Court Opinion

ID: 9474843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:10:42.870398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:22.494443
License: Public Domain

NEESE, Senior (retired District) Judge,
concurring in nos. 84-5400 and 84-5401 and dissenting in no. 84-5033.
I concur with the decision of the majority in affirming the respective convictions in nos. 84-5400 and 84-5401. However, I dissent respectfully from the majority’s af*1299firmance in no. 84-5033 of the dismissal of six counts of the pertinent indictment.
As to the latter, it has long been settled that there are two — and only two — elements of mail-fraud: (1) the existence of a scheme to defraud, and (2) the use of the mails for the purpose of executing that scheme. Pereira v. United States, 347 U.S. 1, 8, 74 S.Ct. 358, 262, 98 L.Ed. 435 (1954); United States v. Bibby, 752 F.2d 1116, 1125 (6th Cir.1985), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 1183, 89 L.Ed.2d 300 (1986); Bender v. Southland Corp., 749 F.2d 1205, 1215-16 (6th Cir.1984). There is no justification in my view for the creation of a third element of this offense in situations where the mailing was required by law.
Parr v. United States, 363 U.S. 370, 390-92, 80 S.Ct. 1171, 1183-84, 4 L.Ed.2d 1277 (1960), and United States v. Curry, 681 F.2d 406, 412 (5th Cir.1982), teach that, where legally-compelled mailings are involved, the Government may not meet its burden of proving the mails were used “for the purpose of executing” the scheme to defraud by showing merely that the mailings took place; instead, the prosecution must prove something more, such as, that the documents mailed were themselves false or fraudulent. This is so because mailings of documents which are required by law to be mailed, and which are not themselves false or fraudulent, cannot “be regarded as mailed for the purpose of executing a pilot or scheme to defraud.” Parr, supra, 363 U.S. at 390, 80 S.Ct. at 1183.
When a person mails something which the law has mandated that he mail, the logical assumption is that he did so in obedience to law. Thus, to support a conviction for mail-fraud based on a legally-compelled mailing, the prosecution must show that the mailing occurred for the specific purpose of executing the scheme to defraud and not merely because the law required the mailing; otherwise, the Government has not met its burden of proving the second element of the offense. See United States v. Buckley, 689 F.2d 893, 900 (9th Cir.1982) {“Parr involved a situation where the legally compelled mailings were not made in furtherance of a scheme to defraud.”).
Neither Parr nor Curry concerned the sufficiency of an indictment; they dealt, rather, with the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain mail-fraud convictions. The counts before us which were dismissed allege the two essential elements of mail-fraud. Whether the prosecution will be able to prove the second such element, by showing that the tax returns were false or fraudulent, or by any other appropriate means, remains to be seen; but, I believe this is a matter of proof, not of pleading.