Court Opinion

ID: 9443807
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:31:10.646614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:36.824714
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
In order to convict defendant of the offense with which he was charged, conspiring with one Vandable to transport a motor vehicle in foreign commerce, knowing said vehicle to have been stolen, it was necessary that the government prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he made the guilty agreement he was charged with having made.
There was no direct evidence whatever that he made such an agreement, and the government’s case, therefore, depended entirely upon circumstantial evidence, and meager circumstantial evidence at that.
In Kassin v. United States, 5 Cir., 87 F.2d 183, 184, in reversing a conviction for the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence, this Court said:
*456“Circumstantial evidence can indeed forge a chain of guilt and draw it so tightly around an accused as almost to compel the inference of guilt as matter of law. Again, circumstantial evidence may forge the chain and draw it tight by legally justifiable, rather than absolutely compelling, inferences. In each case, however, where the evidence is purely circumstantial, the links in the chain must be clearly proven, and taken together must point not to the possibility or probability, but to the moral certainty of guilt. That is, the inferences which may reasonably be drawn from them as a whole must not only be consistent with guilt, but inconsistent with every reasonable hypothesis of innocence. Paddock v. United States, 9 Cir., 79 F.2d 872; DeLuca v. United States, 5 Cir., 298 F. 412; Wright v. United States, 8 Cir., 227 F. 855, 857. This rule applies with the same force where conspiracy is the charge, as where substantive offenses are in question. * * *
“One of the prime rules in the trial of criminal cases is that circumstances, when relevant and cogent, may constitute evidence of guilt, but they must have a legal, as well as logical, relevancy, and they must have probative force; that is, they must point with compelling force to the fact to be proven. Circumstances which merely raise suspicion or give room for conjecture are not sufficient evidence of guilt. Wharton on Evidence, p. 1532. A conviction resting on them alone cannot stand. * * * ”
Applying those rules to this case, it seems clear to me that the meagre circumstances proven wholly fail to prove defendant guilty, indeed do no more than “raise suspicion or give room for conjecture” that appellant entered into the agreement charged.
In United States v. Crimmins, 123 F.2d 271, 273, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said of a conspiracy charge, where, as here, the evidence was insufficient to convict:
“But it does not follow, because a jury might have found him guilty of the substantive offence, that they were justified in finding him guilty of a conspiracy to commit it. Courts do indeed say that each conspirator is chargeable with the acts of his fellows done in furtherance of the joint venture; but into that must be read the condition that acts so imputed must be in execution of the venture as all understand it; not indeed in its details, but so far as concerns those terms which constitute the substantive crime.”
Here all that was proven against appellant was that he was found riding in the car with Vandable and that he had known Vandable before. There was no evidence that Beeler knew the car was stolen, there was an admission by Vandable that he knew it was. Because of prior convictions neither testified before the jury. When, however, they stood before the Court for sentence, appellant reiterated his innocence, stating positively that he did not know the car was stolen, and Vandable not once but twice stated, “I am guilty of transporting the car to the Valley. Beeler did not know that the car was stolen.”
The record standing thus, I cannot bring myself to subscribe to a rule or procedure which permits a defendant to be convicted of a conspiracy on appearances alone, that is merely because he was acquainted with, was seen in the company of, and was riding in the car with Vandable, the admitted thief. To find guilt from mere association may be permissible in the kind of thinking which goes on on the street. It ought not to be, I think it is not, permissible in a Court in the trial of a criminal case. I dissent.