Court Opinion

ID: 9455277
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:17:21.36229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:31.760978
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
In view of my brother Friendly’s dissent, I will comment briefly on the nature of the connection between the conspiracy and the quoted testimony, which persuades me that the Marino-Desser telephone conversations were in furtherance of the conspiracy and that Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968) is not applicable.
The victims of the fraudulent scheme were business men who fell into roughly two groups: Desser and Bernstein were identified with one, and the Shapiros with the other. There was, however, but one conspiracy and one set of co-conspirators who mulct all those whom they could ensnare.
The time came when the conspirators became convinced that they had squeezed the last sou out of Desser, but his money had been deposited in escrow with Littman and he had signed and delivered releases, drafted by Littman and running to Littman and Marino, stating that he, Desser, no longer had any claim to the funds. To discourage Desser from entertaining the idea that he might take some legal action to void the releases and recover his money, it was important to the conspiracy to convince Desser that Littman was acting as lawyer for the conspirators, that he had seen to it that they were in a legally sound position, and that it would be hopeless and futile to attempt any such thing. In addition to this, the threats of torture and other reprisals were designed to keep Desser in terrorem, and fully convinced that any attempt at recovery would be not only useless but dangerous.
There is another reason why it was essential to the furtherance and successful completion of the conspiracy that Desser be kept in a condition of helplessness and abject fear, and that is, that the Shapiros had only paid over a part of what the conspirators expected to extract from them. If Desser told them of the fraudulent nature of the scheme, the Shapiros would refuse to make any further payments. This was a problem built into the nature of the conspiracy where the plan was to extort money out of several persons nearly contemporaneously. Once a victim had been cleaned out and realized that he had been defrauded, he was likely to reveal what had happened, and the conspiracy would be disrupted before it was carried to its full fruition. It was, therefore, a part of the plan to make the earlier victims so terrified that they would be afraid to speak.
This is distinguishable from Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, 69 S.Ct. 716, 93 L.Ed. 790 (1949); Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604, 73 S.Ct. 481, 97 L.Ed. 919 (1953); and Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 77 S.Ct. 963, 1 L.Ed.2d 931 (1957), which held that a subsidiary conspiracy to conceal the crime and avoid detection and punishment will not be implied as a part of the original conspiracy, the criminal purposes of which have been achieved. Rather, the present case comes within the exclusion from that rule, which the Court stated as follows:
“By no means does this mean that acts of concealment can never have *985significance in furthering a criminal conspiracy. But a vital distinction must be made between acts of concealment done in furtherance of the main criminal 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.” Grunewal v. United States, supra at 405, 77 S.Ct. at 974.
The trial judge’s original ruling was correct and when he reversed himself and instructed the jury to disregard the testimony in question, he gave Littman an advantage to which he was not entitled. The statements were admissible as made in furtherance of the conspiracy and are not barred by the rule in the Bruton case.