinion, we shall assume that there was insufficient evidence to prove that defendant actually made any of these entries. We are of the opinion that a sensible interpretation of our statute as given by the United States Supreme Court to the federal statute would equate the terms makes and causes to be made. The defendant argues further that whereas the statutory term may include both makes and causes to be made, the indictment uses the words did make. He contends that the state is bound by its own charge. When the statute is construed as applicable to either term, the indictment or the charge may be stated in the language of the statute that sets forth the essential elements of the offense. State v. Markarian, 551 A.2d 1178, 1180, 1182 (R.I. 1988); State v. Jorjorian, 82 R.I. 334, 340-41, 107 A.2d 468, 471-72 (1954). Since the state was authorized to set forth the offense exactly in statutory language, the state had the benefit of any interpretation that might properly be placed upon that language which sets forth the elements of the crime. See United States v. Bristol, 473 F.2d 439, 441-42 (5th Cir.1973). In re Fiske, 117 R.I. 454, 367 A.2d 1069 (1977), does not compel a different result. In that case, the state alleged in a petition seeking to have a minor declared a delinquent child that the minor had committed one of a number of proscribed acts, which acts were set forth by statute in the disjunctive. The trial justice found that the minor had committed one of the acts proscribed by the statute, but not the one that he had been charged with committing. We held that when only one of the offenses set forth in a statute is charged, a defendant cannot be convicted upon proof that he or she committed one of the other proscribed acts, rather than the one charged. We explained that this is a corollary of the constitutional right to specific notice. Id. at 457-58, 367 A.2d at 1072. In the case at bar, although § 19-19-1 proscribes a number of acts which are set forth in the disjunctive, the group-1 counts of the indictment allege that defendant committed only one of the proscribed acts  the making of false entries  which is the offense that the state sought to, and did prove. It was entitled to prove that offense in accordance with the definition of the word makes, which as a matter of law included the words causes to be made. Thus, defendant was convicted of the offense charged in the indictment, not of an uncharged offense. Consequently the trial justice was correct in denying defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal in respect to the group-1 counts. [1]