Court Opinion

ID: 9474689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:05:50.023104+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:16.230654
License: Public Domain

*703BAILEY ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
With great respect to the court, whose opinion I do not fault, I wonder whether I might profitably say that I would be less generous to the Commonwealth. With the thought that not merely as a moral, but as a constitutional matter of due process it is the function of a bill of particulars to identify rather than conceal the claimed offense, I cannot read paragraph 2 of the bill1 as fairly adverting to two of the three matters, which I label A & B, that the Appeals Court cites as being criminal, although the evidence might well have supported them.
A. Cola’s role as a secret agent for Rapp at the Bankruptcy Court proceedings was more malignant than the role of a disclosed agent because the Bankruptcy Court judge was not alerted to having to weigh Cola’s recommendations in the light of Cola’s role on behalf of Rapp. (468 N.E.2d 1102).
B. Cola participated in the scheme to extricate S & S from the control of the trustee in reorganization. (Id. at 1103).
I do not understand the Appeals Court’s rescuing the Commonwealth by finding evidence supporting these points; this is a criminal, not a civil proceeding where unobjected-to evidence may effect amendments.
Even if it were legally possible for a bill to be enlarged by the prosecutor’s oral claims as to the issues, at least these should be sharply focused. If by a (too liberal, I think) interpretation it could be said that the prosecutor made point B in his closing argument, he clearly did not refer to A in either opening or summation. And I cannot find that the court, in its charge, referred to either.
The third factual ground on which the Appeals Court held a conviction could be sustained was with respect to certain actions apart from the bankruptcy trustee’s removal — allegedly dual agency acts impeding the Commonwealth’s getting paid. It found such covered by the third portion of particular number 2. (n. 1, ante). Even if that language could be taken to cover “filing returns ... calculated to keep the tax collector at bay ... and passing up opportunities to apply the loan proceeds to the reduction of tax arrearages,” (468 N.E.2d at 1101), it would be very difficult so to read the only part of the charge that referred to defendant’s dual agency conduct. The court charged,
Now, here again we have got the state employee, and we have got the particular matter in which he as an employee is involved, and that is, no question about it, the collection and payment of taxes. The question is: Are you satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that while involved in that he acted as an agent for anyone, which would be Rapp or the S and S, in connection with that matter?
And you have heard the attorneys argue that indictment to you. It has to do with the loan, ... (Emphasis supplied).
I believe any jury would be brought up sharp to take the last 18 words as describing what was meant by those preceding, viz., as referring to the loan, of which much had been made.2 Yet the loan was not an offense under the agency indictment. The court said this flatly at p. 1101, and described that claim subsequently as “faulty.”
Thus we have a situation where a number of disputed evidentiary matters were presented during the trial itself, with great doubt as to whether some were adequately *704charged, but with one matter, the loan, which the Appeals Court ruled was not an offense, clearly instructed upon. Thus, the jury was either given one, bad, claim, or one bad and one or more good ones, and the verdict fails to show that it chose a good one. See Chiarella v. United States, 445 U.S. 222, 237 n. 21,100 S.Ct. 1108, 1119 n. 21, 63 L.Ed.2d 348 (1980). On either basis this was fundamentally unfair.

. 2. The defendant acted as an agent for Framingham Food Services, Inc. in granting a second mortgage to Utopia Realty Trust. The defendant acted as agent for Michael Rapp in obtaining a loan from one John Volpe. The defendant acted as agent for Framingham Food Services, Inc. in the payment of debts of the corporation, other than to the Commonwealth.

. Actually, I must wonder what the jury understood. The question addressed to the court during deliberations suggests total confusion.
"If, now that we have heard all the testimony and the charge to the jury, are we free to decide guilt or innocence on any basis whatsoever (except, of course, for being paid off for a vote)?” The court’s negative response did nothing to illuminate.