Court Opinion

ID: 9456202
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:45:21.078976+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:53.251928
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(dissenting):
When arrested, appellant was the passenger in a vehicle constructed from two stolen automobiles. At trial, the evidence most favorable to the Government indicated that appellant had been associated with this vehicle for one month; its components were the engine from an automobile stolen five-and-a-half weeks before appellant’s arrest and the body of a 1957 Chevrolet which had been missing for nine months. These circumstances do not provide the requisite basis for inferring theft from “the exclusive possession of recently stolen property.” *1171Pendergrast v. United States, 135 U.S.App.D.C. 20, 416 F.2d 776 (1969) (emphasis added).1 Nor do they lead to the “logical deduction” that “the possession of the stolen property could have been acquired only by the possessor’s theft of that property.” Id. at 31, 416 F.2d at 787.
Long, a principal prosecution witness, testified that he sold appellant a reconstructed 1957 Chevrolet in April 1967, eight months after the disappearance of the Sherwood car and one week after the Oates car was taken. The car in which appellant was arrested bore the public serial number of the one purchased from Long, but its confidential numbers showed it to be the Sherwood-Oates automobile. Although Long maintained that the car he had sold was not the car in which appellant was arrested,2 he admitted that he had owned a blue and white 1957 Chevrolet (like Sherwood’s) at this time and that he might have also given that car to appellant.
While the identity of the thief may be shown by circumstantial evidence,3 the effect of the instruction in the circumstances of this case was to multiply the “natural probative force”4 of the evidence by inviting the jury to hurdle a gap of eight months in the chain of evidence during which period the defendant was not shown to have had any (much less “exclusive”) possession of the property.. This violates elemental principles of criminal law which at the least require “substantial assurance that the presumed fact is more likely than not to flow from the proved facts on which it is made to depend.” Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6, 36, 89 S.Ct. 1532, 1548, 23 L.Ed.2d 57 (1969); cf. United States v. Romano, 382 U.S. 136, 86 S.Ct. 279, 15 L.Ed.2d 210 .(1965); Tot v. United States, 319 U.S. 463, 63 S.Ct. 1241, 87 L.Ed. 1519 (1943).
If the inference is to be measured by the higher standard of “reasonable doubt,” see Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 408, 416-418, 90 S.Ct. 642, 24 L.Ed.2d 610 (1970), as the court today holds, I do not see how it can properly be invoked in this case, since the evidence adduced by the prosecution, independent of the “first aid” supplied by the inference,5 was not sufficient to allow a rational juror to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.6 On the prosecution’s evidence it was equally possible either (1) that appellant had stolen the Sherwood and Oates automobiles, or (2) that Government witness Long had stolen them, combined the Sherwood body and the Oates engine, and then sold appellant the product, which was registered in Edwards’ name and kept in his driveway, where appellant and Edwards were said to have worked on it. The ambiguous nature of this evidence does not lay the *1172basis for the jury to infer appellant’s guilt “to a moral certainty,”7 because it does not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant’s possession of the car could only have been acquired by his theft of the two automobiles.8

. There the instruction was premised on a showing that a few minutes after he was robbed, the victim identified Pendergrast as his assailant, and a search of his person uncovered the stolen property. 135 U.S.App.D.C. at 22, 416 F.2d at 778.

. No evidence was introduced to explain what became of the car purchased from Long if it was not the car in which appellant was arrested; it is also unclear why, if appellant had stolen the Sherwood and Oates ears, he would have purchased another, elaborately improved car from Long just to get its serial number door plate.

. See majority opinion supra at 1165, & n. 38, citing People v. Davis, 69 Ill.App.2d 120, 216 N.E.2d 490 (1966) (evidence insufficient to support conviction where officers pursued stolen car and apprehended defendant “a couple of feet” behind the abandoned vehicle; conviction reversed) ; cf. People v. Foley, 307 N.Y. 490, 121 N.E.2d 516 (1954) (circumstantial evidence must exclude to a moral certainty every other inference but that of recent and exclusive possession by defendant; reversed for a new trial).

. Pendergrast v. United States, 135 U.S.App.D.C. at 32, 416 F.2d at 788.

. See Chamberlain, Presumptions as First Aid to the District Attorney, 14 A.B.A.J. 287 (1928).

. See Curley v. United States, 81 U.S.App.D.C. 389, 160 F.2d 229 (1947) ; Goldstein, The State and The Accused: Balance of Advantage in Criminal Procedure,. 69 Yale L.J. 1149, 1156-59 (1960).

. See majority opinion at 1170 supra.

. See Pendergrast, supra, 135 U.S.App.D.C. at 31, 416 F.2d at 787; cf. Goodwin v. United States, 121 U.S.App.D.C. 9, 347 F.2d 793 (1965), cert. denied, Vaughn v. United States, 382 U.S. 855, 86 S.Ct. 107, 15 L.Ed.2d 93 (1966).