Court Opinion

ID: 9444345
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 20:57:11.944697+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:49.479072
License: Public Domain

COLLET, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Defendant was the illiterate president of some kind of a corporation. He could neither read nor write. He had never been in charge of the books of the corporation, had never kept the books nor had any control over them other than constructive, as the president of the corporation. In laymen’s language, he was being hotly pursued by the “Law”, federal, state, and congressional. Some kind of a charge had been lodged against the corporation by the state authorities for using counterfeit cigarette 'tax stamps. In September, 1953, he and others connected with the corporate business were arrested by the city police and taken to the police station. They were *93held there for a short time and returned to the place of arrest. When they arrived there they found that, by coincidence or otherwise, during their absence the sheriff’s office had padlocked the corporate place of business and taken possession of all of its contents.
The following May, defendant was summoned before the federal grand jury and asked to produce the corporate books and records. He stood on his constitutional rights. Upon being advised that his personal constitutional rights did not extend to the production of corporate books and records, he testified that he did not have them, did not know where they were, had never kept them, and they had never been under his control, but that he would try to find them. He testified that he tried to find them. He produced a witness who testified that the last time they were seen to the witness’ knowledge was shortly before the raid by the sheriff’s office in September, 1953, when they were placed in the office of the corporation. Defendant steadfastly insisted that he did not have them, that he was afraid to offer himself as a witness for fear of waiving his constitutional rights. He had some justification for that fear. That is exactly what government counsel contended before the court, after the court had called him as a witness. The court very properly struck the evidence that was produced in response to the court’s direction that he take the witness stand, in order to eliminate any possible element of coercion. But that left him in the situation where if he voluntarily offered himself as a witness, government counsel would have been able to contend that he was subject to broad cross-examination.
Defendant was charged, not with perjury, not with failure to answer proper questions propounded to him by the grand jury, but with failing to produce the books of the corporation. The court denominated the proceedings as criminal contempt proceedings. Counsel for the government so characterizes the proceedings. He was convicted without one scintilla of direct evidence that he actually had the books and records of the corporation. The presumption, inference, or implication arising from proof that a corporate president who actually had charge of the corporate books could be presumed to still have them, see Wilson v. United States, 221 U.S. 361, 31 S.Ct. 538, 55 L.Ed. 771, was applied to defendant here without any proof that he had ever had control of the books. That inference, aided by inferences drawn from the defendant standing upon his constitutional right and declining upon those grounds to answer questions, is said to be adequate proof to sustain his conviction. Be he “hoodlum” or not, I do not agree.