Court Opinion

ID: 9445066
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:19:04.621074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:06.903999
License: Public Domain

POPE, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially).
I agree that the judgment should be affirmed but as I am not prepared to approve all of the reasons given for affirmance in the foregoing opinion, I wish to indicate separately my own views.
In meeting the contention that the prosecution was barred by the statute of limitations Judge Fee says: “Furthermore, the evidence showed no substantive crime of any kind had been committed until completion of the first transfer of an item of this property to an unauthorized innocent purchaser for value.” Elsewhere the same point is repeated in the suggestion that the United States was defrauded “for the first time” when the property came into the hands of a “bona fide purchaser for value without notice”. The suggestion is that until that time the crime charged had not been completed because there had not yet been accomplished a “frustration of the governmental purpose.”
I find myself unable to agree with that suggestion for I think that it could well be concluded from the evidence in this case that the offense charged had been completed and accomplished prior to the time when Caywood or Tompkins or either of them had sold the property to the purchasers. In any event I am sure that it was unnecessary for the Government to prove as a part of its case that any one who thus bought the property was a bona fide purchaser without notice.
The evidence shows that after the surplus property here involved was procured through the use of false DP-2 certificates, most of it was delivered to the Tompkins Ranch. It could be inferred that Tompkins and Caywood were using this ranch as a place of sale for the surplus Government property, and that the property was assembled there for that purpose. If this was so, then the fraudulent objective of the conspiracy had been accomplished for at that point the frustration of the governmental function had been completed.
Again I find difficulty in perceiving any special significance in the fact that the property reached the hands of a bona fide purchaser for value and without notice. The property here involved was not negotiable nor do we have a situation in which the transferor is possessed of a legal title which he might transfer free from certain equities. I would think that if the Government or the State of Arizona chose to recover any of this property it could readily do so whether the purchaser did or did not have notice. I find nothing in the charge to the jury to indicate that the case was submitted upon the theory that the objective of *232the conspiracy was to make transfers to innocent purchasers for value or that 'such transfers were an essential part of the Government’s case.
It seems to me that the main question here is when a conspiracy within the meaning of the Act and alleged in the indictment was completed and came to an end. As in the case of Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604, 73 S.Ct. 481, 489, 97 L.Ed. 593, we must inquire when,' on this record, the conspiracy ended. In the Lutwak case, the court Was dealing with the use of declarations of one conspirator sought to be used against a co-conspirator when made in furtherance of the conspiracy saying, “There can be no furtherance of a conspiracy that has ended.” The court proceeded to inquire when that conspiracy which related to the War Brides had ended and concluded that it ended when the last of these parties was admitted to the United States. We deal here with a question involving the statute of limitations. That statute “runs from the last overt act during the existence of the conspiracy.” Fiswick v. United States, 329 U.S. 211, 216, 67 S.Ct. 224, 227, 91 L.Ed. 196. (Emphasis added.)
If I were finding the facts here, I would think that when the property was assembled on the Tompkins ranch the .conspirators had accomplished their objective, and henceforth were holding it for their own purposes exclusively, and that the distribution to the Arizona School system had then been completely frustrated and the object of the conspiracy fully attained. But I also think that the arrival of the property at the ranch, and the holding of it there, was equivocal, in that it might have been kept there for later delivery to the State. Possession at the Tompkins ranch may conceivably have still been possession by Caywqod. I think a jury could take this latter view.
. If appellant desired to have this question of fact determined, as a basis for a judgment based on the running of the statute of limitations, he should have requested the court to submit an appropriate instruction to the jury. As he did not do so, I think we cannot on this record say that the prosecution was barred.
There is a further reason why I think the judgment must be affirmed and that has to do with the item of property listed in overt acts numbers 15 and 16 which were acts on February 15 and 16, 1951. This property was an International Harvester TD-14 tractor which did not go to the Tompkins ranch but following the DP-2 application, it was shipped to the Prisoner of War Camp at Florence, Arizona, and from there was hauled to the State Tractor and Equipment Company at Phoenix where it was repaired. It was then sold as alleged in overt acts Nos. 15-16. So far as this property was concerned I would think the proof clear that the conspiracy was still continuing and had assuredly not then come to an end at the time this sale was accomplished.
I agree that the judgment should be affirmed.