Court Opinion

ID: 9456461
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:53:55.683985+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:59.242702
License: Public Domain

WILBUR K. MILLER, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
In the consideration of a criminal appeal, it is usually helpful to know what the appellant did. For that reason, I give a brief statement of the facts of this case, gleaned from the testimony of the two witnesses for the Government. The appellant did not testify and did not introduce any witnesses.1
James J. Lesko, general manager of a motel, testified that about 1:00 p. m. August 24, 1968, on information received from a guest, he called the police, asking that they look out for a blue or grey station wagon with dealer’s license plates DX 800 — and three male occupants. As he drove to the rear parking lot of the motel, Lesko saw a Dodge with D.C. dealer’s plates and three occupants proceeding from the parking lot to New York Avenue. He went to room 166, found the door open and a television set and a gold blanket missing.
Ronald S. Dotson, a police officer, testified that on August 24, 1968, about 1:00 p. m., as he was cruising in a one-man scout car on Bladensburg Road, he received by radio information that a grey station wagon with D.C. temporary tags DX 30078 was involved in a burglary at a motel two blocks away. He proceeded to the motel and, as he entered its parking lot, he saw a pale blue 1957 Dodge, with D.C. temporary tags and containing three men, leaving at a high rate of speed.
Dotson gave chase, turning on his siren and using his loud speaker in an effort to stop the fleeing car. It did not stop, however, until it stalled after a fifteen-block high-speed chase. As Dotson then approached on foot, two of the occupants attempted to leave the ear. Dotson was able to arrest Maurice F. Irving, the driver, and James Irving, the rear seat passenger. The front seat passenger escaped. After arresting the Irvings, the officer recovered a television set and a gold blanket which were in the car. These articles were identified as those lately stolen from the motel.
A jury found Maurice F. Irving guilty of burglary and petit larceny. He was sentenced to serve 18 months to seven years on the burglary charge and one year on the petit larceny count, the sentences to run concurrently.
The majority reverse solely because they conclude the trial judge erred in one of his definitions of aiding and abetting. Pursuant to counsel’s request, Judge Hart gave several examples of aiding and abetting, using a suppositious bank robbery as an illustration.2 In the last of these examples, the trial judge said:
“Further, though, if B came out of the bank and said I have just robbed it, I have got this sack full of money, let’s go, and then B got in A’s car and A took off and ran knowing that the crime had been committed, and helping in the escape, he could be liable.”
With respect to the foregoing quotation, the majority say:
“The last paragraph of this example was erroneous, in that it did not describe the aiding and abetting of a substantive offense, D.C.Code § 22-105, but rather described the offense of an accessory after the fact, D.C. Code § 22-106. See United States v. Varelli, 407 F.2d 735, 749 (7th Cir. *6541969). Since appellant’s indictment did not charge him with being an accessory after the fact, the giving of this example to the jury was error. See Government of Virgin Islands v. Aquino, 378 F.2d 540, 552-554 (3rd Cir. 1967).”
I disagree. The Varelli case, cited by the majority as authority for saying Judge Hart’s example “did not describe the aiding and abetting of a substantive offense,” involved a situation where the substantive crime had been committed and completed before any participation in it by Varelli. He was an accessory after the fact, therefore, and not an aider and abetter, and the Varelli case so held.
Not so in Judge Hart’s example. There, B had just emerged from the bank he had robbed with the money he had stolen, had gotten in A’s car, informed him of the crime and said, “Let’s go.” Thereupon A took off, knowing that the robbery had been committed. This is quite different from the Varelli case, for here the substantive crime of robbery had not been completed but was still in progress when B entered A’s car and it “took off.”
This is so because asportation is an ingredient of the crime of robbery and, as it had barely begun when B entered A’s car, it was still going on as A drove away; and, therefore, the robbery was still in progress. Thus, A entered into the continuing substantive crime of robbery, and was an aider and abetter therein and not an accessory after the fact as was Varelli.
It is to be noted that in his example Judge Hart said A “could be liable” as an aider and abetter. If, in the example, pursuit of A’s car had immediately begun and been continuously pressed, A undoubtedly would have been liable as an aider and abetter. The absence of pursuit in Judge Hart’s example caused him to say A “could be liable” instead of “would be liable” as an aider and abetter.
Because the majority ignore the fact that, in the trial judge’s example, aspor-tation was still going on and consequently the substantive crime of robbery was still in progress, they err in saying the example “was erroneous, in that it did not describe the aiding and abetting of a substantive offense.” As a consequence, they err in reversing the appellant’s conviction because of this fancied error in Judge Hart’s example.
That asportation is an ingredient of and a continuation of the crime of robbery, after the theft has been accomplished, has been decided by this court. In Carter v. United States,3 Carter robbed one Kozak and shortly thereafter shot and killed a police officer who was pursuing him. He was found guilty of murder in the first degree because he killed the officer during the perpetration of the robbery.
Carter admitted that he robbed Kozak and killed the officer, but appealed from the murder-during-robbery conviction on the theory that he had finished robbing Kozak when he shot the policeman. He argued that when he left “the immediate vicinity * * * there was sufficient asportation * * * to make the robbery complete, there having been no pursuit.” We held “that so long as the essential ingredient of asportation continues, the crime of robbery is still in progress; and * * * that during continuous pursuit immediately organized and begun, asportation is still going on. * * -X- ”
In the Carter case there was a slight interval between the actual theft of the money and the beginning of the pursuit. With respect to this we said, at p. 42, 223 F.2d at 334:
“We have no doubt that the appellant had not secured to himself the fruits of the robbery, but was still feloniously carrying away the stolen money when Cassels [the slain policeman] began the chase. The delay was so slight that the bandit had not been *655able to reach a place of seeming security. * * * ”
