Court Opinion

ID: 9472838
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:12:20.45079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:10.643226
License: Public Domain

HATCHETT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because the majority has approached Acosta’s contention as though misapplication is a lesser included *583offense of embezzlement of bank funds. In taking such an approach, the majority violates three basic and important principles in criminal law; those principles are: (1) for an appellate court to properly affirm a judgment of conviction in a federal criminal case, the appellate court must be sure that all twelve jurors agreed on guilt on the same offense; (2) misapplication is not a lesser included offense of embezzlement under 18 U.S.C.A. § 656; and (3) lesser included offenses must be specifically found, based on a unanimous verdict, after proper instructions.
The grand jury indicted Acosta, in three counts, in the conjunctive for embezzling and misapplying monies under 18 U.S.C.A. § 656 (1976).1 The court’s instruction to the jury was in the disjunctive (embezzling or misapplying funds).2 The jury rendered a general verdict of guilty. The issue framed by Acosta before this court is whether the jury instruction authorized the jury to return a non-unanimous verdict in violation of her constitutional right to a unanimous verdict.
The majority divines unanimity of the jury’s verdict, in this case, by finding that the major elements of embezzlement and misapplication are the same; common to both offenses, says the majority, is the “willful taking of any insured bank’s money by its employees with intent to defraud the bank.” In its view, if four jurors found Acosta guilty of misapplication, they would have been satisfied that the evidence showed that Acosta took money willfully from the bank with intent to defraud the bank. Similarly, if the other eight jurors found that Acosta was guilty of embezzlement, those jurors would also have been satisfied that the evidence showed that Acosta willfully took the bank’s money with intent to defraud the bank. The majority concludes that since all the jurors agreed that Acosta willfully took the bank’s money with an intent to defraud the bank, all twelve jurors necessarily found Acosta guilty of misapplication. As a result, therefore, the jury was unanimous in its general verdict that Acosta was guilty of committing an act in violation of the statute.
Such an approach is nothing more than a holding that says: where a greater offense and a lesser included offense are charged in the same count of an indictment or information, and a guilty verdict is rendered on that count, if a poll of the jury shows that six jurors convicted on the greater offense and six jurors convicted on the lesser included offense, the conviction may be upheld. The conviction is upheld because implicit in the guilty verdict is unanimous agreement on all the elements of the lesser included offense.
*584The majority’s approach is flawed. The majority misapprehends the claim being made on appeal and, therefore, cites authority that is inapplicable to this case. Acosta’s principal claim on appeal is that the district court’s jury instruction authorized a non-unanimous verdict. The majority recasts this claim into a contention that no reasonable jury could have found, based on the evidence, that Acosta did not take the money with an intent to defraud the bank. None of the cases cited by the majority deals with a challenge to a court’s jury instructions as authorizing a non-unanimous verdict. This case, however, deals with the question of the amount of latitude to be given trial judges in the giving of jury instructions in light of the unanimity requirement of the constitution. This case is controlled by the former Fifth Circuit’s opinion in United States v. Sayklay, 542 F.2d 942 (5th Cir.1976).
The majority attempts to distinguish Sayklay by reading its holding to be that a person charged only with embezzlement can only be found guilty of embezzlement, but when embezzlement is combined with another offense the jury may lawfully convict on either offense or on a combination of the offenses.3 This is a very limited reading of Sayklay. Sayklay also stands for the proposition that Congress’s intent in drafting section 656 was to make embezzlement a separate offense from misapplication, requiring an additional element and separate proof. The Sayklay court explained:
‘Embezzlement’ is a technical term, imbued with a specific meaning. To uphold a conviction for embezzlement under these facts would confuse the distinction that Congress clearly drew between embezzlement and other forms of conversion. And it remains true that penal statutes are to be strictly construed, with ambiguities resolved in favor of leniency. The defendant’s wrongful actions render her an undeserving candidate for application of the principle, but doubtless most who require its assistance have been and will be undeserving. More is at stake here than convicting a wrongdoer of something: fidelity to Congress’s clear purpose and refusal to convict any one of a crime of which he has not been — and cannot be, on the facts — proved guilty.
