Court Opinion

ID: 9466320
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:12:09.085304+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:40.053105
License: Public Domain

SPRECHER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The issues raised in this appeal are (1) whether section 661 of title 18 of the United States Code defines “larceny” as used in section 1153 of that title and (2) if it does define larceny, whether section 661 requires an intent to deprive permanently. Contrary to the conclusion reached by the majority, I would hold that, to the extent that it defines larceny, section 661 requires an intent to deprive permanently.
Section 1153 grants federal jurisdiction for certain enumerated crimes committed by an Indian in Indian country, the relevant one here being larceny, 18 U.S.C. § 1153. Since section 1153 is merely a jurisdictional statute, there must be a corresponding substantive criminal statute under which a defendant has been charged before a federal court can exercise jurisdiction. If any of the offenses enumerated in section 1153 “are not defined and punished by Federal law in force within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States,” then they “shall be defined and punished in accordance with the laws of the State in which such offense was committed.” 18 U.S.C. § 1153.
Defendant first contends that section 661, the substantive statute under which she was charged, does not define the crime of larceny. Since section 1153 grants federal jurisdiction for larceny and since section 661 nowhere states that it defines larceny, defendant argues that her indictment was fatally defective and that her conviction must therefore be reversed.
The majority correctly points out that this issue was decided against the defendant in the recent case of United States v. Maloney, 607 F.2d 222 (9th Cir. 1979). However, I respectfully disagree with the majority’s assertion that the issue was also decided by the courts in Quinn v. United States, 499 F.2d 794 (8th Cir. 1974) and Dunaway v. United States, 170 F.2d 11 (10th Cir. 1948). As stated by Judge Hug in his dissent in Maloney, there was only one case prior to Maloney which specifically decided that section 661 defined larceny for purposes of section 1153. That case was a district court opinion in United States v. Gilbert, 378 F.Supp. 82 (D.S.D.1974). See United States v. Maloney, 607 F.2d at 232 and n. 1 (Hug. J., dissenting). In the other cases cited by the majority here and by the majority in Maloney, the courts either stated in dicta that section 661 defined section 1153 larceny or they discussed larceny and section 661 outside the context of section 1153.1
Nevertheless, based on the legislative history of section 661 as discussed in Maloney I would be willing to accept the premise that section 661 encompasses larceny for purposes of section 1153 jurisdiction. Like Judge Hug, however, I cannot make the jump made by the majority to hold that larceny does not require the intent to deprive permanently. The majority based its holding on United States v. Turley, 352 U.S. 407, 77 S.Ct. 397, 1 L.Ed.2d 430 (1957), in which the Supreme Court concluded that the word “stolen” is not a term of art *185synonymous with common law larceny. Accordingly, the Turley Court held that the intent to deprive permanently — although a requisite element in the crime of larceny— was not a requirement for “stealing.” Since section 661 prohibits a taking “with intent to steal or purloin,” the majority here has concluded that, like the statute addressed in Turley, section 661 does not require the intent to deprive permanently. Moreover, since it had already concluded that section 661 defines larceny for purposes of section 1153, the majority concludes that larceny under section 1153 does not require the intent to deprive permanently. I believe that the position taken by the majority is contrary to the express language of section 1153 and to the rules of construction of criminal statutes.
Long ago, in Todd v. United States, 158 U.S. 278, 15 S.Ct. 889, 39 L.Ed. 982 (1895), the Supreme Court expressed the rule for construction of criminal statutes:
It is axiomatic that statutes creating and defining crimes cannot be extended by intendment, and that no act, however wrongful, can be- punished under such a statute unless clearly within its terms. “There can be no constructive offences, and, before a man can be punished, his case must be plainly and unmistakably within the statute.”
Id. at 282, 15 S.Ct. at 890 [citations omitted]. This standard of strict construction has been repeatedly applied to criminal statutes and is equally applicable to section 1153. See Kills Crow v. United States, 451 F.2d 323, 325 (8th Cir. 1971), cert. denied, 405 U.S. 999, 92 S.Ct. 1262, 31 L.Ed.2d 467 (1972). Applying this standard to the statutes in question, I cannot support the position taken by the majority.
Larceny is a term of art with an accepted common-law definition that has historically required an intent to deprive permanently. See Loman v. United States, 243 F.2d 327, 329 (8th Cir. 1957). And as the Supreme Court stated in Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 263, 72 S.Ct. 240, 250, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952):
[W]here Congress borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed. In such case, absence of contrary direction may be taken as satisfaction with widely accepted definitions, not as a departure from it.
Id. The majority here has not attempted to reconcile its holding with Morissette’s directive. It has, however, relied on the reasoning of the Maloney, court which did touch on the question raised in Morissette. In a footnote, the Maloney court stated:
[A]s discussed below, we do find a “contrary direction” by Congress in regards to 18 U.S.C. § 661.
Maloney, 607 F.2d at 230 n. 11. That “contrary direction,” according to the court, was the predecessor of section 661, a statute which included within its scope “theft” crimes other than common-law larceny. I cannot accept the court’s position. Even assuming, arguendo, that section 661 includes within its purview the definition of larceny, the mere fact that it also includes crimes other than larceny does not mean that Congress intended the requirements for larceny to be coterminous with the requirements for other “theft” crimes. For such a radical departure from the accepted definition of larceny, there must be a more express “contrary direction” from Congress.
Although, in 1976, Congress did change one of the crimes enumerated in section 1153 to conform with its federal substantive counterpart,2 it did not change the word *186“larceny.” Consequently, as I can find no contrary directive from Congress, I would hold that larceny must be given its accepted common-law meaning which includes the intent to deprive permanently.
In his dissent in Maloney, Judge Hug listed the three choices available in strictly construing larceny under section 1153:
1. We could hold that § 661 is the codification of common law larceny, as the legislative history suggests and several cases hold;
2. We could find that § 661 does not define and punish larceny and thus look to the applicable state law . . . ; or
3. We could hold that § 661 defines and punishes common law larceny as well as other conduct, in which “the intent to deprive permanently” is not requisite, but that for the purposes of § 1153 only, the common law larceny aspect of that crime may be punished.
Maloney, 607 F.2d at 234 (Hug, J., dissenting). As in Maloney, adopting any of the alternatives listed above requires vacating defendant’s conviction. If section 661 does not define larceny so that defendant should have been charged under a state statute, then the indictment was fatally defective. If section 661 does define common-law larceny, the conviction should still be reversed because the trial court did not instruct the jury on the essential intent element. I would reverse the judgment below.

. In one case, United States v. Henry, 447 F.2d 283, 285-86 (3d Cir. 1971), the court held that section 661 was broader than common-law larceny so that there was no need to show permanent deprivation. Jurisdiction in Henry was not based on section 1153, however. As will be discussed in the text infra, I believe that the express reference to larceny in section 1153 is a key distinguishing factor.

. In House Report No. 94 — 1038 for the Indian Crimes Act of 1976, the House Judiciary Committee stated:
Present § 1153 refers to “assault with intent to kill.” The actual title of the offense defined in 18 U.S.C. § 113(a) is “assault with intent to commit murder,” so the bill changes the title of the enumerated offense in § 1153 to conform to the title in 18 U.S.C. § 113(a).
H.Rep.No.94-1038, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1976 U.S.Code Cong, and Admin. News, pp. 1125, 1129. See United States v. *186Altaha, No. CR-70-412 (D.Ariz. February 10, 1971), reprinted in Defendant’s Reply Brief at 16, which held that “assault with intent to kill” was not defined and punished by the federal statute entitled “[a]ssault with intent to commit murder.”