Court Opinion

ID: 9489027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:03:10.468752+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:15.860347
License: Public Domain

VAN GRAAFEILAND, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in my colleagues’ affirmance of Klausner’s conviction under 26 U.S.C. § 7201. However, I am constrained by the Supreme Court’s holding in United States v. Gaudin, — U.S. - — •, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995), to dissent from the affir-mance of Klausner’s conviction under 26 U.S.C. § 7206(2).
Because of the breadth of the issues with which the Supreme Court customarily is confronted, not every pronouncement of that Court is a model of simplicity and clarity. However, the following holding in Gaudin unquestionably is:
The Constitution gives a criminal defendant the right to have a jury determine, beyond a reasonable doubt, his guilt of every element of the crime with which he is charged. The trial judge’s refusal to allow the jury to pass on the “materiality” of Gaudin’s false statements infringed that right.
Id. at-•, 115 S.Ct. at 2320.
Although, as Chief Justice Rehnquist recognized in his concurring opinion,-U.S. at *64-, 115 S.Ct. at 2322, the Court was overturning the established law of this and most other circuits, the change may not be as drastic as it at first appears to be. Henceforth, in submitting the issue of materiality to the jury, our trial courts will have to define the term, a task not easily accomplished. The probabilities are that in many cases the carrying out of this difficult assignment will so closely resemble the judicial determination of materiality that the Supreme Court now has outlawed as to accomplish substantially the same result.