Sayklay, 542 F.2d at 944 (citations and footnotes omitted) (emphasis added). In the absence of proof that Acosta converted funds that were properly entrusted to her, she has no criminal liability based on embezzlement. It is no answer to say that all jurors must have found that Acosta took the money from the bank with an intent to defraud the bank, or, even absent proof of embezzlement, i.e., proof of an entrustment or lawful possession of the monies,, adequate proof existed of misapplication; therefore, the jury verdict is unanimous.
A unanimous verdict is a prerequisite to a valid conviction in a federal criminal case. Fed.R.Crim.P. 31(a). This is no mere rule of procedure; unanimity has its constitutional basis in the sixth amendment. Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U.S. 356, 92 S.Ct. 1620, 32 L.Ed.2d 152 (1972)4; Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404, 92 S.Ct. 1628, 32 L.Ed.2d 184 (1972).
*585In United States v. Gipson, the court, on similar facts, addressed the majority’s proposition that a general verdict can be unanimous if all jurors voted for either guilty of embezzlement or guilty of misapplication.5 The former Fifth Circuit cautioned:
A superficial analysis of the problem might yield the conclusion that since every juror was still required to find all elements of the charged offense(s) present in order to convict defendant, there was necessarily unanimous jury agreement as to his guilt. This reasoning loses its cogency, however, when the policy underlying the unanimous jury right is taken into account.
Gipson, 553 F.2d at 457. See Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U.S. 356, 92 S.Ct. 1620, 32 L.Ed.2d 152 (1972).
The unanimous jury right is an important provision in criminal law. The Gipson court illustrated the problem that can be presented by following the majority’s rule.
A single criminal code section might prohibit a number of distinct acts; for example, a traffic control statute might prohibit (a) speeding, (b) driving without lights at night, (c) making a turn from the wrong lane, and (d) failing to use turn signals. At a trial for violating the statute, the prosecution might present some evidence that each of the prohibited acts was performed by the defendant, and the judge might charge the jury that the defendant would be guilty of violating the statute if the jury found he had done any one of the prohibited acts. If three members of the jury found that the defendant was guilty of speeding but had not committed any of the other prohibited acts, and three other jurors found that the only illegal act the defendant committed was driving without lights at night, and three other jury members found that the only prohibited act the defendant performed was making a turn from the wrong lane, and the final three jurors found that the only wrong the defendant committed was failing to use his turn signals, the defendant’s right to a unanimous verdict would be violated if the jury found him guilty of violating the code section. The prosecution would not have convinced all of the jurors that the defendant committed one or more of the unlawful acts. Indeed, nine of the jurors would have found that the defendant did not perform each of the prohibited acts.
Gipson, 553 F.2d at 458.
The majority’s lesser included offense approach is wrong. Misapplication is not a lesser included offense of embezzlement. To be a lesser included offense under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 31(c), an offense must “consist of fewer elements than the greater offense charged, it must bear a lesser penalty than the greater offense, and the two offenses must contain such common elements that the greater offense cannot be committed without also committing the lesser offense.” 9 Fed. Proc.L.Ed. § 22:848, p. 422 (1982). Misapplication does not “bear a lesser penalty than the greater offense charged.”
Even if the lesser included offense approach is accepted the verdict rendered in *586this case would still be invalid. If misapplication were a lesser offense, an instruction would be required (1) characterizing embezzlement as the greater offense, (2) indicating that Acosta could be found guilty of a lesser included offense, (3) defining all lesser included offenses, and (4) instructing the jury to specifically indicate the offense found. See, e.g., United States v. Harvey, 701 F.2d 800 (9th Cir.1983) (trial court instructed jury that it was to reach a unanimous verdict in favor of defendant on the greater charge before it could consider lesser included offenses); United States v. Tsanas, 572 F.2d 340 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 995, 98 S.Ct. 1647, 56 L.Ed.2d 84 (1978) (instruction requiring unanimous verdict of not guilty of greater offense before allowing jury to move to lesser offense was not plain error); 8A J. Moore, W. Taggart & J. Wicker, Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 31.03 (June 1984 revision). No instruction was given in this case on a greater or lesser offense theory. No verdict form for such a finding was provided. The jury did not specify which offense it found. Indeed, most telling is the fact that the district court in its written judgment, never mentioned misapplication; the district court declared Acosta guilty of embezzlement. We are left guessing whether all the jurors agreed on anything.

