Court Opinion

ID: 9478890
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:01:34.436137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:40.836543
License: Public Domain

MCKAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
Appellants contend that count one of the indictment returned by the grand jury was “constitutionally and procedurally defective” due to the vagueness of its language. The appellants maintain that the charging section of count one lacks sufficient detail to protect their rights to due process of law guaranteed by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution.1
Generally, three clauses of the Fifth Amendment are implicated by a claim that an indictment is unconstitutionally vague. The Amendment provides that “[n]o person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury ... nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy ... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....” Of equal relevance is the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.”
In Russell v. United States, 369 U.S. 749, 82 S.Ct. 1038, 8 L.Ed.2d 240 (1962), the Supreme Court observed that the process of grand jury indictment is designed to guarantee a defendant in a criminal prosecution the “substantial safeguards” of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Drawing on the Court’s explication in Russell, we have held that
[t]he purposes and requirements for the sufficiency of indictments have been variously stated, but the essentials are clear. First the indictment must contain the elements of the offense and sufficiently apprise the defendant of what he must be prepared to meet.... And a purpose corollary to the first is that the indictment inform the court of the facts alleged, so that it may decide whether they are sufficient in law to support a conviction, if one should be had. Furthermore, and of paramount importance, a sufficient indictment is required to implement the Fifth Amendment guaranty and make clear the charges so as to limit a defendant’s jeopardy to offenses charged by a group of his fellow citizens, and to avoid his conviction on facts not found, or perhaps not even presented to, the grand jury that indicted him.
United States v. Radetsky, 535 F.2d 556, 562 (10th Cir.1976) (citations omitted); see United States v. Bohonus, 628 F.2d 1167, 1173 (9th Cir.1980). These requirements stand in conjunction with each other; all must be satisfied by the language of an indictment or the indictment is fatally defective.
Though the appellants address all of these requirements in their challenge to count one’s sufficiency, their arguments focus on only two: “whether Count One as a whole conveys sufficient information to enable the [appellants] to prepare for trial, and to identify the conduct relied upon by the Grand Jury in making the charge.” Record, doc. 44, at 6.
When determining whether an indictment is drafted with enough detail to protect a defendant’s constitutional rights of due process, we examine the entire document. United States v. Metropolitan Enterprises, Inc., 728 F.2d 444, 453 (10th Cir.1984). This rule applies when the entire indict*920ment is challenged, or where, as here, the sufficiency of only part of the document is at issue. So in responding to the appellants’ constitutional challenge to count one, we look first to the charging statement and related provisions of count one, then to the remaining paragraphs of that count, and finally to all “four corners” of the indictment for factual details that will support the government’s allegations of collusive, anticompetitive conduct.
The charging statement in paragraphs fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, the allegation of anticompetitive effects in paragraph seventeen, and the allegation of jurisdiction and venue in paragraph eighteen comprise the heart of count one. These paragraphs read in their entirety:
OFFENSE CHARGED
14. Beginning at least as early as July 1978, and continuing thereafter at least through February 1982, the exact dates being unknown to the Grand Jury, the defendants and co-conspirators engaged in a combination and conspiracy in unreasonable restraint of trade and commerce in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act (15 U.S.C. section 1).
15. The aforesaid combination and conspiracy consisted of an agreement, understanding, and concert of action among the defendants and co-conspirators, a substantial term of which was to submit collusive, noncompetitive, and rigged bids to, or to withhold bids from, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority for the award of highway construction projects, some of which were federally funded.
16. For the purposes of forming and effectuating the aforesaid combination and conspiracy, the defendants and co-conspirators did those things which they combined to do, including:
(a) Discussing the submission of prospective bids on highway construction projects in Oklahoma;
(b) Agreeing upon the successful low bidder on highway construction projects in Oklahoma;
(c) Submitting intentionally high, noncompetitive bids, or withholding bids, on highway construction projects in Oklahoma; and
(d) Submitting bid proposals on highway construction projects in Oklahoma containing false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and entries.
EFFECTS
17. The aforesaid combination and conspiracy had the following effects, among others:
(a) Prices for Oklahoma highway construction projects were fixed and established at artificial and noncompetitive levels;
(b) Competition for the award of Oklahoma highway construction projects was restrained, suppressed, and eliminated;
(c) The state of Oklahoma was denied the right to receive competitive bids for highway construction projects; and
(d) The State of Oklahoma and the United States of America were denied the benefits of free and open competition for the award of highway construction projects.
JURISDICTION AND VENUE
18. The aforesaid combination and conspiracy was formed and carried out, in part, within the Western District of Oklahoma within the five years preceding the return of this indictment.
Record, doc. 1, at 7-9.
