Court Opinion

ID: 9464012
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:22:56.62739+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:24.887729
License: Public Domain

ALBERT V. BRYAN, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
In my view the evidence was inadequate to support Federal jurisdiction and, hence, the case should have been dismissed rather than submitted to the jury. My concern is that this court’s opinion allows a forbidden incursion into the domain of State law and for this reason do I not join in it.
In usurping jurisdiction of the indicted larceny, the Federal courts here are trespassing where Congress explicitly admonished that they should tread with caution. The very statute creating the crime in prosecution states: “Nothing contained in this section shall be construed as indicating an intent on the part of Congress to occupy the field in which provisions of this section operate to the exclusion of State laws on the same subject matter . .
North Carolina, of course, punishes theft of gasoline within the State; the crime here was no more than that. Instead the court extends the offense into Federal condemnation. To do so casts the gasoline as still moving in, or constituting a part of, an interstate shipment when it was stolen.
I pursue the path posted by the majority to determine the category of the gasoline: *1250“Ordinarily, the question of whether goods are moving in interstate commerce or constitute part of an interstate shipment is a practical one”.
To start, after the gasoline entered the storage tank, it was sealed off from the interstate system; it could not return to the spur or the main line. Its severance from the system was marked and recorded by the system computer. Amoco came'again into possession of the gasoline it had possessed in Texas.
Next, while in the. present circumstances the gasoline only remained in the storage tank for 24 hours, that does not fix its status. Its position is determined by how long it may reside in isolation. Generally, we are told, the stay is no more than four days, but there is nothing to indicate it could not be longer. The point of this factor is its proof that the shipment was treated by Amoco as having come to rest after it entered the tank. It had “arrived at its final destination and [was] there delivered”. Cf. United States v. Yoppolo, 435 F.2d 625, 626 (6 Cir. 1970).
Still again, it was to be sold in regular course of trade from the tank to such cardholders as had access to it if, as and when they desired it. It was as if they had keys to the warehouse. The Government has not established that the gasoline had been preordered or pre-sold to them. So far as the proof discloses they could buy or not as they saw fit. The gasoline could stay in the tank indefinitely. Surely it loses its interstate image in the tank at some time. That must have been when it entered the tank, for there is no later determinant. We are not shown that the sales were anything more than across-the-counter sales of merchandise.
This court in United States v. Maddox, 394 F.2d 297, 299 (4 Cir. 1968), outlined how the character of the gasoline should be adjudged, saying:
“The deposit of cargo in a warehouse may under certain circumstances consti-
tute a coming to rest, marking the termination of an interstate of foreign shipment. At other times, however, the stop- • off at the warehouse may be only a pause in the course of an uncompleted journey. Standing alone, the removal of goods to a warehouse is not conclusive; nor is the consignee’s power to divert the goods from the intended interstate .commerce. *. * * These are merely factors to be considered, but there is. no rigid rule of law that mandates a holding either way. The answer in any particular case must depend on a factual assessment.” (Accent added.)
Thus in the circumstances here the uncontroverted indicia of the gasoline’s posture reveal that the gasoline was in repose intra the State when stolen.
But the court would supply the deficiency by reliance upon the presumption in the statute, 18 U.S.C. § 659:
“The removal of property from' a pipeline system which extends interstate shall be prima facie evidence of the interstate character of the shipment of the property.” ‘ (Accent added.)
However, by its very terms this presumption does not apply presently because the unlawful taking was not from “a pipeline system” but rather from a storage tank, a studied difference. The latter is in the proscriptive provisions distinguished from the “pipeline system” of the presumption. Thus this statute, with emphasis noted, provides:
“Whoever embezzles, steals or unlawfully takes, carries away or conceals, or by fraud or deception obtains from any pipeline system ... or from any tank or storage facility . . . any goods or chattels moving as or which are part of or which constitute an interstate or foreign shipment of freight, express or other property shall in each case [be punished].”
Each of the three counts in the present indictment makes the distinction, charging *1251that the pilferage was from penalize steal-age from an interstate movement or interstate storage, but the presumption would not apply to any taking save one from a pipeline system.
The 1966 amendments, as discussed by the majority, sharply make the differentiation. They did not even purport to enlarge the presumption; they simply expanded the types of container embraced in the enactments. In this addition Congress was careful to enumerate each of them separately, manifesting that the legislators were preserving their several identities. With these identifications in mind, “pipeline system” was included for the first time and the presumption was confined to a pipeline system. Obviously, it was not intended to apply elsewhere.
The reason for this inclusion is obvious: a pipeline system runs for thousands of miles and Congress needed to cover every foot of it. It wished to protect transportation by pipeline, a somewhat recent utility. Interestingly, the presumption provision was written by the Department of Justice and engrossed ipsissimis verbis within the law.
The Federal Government has no reason for being here.