Opinion ID: 347528
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: the conspiracy argument

Text: 663 My colleagues also make the weird contention that the instruction as to Count 2 was unobjectionable because the evidence was admissible under Count 1. That is an unbelievable argument to assert that defendants are not prejudiced by convictions on two counts on the basis of evidence that is admissible only on one count. I will be anxiously waiting for my colleagues to apply that law in the future to other cases. 664 Actually the majority has hit exactly upon what it is trying to do by its CIA argument. It is trying to make a second conspiracy count out of Count 2. In the heat of the trial the court made the same mistake and instructed the jury: Count Two charges all of the defendants except Mr. Mardian with actually carrying out the agreement to obstruct justice which is charged in Count One. (Tr. 12,378) (emphasis added). But the Grand Jury knew it could not hold the acts of certain defendants in a substantive offense against other defendants, as is done in a conspiracy count with acts of coconspirators committed in furtherance of the conspiracy. It refused to charge in the obstruction count that Parkinson participated in delaying the investigation by a defrauding of the CIA because he was not in any way involved in any of the CIA activity. Since the Grand Jury never so charged Parkinson in that count it never charged any of his co-defendants that were named in the count. 665 It is elementary law that absent a cross-reference one count in an indictment cannot be amended at trial to insert allegations from another count. One would have though it was not necessary to assert such an elementary rule of law to this court. Nevertheless the majority opinion contends: 666 In fact, the allegations of conspiracy to obstruct justice and to defraud the United States in Count 1 are the basis of the allegations of the substantive offense of obstruction of justice in Count 2. 667 Majority opinion at ---- of --- U.S.App.D.C., at 128 of 559 F.2d (emphasis added). What a statement! There is absolutely no allegation whatsoever in Count 2 about defrauding the United States or about conspiracy. Or for that matter about perjury. This argument in the majority opinion makes it plain that it is trying to convert Count 2 into another conspiracy count. One conviction on a single conspiracy is all that this court has previously allowed. It is plain error to permit the allegations of conspiracy . . . to defraud the United States in Count 1 (to constitute) . . . the basis of the allegations of the substantive offense of obstruction of justice in Count 2. 668 The sufficiency of the evidence on the conspiracy count is not an issue here. What is objected to is permitting a small portion of that evidence, offered in proof of the consummated conspiracy alleged in Count 1, to constitute the sole basis for the conviction on Count 2. Heretofore this court has always considered that it was immaterial what the evidence disclosed as to some other offense if a defendant was convicted on an offense that was not charged in the indictment. This was so because we considered that all defendants have a constitutional right to be tried only on felonious offenses that have been charged by the grand jury. 669 To support its decision here, to the contrary of this basic constitutional principle, the majority opinion attempts (at --------- of 181 U.S.App.D.C., at 127-129 of 559 F.2d) to distinguish Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212, 80 S.Ct. 270, 4 L.Ed.2d 252 (1960). It fails. It points only to evidentiary differences in the details of the two crimes. It is true that there are such differences no two cases involve the same evidence one is an interstate racketeering case and this case alleges obstruction of justice. But the controlling issues in the two cases are identical in that in both instances the trial court charged the jury that it could return a guilty verdict solely on evidence that supported an offense not charged in the indictment. All the attempts by the majority to pick out differences in the nature of the two offenses, in the evidence and in the jurisdictional base, cannot escape the complete identity of the two cases on that one controlling aspect. And that is all that matters. Stirone completely controls here.