As with the entire indictment challenged in Russell, the defect in the charging statement and its complementary provisions lies in their failure “to inform the defendant of the nature of the accusation,” Russell, 369 U.S. at 767, 82 S.Ct. at 1049, by descending to the particulars of time, manner, and circumstance associated with the alleged offense. See id. at 765, 82 S.Ct. at 1047. Paragraph fourteen of the indictment merely sketches the antitrust violation charged by paraphrasing the language of section 1 of the Sherman Act. This derivative of statutory text ignores the rule in *921Russell that “where guilt depends so crucially upon a specific identification of fact ... an indictment must do more than repeat the language of the criminal statute.” Id. at 764, 82 S.Ct. at 1047. In addition, it leaves to the remaining sections of the charging statement the substantial task of bringing home to the appellants the facts of the alleged offense.
Paragraph fifteen builds upon the bare charge of unlawful concerted action found in paragraph fourteen. It characterizes the alleged unlawful conduct as bid-rigging but in doing so achieves only two unremarkable results. It plucks the conduct of which the appellants are accused from the vast sea of acts illegal under section 1 of the Sherman Act and ties that conduct to the contract-letting procedures of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. Given the meager substance of paragraph fourteen, the information supplied in paragraph fifteen is a necessary buttress to the charging statement. Yet the coupling of the two paragraphs does not sufficiently strengthen the definition of the antitrust charge to allow the appellants to prepare their defense.
Paragraph sixteen continues the government’s flawed technique of charging collusive conduct. It lists four types of overt acts by which the government alleges the appellants advanced their bid-rigging conspiracy but fails to refine the allegations of the two preceding paragraphs. Its coarse parsing of conduct is simply unable to provide the specifications of time, place, and circumstance needed to tell the appellants which of their acts constitute the alleged offense.
Paragraphs seventeen and eighteen conclude the government’s definition of the antitrust violation, but their content is inadequate to cure the infirmities of the charging statement. In paragraph seventeen the government claims that prices have been fixed, competition has been restrained, and that Oklahoma and the United States have been denied the benefits of free competition. But nowhere in the paragraph does the government tie these nebulous allegations to specific instances of criminal wrongdoing by the appellants. Paragraph eighteen, the final provision of count one, is similarly ineffective. It merely identifies a broad geographical area in which the government believes at least “part” of the conspiracy transpired. How the government has divided the alleged conspiracy for the purposes of this claim, whether in time or by site of illicit conduct, is not disclosed.
Considering the remainder of count one, we note that paragraphs one through thirteen perform several functions. They define terms peculiar to an indictment charging illegal collusion in the highway construction business, identify the accused, and allege the involvement of unspecified co-conspirators. In addition, the paragraphs claim that interstate trade and commerce are affected by the illegal conduct charged and incorporate an affidavit and regulations pertinent to Oklahoma’s contract-letting procedures for highway construction projects. Taken together, these introductory provisions of count one provide a framework on which the remainder of the indictment hangs, but they offer no specific details to bolster the allegation of an antitrust violation.
We turn then to counts two through seven of the indictment for factual detail sufficient to revive count one. The charge under counts two and three is that the appellants falsely represented to a federal agency that they had not participated in any scheme to fix prices when bidding on construction projects. Each count specifies the date on which a bid proposal was submitted and the exact federal-aid highway construction project that is the object of the proposal. The precise drafting of the allegations in both counts contrasts markedly with the loose construction of count one and thoroughly informs the appellants of the charges against them. Though these charges are rooted in the appellants’ participation in the Oklahoma highway construction industry, we may not pour their particulars into the empty allegations of count one. To do so would threaten the appellants with factual assertions that may not have been presented to the grand jury, a result which, as we explained in Radet-sky, the Fifth Amendment will not abide. *922The risk of violating this constitutional guarantee springs from the textual differences between count one and counts two and three: paragraph fifteen of count one alleges that only “some” of the unspecified construction projects on which the appellants submitted rigged bids are federally funded. Yet both projects referred to in counts two and three were paid for — at least in part — by federal monies. The single conclusion that we may draw from the conjunction of these statements is that the object of the appellants’ alleged antitrust violations are projects different from or in addition to those listed in counts two and three. It is irrelevant which of these possibilities is correct; the existence of either invalidates any attempt to imply a correspondence between the projects at issue in count one and those specified in counts two and three.
Counts four through seven of the indictment contain factual detail comparable to that in counts two and three. Their allegations refer to construction projects by project number and by citation to warrants for payment submitted by the appellants to the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. These references are sufficient to apprise the appellants of which transactions the government believes violate 18 U.S.C. § 1341. However, nothing in the text of these criminal charges compels the conclusion that the projects on which the appellants submitted warrants are the same as those associated with the antitrust violation alleged in count one. As a result, we may not read the specifications of counts four through seven into count one without once again subjecting the appellants to a criminal prosecution based on charges the grand jury may not have considered.
When we explore the entire indictment in search of the particulars necessary to sustain a charge of anticompetitive conduct, we view the same landscape the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit surveyed in United States v. Cecil, 608 F.2d 1294, 1296-97 (9th Cir.1979):