We quoted with approval the following excerpt from State v. Habig, 106 Ohio St. 151, 140 N.E. 195, 197-198 (1922), a case strikingly similar to the Carter case as to facts and the legal question presented:
“It will therefore be seen that the commission of the crime necessarily includes not only the violent and forcible taking but also the felonious carrying away of the proceeds of the robbery. It is argued with both force and logic that the crime is complete when there has been a violent and forcible taking, though the asportation of the goods may be ever so slight, and from this it is claimed that when the crime of robbery is once complete any homicide thereafter committed, connected with the robbery, is not a commission of homicide in perpetrating a robbery. * * * Though the crime of robbery is complete with only a slight asportation, yet, if the carrying away is in fact a long distance, the crime is still in process of commission if pursuit of the robber is immediately begun and continued without interruption until the flight has carried the perpetrator to a place of seeming security, or until uninterrupted pursuit is no longer continuously active. The mere fact of delay in beginning the pursuit until an alarm can be sounded and pursuit organized and instituted does not necessarily segregate the flight and prevent it being part and parcel of the crime. * * -x-
Maurice Irving had a much more active part in this burglary and larceny than did A in the bank robbery in Judge Hart’s example. After a wild chase, he was captured in exclusive4 and unexplained possession of recently stolen articles, from which fact the jury could infer that he had stolen them; and from his desperate flight, the jury could infer a consciousness of guilt. Its verdict shows the jury made those permissible inferences. Moreover, the pursuit of the appellant immediately began and continued uninterruptedly until he was captured; thus the asportation of the stolen articles was a continuing part of the original substantive larceny and the burglary which preceded it.
It becomes apparent, therefore, that what the appellant did brands him, not as an accessory after the fact, but at least as an aider and abetter; and Judge Hart’s example was not error. This makes inapposite the Bollenbach, McFarland and Kitchen eases, relied upon by the majority, which turned on erroneous instructions while the case before us does not. Bollenbach was convicted as a principal on the theory that he was an aider and abetter; but, unlike the present appellant, he did not participate until the substantive crime had been completed, and so was held to be only an accessory after the fact.
The McFarland and Kitchen cases did not deal with aiding and abetting or with accessory after the fact. Both were reversed because of an erroneous instruction and neither has application here.
In an effort to avoid the impact of this dissent, the majority have added two paragraphs to their footnote 10. These paragraphs contain inaccuracies and mistakes of law which I now point out.
The remarks of Judge Hart, which the majority regard as reversible error, were not an instruction on burglary, as they seem to think, but an illustration of aiding and abetting in the crime of robbery. It was only that illustration which the majority say was wrong and only because of that is appellant’s conviction overturned. I have already demonstrated that Judge Hart’s example was quite *656correct, and that the majority err in reversing on the idea that A in the illustration was not an aider and abetter but nothing more than an accessory after the fact. They still completely ignore the element of asportation in the example.
The majority say in their addition to footnote 10: “Asportation is no element of the crime of burglary. Burglary was complete by the time the other participants left the building.” In making these statements the majority forget that the burglary was immediately followed by larceny, including the aspor-tation of the stolen articles. And they ignore the fact that during asportation the appellant was in unexplained, exclusive possession of the recently stolen goods, which led to his conviction of both burglary and larceny. See McNamara v. Henkel, infra,.
This court [Judge Justin Miller, writing for himself and the late Judges Groner and Edgerton] said in Edwards v. United States, 78 U.S.App.D.C. 226, 139 F.2d 365 (1943), cert. denied 321 U.S. 769, 64 S.Ct. 523, 88 L.Ed. 1064 (1944):
“This court has held that possession of recently stolen property, unexplained, is sufficient to support a verdict of guilty in larceny. Housebreaking, robbery and burglary are merely aggravated forms of larceny and there is no reason why evidence competent in one case should not be competent, also, in the others. * * * [Footnotes omitted.]”
The majority’s attempt to distinguish between the burglary and larceny in this case is further shown to be invalid by what Mr. Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote in McNamara v. Henkel, 226 U.S. 520, 524-525, 33 S.Ct. 146, 147, 57 L.Ed. 330 (1913):
“ * * -x- js objected that while possession of property recently stolen may be evidence of participation in the larceny, the apparent possession of the automobile by the appellant affords no support for a conclusion that he committed the burglary, the crime with which he was charged. The permissible inference is not thus to be limited. The evidence pointed to the appellant as one having control of the car and engaged in the endeavor to secure the fruits of the burglarious entry. Possession in these circumstances tended to show guilty participation in the burglary. This is but to accord to the evidence, if unexplained, its natural probative force. [Citations omitted.]
Maurice Irving not only did not testify but also presented no real defense and introduced no witnesses. He was convicted by ample proof; in fact, he was literally caught in the act, that is, in the unexplained, exclusive possession of recently stolen goods. This reversal, based on the mistaken notion that there was an erroneous instruction, is the sort of thing which causes concerned citizens to criticize the courts.
For the reasons given, I dissent.

. He did introduce a stipulation that, on the day before the incident involved here, he had been arrested for driving without a license. If he hoped the jury would accept this as the reason for his flight, he was disappointed.

. The judge’s language is reproduced in the first paragraph of the majority opinion.

. 96 U.S.App.D.C. 40, 223 F.2d 332 (1955), cert. denied 350 U.S. 949, 76 S.Ct. 324, 100 L.Ed. 827 (1956).

. Two or more persons may have the exclusive possession of stolen property. Weis-man v. United States, 1 F.2d 696 (8th Cir. 1924); State v. Raymond, 46 Conn. 345; Flamer v. Delaware, Del.Supr., 227 A.2d 123, 127 (1967); Graham v. State, 6 Md.App. 458, 251 A.2d 616, 619-620 (1969).