Court Opinion

ID: 9452761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:51:10.081825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:20.914947
License: Public Domain

*941BURGER, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the affirmance of the conviction for uttering forged documents, hut I dissent from the majority’s holding that the District Court did not have jurisdiction to try Appellant on the alteration counts.
The question we must decide is whether there was sufficient evidence to permit the jury to infer that the crime of uttering was committed in the District of Columbia. Fed.R.Crim.P. 18. Consideration of the evidence on this issue can well begin with Justice Frankfurter’s admonition that:
These are matters that touch closely the fair administration of criminal justice and public confidence in it, on which it ultimately rests. These are important factors in any consideration of the effective enforcement of the criminal law. They have been adverted to, from time to time, by eminent judges; and Congress has not been unmindful of them. Questions of venue in criminal cases, therefore, are not merely matters of formal legal procedure. They raise deep issues of public policy in the light of which legislation must be construed.
United States v. Johnson, 323 U.S. 273, 276, 65 S.Ct. 249, 250 (1944). In more concrete terms this is a reminder of the long history of the repugnance of Englishmen and Americans to being “transported for trial” to a place away from the scene of the charged events.
The provision for trial in the vicinity of the crime is a safeguard against the unfairness and hardship involved when an accused is prosecuted in a remote place. Provided its language permits, the Act in question should be given that construction which will respect such considerations.
United States v. Cores, 356 U.S. 405, 407, 78 S.Ct. 875, 877, 2 L.Ed.2d 873 (1958); see also Johnston v. United States, 351 U.S. 215, 223, 224, 76 S.Ct. 739, 100 L.Ed. 1097 (1956) (dissenting opinion of Douglas, J.). I submit that Congress’ failure to provide specific venue provisions for every conceivable factual situation should not be utilized to reach a technical result that protects no rights of Appellant and may even injure him while preventing society from trying him as an alterer or at the very least requiring duplicate trials to convict him of both altering and uttering. The result reached by the majority is of the kind that undermines the “public confidence” in the administration of criminal justice to which Justice Frankfurter adverted.
The evidence showed that Appellant lived in Maryland and had altered a money order purchased at a Baltimore post office; the evidence is also clear that the money order had been uttered in the District of Columbia with the aid of a stolen Maryland driver’s license. I believe that discovery of the money order in the District of Columbia in an altered state is sufficiently probative to permit the jury to infer that the crime was committed here, notwithstanding the possibility that the alteration was performed in Maryland.
The interests sought to be protected by the requirement of venue are not served by denying the District of Columbia jurisdiction on these counts. The money orders were purchased in Baltimore and cashed in the District of Columbia on the same day. I hardly think that Appellant would suffer any hardship if tried in the District of Columbia rather than in Baltimore, but I do fear that the government might not be able to establish venue in Maryland, so that its case would “fall between two stools.” Venue is intended to protect defendants, but it is not designed to protect them by preventing the Government from trying them anywhere.
Furthermore, even assuming the majority’s view of the evidence means that Appellant could be tried in Maryland, an equally undesirable stituation would arise — and one that would injure Appellant as well as society. Appellant would have been tried in the District of Columbia for aiding and abetting his *942co-defendant in uttering the document; since the aiding and abetting consists of altering the document, the Government would have proved that Appellant altered the document. But to convict him of altering, it would be necessary to start a new prosecution in Maryland, and the major issue in this duplicate trial would be what had already been tried in the District of Columbia — whether Appellant had altered the money order. I would think the majority would seek to avoid this harassment of Appellant, even if it were not concerned with the waste of public resources.
These practical considerations are reflected in the cases which indicate that the presence of a forged or altered document in the jurisdiction permits a jury to infer that the crime was committed where the document is found. The cases sometimes state the rule in terms of presumption, sometimes as an inference, but at the very least the rule permits the jury to find the ultimate fact on the basis of the location of the forged document even if there is evidence pointing to a different jurisdiction. State v. Forbes, 75 N.H. 306, 73 A. 929 (1909).
As long ago as the case of United States v. Britton, 24 Fed.Cas. p. 1239 (No. 14650) (C.C.D.Mass.1822), the reasonableness of the presumption or permissible inference was recognized. There the defendant was found in Massachusetts with the check in his possession, but Justice Story, recognizing it as “the dictate of common sense and reason,” stated the rule to be “that the place, where an instrument is found or offered in a forged state, affords prima facie evidence, or a presumption, that the instrument was forged there, unless that presumption be repelled by some other fact in the case.” Id. at 1241.
The same basic rationale was applied by this Court in Read v. United States, 55 App.D.C. 43, 45, 299 F. 918, 922 (1924):
The instrument bore the name of the real estate firm with which defendant was negotiating in the District, to which firm defendant had been referred by another local real estate dealer. The evidence, therefore, fully justified the inference that the forgery was committed in this District, where the instrument was produced and uttered. (Emphasis supplied.)
It is true that the production of the document in the District included the presence of the defendant, but the Court did not rely on this at all. The evidence that the Court considered relevant, in addition to the place of production and uttering, was that the check was made out to the District real estate firm with which the defendant was negotiating and to which the defendant had been referred by another local real estate dealer. These factors seem completely irrelevant to the place of the commission of the forgery; and, since this court did not rely on the presence of the defendant in the jurisdiction, all that remains as probative of commission in the District is the place of the production and uttering of the document.
In Conley v. United States, 23 F.2d 226 (4th Cir. 1928), the defendant was found with stolen and altered bonds in his possession, but the Court stated the presumption to be that “the forgery was committed where the bonds were found in a forged state.” 23 F.2d at 228. The presumption was employed in this case to defeat venue in the jurisdiction where the bonds had been stolen, although the court relied mainly on the evidence of hasty flight from the scene of the theft.
In the recent case of United States v. Di Pietroantonio, 289 F.2d 122 (2d Cir. 1961), 389 money orders had been stolen in Florida; 46 were cashed in Connecticut in an altered condition. The Court held that venue could lie in Connecticut because the defendant lived there and because most of the 46 money orders were cashed there, although there was no proof that he had cashed them.
Except for an English case of 1797, no case has been cited to us which requires the document to be found in the possession of the defendant for the inference to apply. I fail to understand why the majority labors so hard to avoid *943applying so reasonable an inference and reaches a result that benefits no one but exposes Appellant to a separate trial in Maryland should the Government elect to pursue the matter.