The present indictment is a rather barren document. Aside from tracking the language of the pertinent statute in setting out the elements of the offense with which the defendants were charged, the indictment makes only two specific allegations concerning the conspiracies. It states that the conspiracies occurred in Arizona, Mexico, and elsewhere and offers the names of some of the alleged co-conspirators. The indictment fails to state any other facts or circumstances pertaining to the conspiracy or any overt acts done in furtherance thereof. More importantly, the indictment fails to place the conspiracies within any time frame. The language “beginning on or about July, 1975, and continuing thereafter until on or after October, 1975,” is open-ended in both directions.
The only specific allegation pertinent to the antitrust violation charged is that a bid-rigging scheme was directed against the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority. Nothing is disclosed about the site (or timing) of illegal activity other than “part” of it occurred in the Western District of Oklahoma. The appellants’ co-conspirators are not identified, the circumstances of the collusive dealings are not revealed, and the projects the appellants are accused of rigging are not specified. Finally, the period in which the government claims the conspiracy transpired is anchored as loosely as that in the Cecil indictment. The phrase “at least as early as July, 1978 and continuing thereafter at least through February, 1982” describes an unbounded span of time. Moreover, it conflicts with the statement in paragraph eighteen that the combination and conspiracy were formed within five years of August 22, 1984, the date the indictment was returned.2
*923The government responds to the appellants’ allegations of vagueness with two arguments. Citing our decisions in United States v. Boston, 718 F.2d 1511 (10th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 466 U.S. 974, 104 S.Ct. 2352, 80 L.Ed.2d 825 (1984), and United States v. Neal, 692 F.2d 1296 (10th Cir.1982), the government first asserts that an indictment is not required to include the evidentiary details of the intended prosecution. However, neither of these cases stands for this broad proposition. In Boston, an appeal of a conviction under the Hobbs Act, we said no more than “it is not necessary for the indictment in a Hobbs Act case to allege the exact nature of the interference with commerce.” 718 F.2d at 1515. Our holding in Neal was similarly tailored to address the point of law at issue. There we distinguished the determination that must be made in prosecutions under 2 U.S.C. § 192 (refusal of witnesses to testify or produce papers) from that which must be made in prosecutions under 18 U.S.C. § 894 (using extortionate means to collect an extension of credit). Because the indictment had adequately alleged that one identified person had repeatedly threatened another in stated locations between certain dates, we concluded that “the content of [the defendant’s] alleged threats would of course be material at trial, but greater specificity thereof in view of the other facts alleged in the indictment is not required in order ‘to sufficiently apprise the defendant “of what he must be prepared to meet.” ’ ” Neal, 692 F.2d at 1302 (quoting Russell, 369 U.S. at 764, 82 S.Ct. at 1047).
Even if the holdings of Boston and Neal were precisely as the government has characterized them, the argument misses the point at issue. The appellants do not contend that the government has failed to disclose its evidence. Rather, they argue that the government has not adequately defined the factual allegations against them which it hopes to support with its evidence.
The government also defends the sufficiency of the present indictment on the ground that others similar to it have withstood appellate court scrutiny. The indictment employed in the prosecution underlying United States v. Washita Construction Co., 789 F.2d 809 (10th Cir.1986), and the indictment at issue in United States v. Fischbach and Moore, Inc., 750 F.2d 1183 (3d Cir.1984), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1029, 105 S.Ct. 1397, 84 L.Ed.2d 785 (1985), are offered as examples.
The prosecution of Washita Construction Company was in all relevant respects identical to that which the government pursued against the appellants here. In a seven-count indictment, the government charged Washita and its president with submitting collusive, noncompetitive and rigged bids to, and withholding bids from, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation; making false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements; and engaging in mail fraud by receiving progress payments from the state of Oklahoma. While the prosecutions in the two cases may be substantive twins, the language of the indictment returned in Washita was not, as the government claims, “essentially identical” to that involved in this matter. The indictment in Washita not only charged that the defendants had rigged bids on a specified number of highway construction projects (seven), it also identified the projects by project number and date of contract-letting. 789 F.2d at 812 n. 3. Thus, the defendants in Washita were given ample information regarding the particulars of the government’s charge and did not even contest the sufficiency of the indictment on appeal.
It is impossible for us to comment upon the language of the indictment brought before the court of appeals in Fischbach and Moore. The court’s opinion in that case contains only fragmentary quotations from the indictment,3 and the government *924has not provided a copy of it for us to examine. We note, however, that just as in Washita, the sufficiency of the indictment was not challenged on appeal.4
In view of the deficiencies described, I believe that count one of the indictment failed to inform the appellants of the “nature and cause of the accusation” against them in violation of the Sixth Amendment. As a result, the appellants were forced to resort to speculation and inference when answering the government’s accusations and were thereby deprived of the opportunity to prepare a proper defense.5
Although I would reverse on the issue regarding the sufficiency of the indictment, I concur with the majority’s disposition of all other issues presented.

