Opinion ID: 103352
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Variance.

Text: By their cross petition respondents contend that there was a fatal variance between the agreement charged in the indictment and the agreement proved, with a consequent violation of respondents' rights under the Sixth Amendment. As we have noted, certain trade journals were made defendants. The indictment charged that they were the chief agencies and instrumentalities through which the illegally raised prices affected prices paid for gasoline in the Mid-Western area; that they knowingly published and circulated as such price quotations the wrongfully and artificially raised and fixed prices for gasoline paid by defendants in the buying programs, while representing the price quotations published by them to be gasoline prices prevailing in spot sales to jobbers in tank car lots and while knowing and intending them to be relied on as such by jobbers and to be made the basis of prices to jobbers. At the close of the government's case the indictment was dismissed, on motion of the government, as against all trade journal defendants who went to trial. This was clearly proper, as the evidence adduced exculpated them from any wrongdoing. But respondents contend that the device charged in the indictment was one by which respondents were to pay higher than the actual spot market prices for their purchases and then to substitute in the trade journal quotations such prices for the lower prices actually paid by jobbers in spot market sales. Since there was failure of proof on this point of falsification, it is argued that there was a variance. For, according to respondents, that feature was an integral and essential part of the plan as charged. We agree with the Circuit Court of Appeals that there was no variance. Analysis of the indictment which we have set forth, supra, pp. 166-170, makes it clear that the charge against respondents was separate from and independent of the charge against the trade journals and that the allegations against those journals constituted not the only means by which the conspiracy was to be effectuated but only one of several means ( supra, pp. 167-168). In effect, those charges in the indictment sought to connect the trade journals with the conspiracy as aiders and abettors. On the other hand, the gist of the indictment charged a conspiracy by defendants (1) to raise and fix the spot market prices and (2) thereby to raise and fix the prices in the Mid-Western area. So far as means and methods of accomplishing those objectives were concerned, the charge of falsification of the trade journal quotations was as unessential as was the charge, likewise unproved, that defendants caused the independent refiners to curtail their production. The purpose and effect of the buying programs in raising and fixing prices were in no way made dependent on the utilization of fraudulent trade journal quotations. As charged, the trade journals were the chief instrumentalities by which the spot market prices were converted into prices in the Mid-Western area. Hence under this indictment they were wholly effective for respondents' purposes, though they were innocent and though their quotations were not falsified as charged. A variation between the means charged and the means utilized is not fatal. And where an indictment charges various means by which the conspiracy is effectuated, not all of them need be proved. See Nash v. United States, 229 U.S. 373, 380. Cf. Boyle v. United States, 259 F. 803, 805.