. Count I of the indictment charged:
On or about December 8, 1980, at Miami, Dade County, in the Southern District of Florida, the defendant,
BLANCA ACOSTA
being an employee of the Intercontinental Bank, Westchester Branch, 8755 S.W. 24 Street, Miami, Florida, a bank whose deposits were then insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, did knowingly, willfully, and with intent to injure and defraud said bank, embezzle, abstract, purloin, and misapply monies and funds entrusted to the custody and care of said bank in that she removed $6,448 from said bank; in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 656.
Counts II and III were similarly worded with changes in the dates and amounts of money. Title 18 U.S.C.A. § 656 provides in part:
Whoever ... embezzles, abstracts, purloins or willfully misapplies any of the moneys, funds or credits of [a member] bank or any moneys, funds, assets or securities intrusted to the custody or employee or receiver, shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both . . . .

. After paraphrasing section 656, the court charged, in relevant part:
So, in order to establish the offense as charged the Government must prove the following essential elements beyond a reasonable doubt:
First: That the Defendant was an officer or employee of the bank described in the indictment;
Second: That the bank was a national bank or an insured bank;
Third: That the Defendant, being an officer or employee, knowingly and willfully embezzled or misapplied funds or credits belonging to the bank or intrusted to its care; and
Fourth: That the Defendant acted with the intent to injure and defraud said bank.
Although this is a correct instruction for misapplication, it is improper for embezzlement.

. If the majority is correct, then our circuit, after the majority’s opinion, could uphold a conviction where (1) the government charged only misapplication in count I and charged only embezzlement in count II of an indictment, (2) the jury returned verdicts of guilty on both counts, (3) a poll showed that six of the jurors found guilt only as to count I while the other six found guilt only as to count II. Under the majority’s reasoning in this case, the appellate court would find that all of the jurors necessarily found the defendant guilty of count I; therefore, the conviction on count II would be reversed, but the conviction on count I would be affirmed.

. In explaining his doubt that all the elements of the sixth amendment jury trial provisions are binding on the states, Justice Powell outlined the historical and precedential basis for the sixth amendment requirement of a unanimous jury verdict in federal criminal cases:
In an unbroken line of cases reaching back into the late 1800’s, the Justices of this Court have recognized, virtually without dissent, that unanimity is one of the indispensable *585features of federal jury trials. In these cases, the Court has presumed that unanimous verdicts are essential in federal jury trials, not because unanimity is necessarily fundamental to the function performed by the jury, but because that result is mandated by history. The reasoning that runs throughout this Court’s Sixth Amendment precedence is that, in amending the Constitution to guarantee the right to jury trial, the framers desired to preserve the jury safeguard as was known to them at common law. At the time the Bill of Rights was adopted, unanimity had long been established as one of the attributes of a jury conviction at common law. It therefore seems to me, in accord with both history and precedent, that the Sixth Amendment requires a unanimous jury verdict to convict in a federal criminal case.
Johnson, 406 U.S. at 369-71, 92 S.Ct. at 1636-37 (citations and footnotes omitted).

. Defendant was convicted for receiving, concealing, storing, bartering, selling, or disposing of a stolen vehicle in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2313. The court instructed the jury that their verdict would be unanimous even if all twelve agreed that he had done one of those acts, but there was no agreement that he had done the same act. The former Fifth Circuit held that this instruction was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. United States v. Gipson, 553 F.2d 453 (5th Cir.1977).