. The appellants offer only a cursory argument on this issue in their Brief in Chief. They refer us, however, to their Brief in Support of the Motion to Dismiss Count One for Vagueness, a document submitted to the district court and now included as part of the record before us. It is in the supporting brief that the appellants ground their objection to the language of count one in the guarantees of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Record, doc. 44, at 4-6.

. A statistic the appellants have provided indicates but one of the difficulties imposed on them by the indictment's lack of detail. The appellants claim that in the 43-month period mentioned in paragraph fourteen, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation invited bids on more than 700 highway construction projects. Record, doc. 44, at 3. Even if this figure is overestimated by a factor of ten, the number of projects the appellants are left to sort through is guaranteed to exhaust their capacity to mount an informed defense.

. We learn the details of the prosecution only from the court's statement of the procedural history of the case:
"As a result of investigating [a] bid-rigging scheme, the government accused a number of the electrical contractors and their employees of antitrust violations. The indictment charged them with violating § 1 of the Sherman Act by conspiring to allocate electrical construction projects at the Western Pennsyl*924vania Works, to fix the prices at which those projects were bid, and to submit noncompetitive, collusive, and rigged bids on those projects.
Fischbach and Moore, 750 F.2d at 1188.

. An indictment couched in terms strikingly similar to those challenged here may be found in the margin of United States v. Braniff Airways, Inc., 428 F.Supp. 579 (W.D.Tex.1977). Although it dismissed the indictment for other reasons, the Braniff court commented in passing: "Any close examination of the indictment strongly suggests that it fails to set forth the specific acts and particular facts constituting the alleged offenses, and thus failed to state the essential elements of the crime which is charged.” Id. at 584-86 n. 5.

. While this Sixth Amendment violation alone is sufficient to invalidate count one, I also conclude that the same infirmities subvert the Fifth Amendment guarantee that the appellants will be convicted only upon facts presented to the grand jury that indicted them — an infirmity which even a bill of particulars or additional discovery could not possibly cure.