Court Opinion

ID: 9488721
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:54:14.617611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:04.368744
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the affirmance of the district court’s decision to deny the motion for new trial. In my view, if the jury had been permitted to hear the evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, it might well have rejected the government’s submission that the conspiracy continued within the time period covered by the statute of limitations.
To fall within the statute of limitations, the conspiracy charged in this case must have continued within the five-year period before the date of the indictment. Therefore, it was incumbent upon the prosecution to establish that at least one racketeering act took place after June 25, 1986. The post-June 25, 1986 acts on which the government relies to prove the continuation of the conspiracy were the alleged return of the $10,000 bribe to Swano on June 27, 1986 (rather than on June 19, 1986), and the cover-up conversations, the “standing tall” admonition, between Maloney and Swano.1
1.
I cannot accept the government’s submission that the jury’s lack of knowledge with respect to Hawkins’ relationship with the government could not have affected its evaluation of whether the money was repaid on *666June 19 rather than June 27. Indeed, my colleagues admit that the testimony could have made a difference in the jury’s evaluation. Nor can I accept the proposition that keeping the jury in the dark with respect to this matter did not make a significant difference in the outcome.
My colleagues conclude that, even if the money was returned on June 19, as the defendant contends, that return could not have constituted a withdrawal from the conspiracy. In the majority’s view, “Maloney’s return of the bribe was ... more akin to a deal gone sour than an affirmative attempt to defeat the purposes of the conspiracy.” In my view, this is a judgment that ought to be left to the jury. Government witness Earl Hawkins first testified that the bribe money was returned on June 19; after much questioning and eventual impeachment from Assistant United States Attorney Hogan, Hawkins changed his testimony to say that Malo-ney said he would return the bribe money on June 19, but he actually returned it on June 27,1986.2 If the jury had realized that Hawkins had a very definite motive to give the government the testimony it wanted to hear, its evaluation of his testimony may well have been different.
We have recently set forth the requirements for withdrawal:
But proving one has withdrawn from a conspiracy is no easy matter, requiring the defendant to prove he both ceased participation in the conspiracy, United States v. DePriest, 6 F.3d 1201, 1206 (7th Cir.1993), and affirmatively disavowed the conspiracy’s purpose, United States v. Bafia, 949 F.2d 1465, 1477 (7th Cir.1991), cert. denied sub nom. Kerridan v. United States, [504] U.S. [928], 112 S.Ct. 1989 [118 L.Ed.2d 586] (1992).
United States v. Morgano, 39 F.3d 1358, 1370 (7th Cir.1994), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 2559, 132 L.Ed.2d 813 (1995). It is never enough merely to cease participation (even when the conspirator was terminated from the conspiracy, as in Morga-ño). There must be an “affirmative act, such as a confession to authorities or a clear communication to co-conspirators of abandonment of the conspiracy’s goals.” Id. at 1370-71; see also United States v. Sax, 39 F.3d 1380, 1386 (7th Cir.1994) (requiring that “the conspirator must take affirmative steps to defeat or disavow the conspiracy’s purpose”); United States v. Masters, 924 F.2d 1362, 1368 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 500 U.S. 919, 111 S.Ct. 2019, 114 L.Ed.2d 105 (1991) (discussing withdrawal as a “term of art in the law of conspiracy”). In this case, the jury was entitled to conclude on the basis of the evidence that Maloney had taken the affirmative act of returning the $10,000 bribe money. Such an act is certainly a communication, made to a fellow conspirator, of his abandonment of the conspiracy, and could constitute a withdrawal. There is no evidence of bribes or of ease-fixing after this action, and thus no demonstration that Malo-ney continued to endorse the purpose of the conspiracy. See Sax, 39 F.3d at 1387.
A jury should be entitled to consider Hawkins’ privileged treatment by the United States Attorney’s Office in its evaluation of the lack of evidence of a continuation of the conspiracy.
2.
The majority also relies upon the “standing tall” admonition by the defendant to Swa-no as evidence that the conspiracy continued up to that point.
This reliance is dependent on the majority’s view that the purpose and objective of the conspiracy was case-fixing, and that the conspirators had agreed that this activity would continue as long as Maloney was a judge. On that view, the conspiracy was neither accomplished nor abandoned as long as Judge Maloney remained on the bench, Swano continued to practice before him, and McGee continued his friendship with him. This view posits a conspiracy that is, for all practical purposes, of unlimited duration. In Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 77 S.Ct. 963, 1 L.Ed.2d 931 (1957), the Supreme Court distinguished “between acts of concealment done in furtherance of the main erimi-*667nal objectives of the conspiracy, and acts of concealment- done after these central objectives have been attained, for the purpose only of covering up after the crime.” Id. at 405, 77 S.Ct. at 974.
The acts of covering up can by themselves indicate nothing more than that the conspirators do not wish to be apprehended— a concomitant, certainly, of every crime since Cain attempted to conceal the murder of Abel from the Lord.
Id. at 406, 77 S.Ct. at 974; see also Ingram v. United States, 360 U.S. 672, 679 n. 10, 79 S.Ct. 1314, 1319 n. 10, 3 L.Ed.2d 1503 (1959) (“[T]he life of the conspiracy cannot be extended by evidence of concealment after the conspiracy’s criminal objectives have been fully accomplished.”); United States v. Finlay, 55 F.3d 1410, 1415 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 116 S.Ct. 193, 133 L.Ed.2d 129 (1995). If, as we have previously held, the concealment of records and attempts to mislead the grand jury are simply cover-up activities, rather than a continuation of the actual conspiracy, see United States v. Roberts, 22 F.3d 744, 750-51 (7th Cir.1994), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 744, 130 L.Ed.2d 645 (1995), then surely two brief conversations between Maloney and Swano, held a year apart, unconnected to any specific actions, cannot be considered a continuation of the conspiracy.3 Under this theory, as long as there is the potential for a bribe, Maloney could never withdraw from the conspiracy. Given our case law, this characterization is a much too slender reed on which to base a theory of continued conspiracy. Indeed, even when we have found that conspirators “intended from the first to exert strenuous efforts to prevent discovery of the crime and of their involvement in it,” Masters, 924 F.2d at 1368, we have recognized that efforts to conceal a conspiracy are not automatically a part of the conspiracy.
More fundamentally, even if the jury should have been permitted to reach, on the evidence before it, the conclusion that the conspiracy included the “standing tall” incidents, its consideration of this issue was im-permissibly skewed by the absence of information concerning Hawkins’ motivation to support the case of the government. Had the jury known of Hawkins’ affiliation, it might have determined that the conspiracy terminated on June 19. If it had so determined, it necessarily would not have characterized the Maloney-Swano conversations as part of that conspiracy.

. Testimony concerning the return of the bribe came from El Rukn gang member Earl Hawkins, a cooperating witness. See Tr. 1559-70, 1648-49, 1697, 1709-10.

. In United States v. LeFevour, 798 F.2d 977 (7th Cir.1986), we also considered whether a coverup conspiracy is separate from the original conspiracy (judge taking bribes). In this case the act of concealment was a note written by a cocon-spirator during the period that the judge was still taking bribes. 798 F.2d at 982. We upheld the admission of that note into evidence as an act of concealment that furthered the object of the conspiracy.