Opinion ID: 328169
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Legal Sufficiency of Count Two.

Text: 6 We may as well proceed directly to the defendants' attack on Count Two 3 on the basis that § 2114 is limited to offenses having a postal nexus. After this case was argued, we sustained that contention in United States v. Rivera, 513 F.2d 519, 531-532 (2 Cir. 1975), agreeing with the concession of the Solicitor General in United States v. Hanahan, 442 F.2d 649 (7 Cir. 1971), vacated and remanded for reconsideration in light of Solicitor General's position, 414 U.S. 807, 94 S.Ct. 169, 38 L.Ed.2d 43 (1973), and the decision in United States v. Fernandez, 497 F.2d 730, 739-40 (9 Cir. 1974). See also United States v. Spears, 145 U.S.App.D.C. 284, 449 F.2d 946, 951-54 (1971). 7 Further research on our part has made the correctness of that view even clearer. At the time of the 1935 amendment to § 2114, Act of August 26, 1935, ch. 694, 49 Stat. 867, which added the phrase money or other property of the United States to mail matter in 18 U.S.C. § 320 (1934 ed.), § 320 stood in the portion of the Criminal Code, then Chapter 8, entitled Offenses Against Postal Service (Code of Laws of the United States of America in Force January 3, 1935). Its predecessors had been similarly organized in codifications having the force of positive law. See Act of March 4, 1909, An Act To codify, revise, and amend the penal laws of the United States, ch. 321, § 197, 35 Stat. 1126 (part of Chapter Eight, Offenses Against the Postal Service); Rev.Stat. §§ 5472, 5473 (1878) (part of section devoted to Postal Crimes). The 1935 amendment, H.R. 5360, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935), came in response to a 1933 request from the Postmaster General and was handled in the House by the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, see H.R.Rep. No. 582, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935), and in the Senate by the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, see Sen.Rep. No. 1440, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. (1935). Despite the generality of the language in the amendment and in the titles and language of the committee reports, no one would have entertained any doubt of the limited scope of § 320 if it had been allowed to remain in the chapter of the Criminal Code where Congress had placed it. 3a And remain it did for a period of years in codifications which, though unofficial, were widely used. See 18 U.S.C. § 320 (Cum.Supp. V, The Code of the Laws of the United States of America, 1934 Edition (1939)); 18 U.S.C. § 320 (1940 ed.); 18 U.S.C. § 320 (1946 ed.). The Reviser's transfer of § 320 in 1948, Act of June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 797, to Chapter 103, Robbery and Burglary, where it now appears as § 2114, 4 with what were characterized as (m)inor changes . . . in phraseology, did not expand the meaning Congress had entertained in 1935. Although constituting positive law, (t)he 1948 Revision was not intended to create new crimes but to recodify those then in existence. Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 266-69 n. 28, 72 S.Ct. 240, 253, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952). 5 8 The prosecution now has cause to regret its error in including Count Two in the superseding indictment since the judge might well have imposed higher sentences on other counts if he had known the conviction on Count Two with the mandatory 25 year sentence was invalid. But the difficulty was of the Government's own making in that the draftsman of the superseding indictment did not follow or, as we gathered at argument, did not know of the Solicitor General's proper concession in Hanahan and is beyond our power to remedy. 9