Court Opinion

ID: 9450374
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:43:54.89967+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:16.458173
License: Public Domain

DIMOCK, District Judge
(dissenting) :
Defendants have moved for a rehearing of their appeal from conviction of theft from interstate commerce and that the rehearing be held en banc.
The facts brought out in the application demonstrate so completely what I regard as the unsoundness of the affirmance that I am constrained to vote for reconsideration in the hope that in the course of it my brethren will be persuaded.
It appears that one of the defendants was arrested by the F. B. I. before the decision was made to route the shipment interstate. It thereupon rested with the carrier to decide whether or not he had committed a federal crime. His guilt depended upon whether the carrier would exercise in favor of an interstate rather than an intrastate route the choice offered by its tariffs.
My point is not that the arrest was unlawful. My point is that the facts of the case of one of the defendants afford a perfect illustration of the error in giving retroactive effect to a decision to route a shipment in interstate rather than intrastate commerce. The fact that the F. B. I. was in a position to influence this decision places further emphasis on this case as an illustration of the error.
Putting aside the ease, not presented here, of a shipper who knows of the custom of his carrier to route interstate and who might thereby be considered to intend an interstate shipment, I am satisfied that a shipper who names an intrastate destination thereby stamps as intrastate so much of the journey as takes place before his carrier actually makes an election to route interstate. While it is thus my belief that so much of the journey is intrastate, that conclusion is unnecessary. It suffices that the most that can be said is that the character of the journey was undecided at the time of the theft. The Government’s burden was not to show that its character was undecided but to show that it was interstate. Even though it be established that the carrier had a custom of choosing a published interstate tariff route instead of a published intrastate tariff route and even if there be a rule of law that a shipper who does not designate one of the published tariff routes vests in the *490carrier authority to choose the published route most convenient for the carrier, the fact remains that at the time of the theft no mortal knew or intended that the shipment would be interstate. I think that we ought to leave the employment of the doctrine of predestination to the ecclesiastical courts.