Court Opinion

ID: 9456451
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:53:23.961697+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:59.033656
License: Public Domain

*321HASTIE, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
The crimes of which the appellant has been convicted are (1) conspiracy to receive and possess goods stolen from interstate commerce and (2) possessing such goods, both in violation of section 659 of Title 18, United States Code. The evidence established that the goods in question were in fact stolen. But the appellant could not be guilty of either crime if he was unaware of that fact.
On this crucial element of the case the court charged as follows:
“And if you find that the defendants were in possession, whether active or constructive, of the stolen television sets, you may infer that the defendants knew that the television sets were stolen, since it has been stipulated that the truck was actually stolen with the television sets on them the night before the arrest.”
The instruction was plainly incorrect. This court held, unequivocally, in United States v. Russo, 1947, 123 F.2d 420, that an inference of knowledge that goods were stolen could not lawfully be drawn from constructive possession. This rule reflects the concept that, in the process of proof beyond reasonable doubt, possession, itself merely inferred from some other fact, may not fairly be made the basis of a second inference of guilty knowledge.
In this ease there was no testimony that Grasso was ever in possession of the goods. Thus, the jury could only have inferred possession from some other circumstance. Yet the jury was charged that this was enough to warrant an inference of guilty knowledge as well.
The majority opinion reasons, as the government argued, that the jury might have concluded that other evidence provided sufficient circumstantial proof of guilty knowledge without resort to any inference from constructive possession. But that circumstantial proof was weak at best, apparently because a key witness for the prosecution did not supply such probative testimony as the prosecution had reason to anticipate from him. Thus, the jury may well have based its essential finding of guilty knowledge upon the erroneous instruction that “constructive possession” justified an inference of knowledge that the goods were stolen. Accordingly, I do not see how the conviction can stand.
I would set aside this conviction and remand the case for a new trial.