Court Opinion

ID: 9474641
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:03:57.037474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:13.904360
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Green neither committed mail fraud nor received a fair trial.
His job for the police department was to mail letters to people suspected of having left the scene of an accident — letters inviting them to come in and explain their conduct — and then to interview them when they came in and make recommendations to his superiors for further action. The fraud consisted of extorting money from the people interviewed, and was a fraud on the police department. The government had to show not that the fraudulent scheme would have failed if Green hadn’t mailed the letters but that he mailed them “for the purpose of executing” the scheme. 18 U.S.C. § 1341. It is not enough that the mailings were “a step in a plot.” That is a cropped quotation from Badders v. United States, 240 U.S. 391, 394, 36 S.Ct. 367, 368, 60 L.Ed. 706 (1916), where Justice Holmes said, “Intent may make an otherwise innocent act criminal, if it is a step in a plot. The acts alleged [the mailings] have been found to have been done for the purpose of executing the scheme____” (Citations omitted.)
It is tempting in a mail fraud case to think of the fraud as the important thing, and the use of the mails as a boring detail. But it is the mailing, not the fraud, that is the crime; each count of the mail fraud part of the indictment against Green is a separate mailing, not a separate fraud. And a mailing violates the statute only when it is made for a fraudulent purpose. The focus of this case should have been on the purpose of the mailings; if that purpose was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be fraud, Green was entitled to an acquittal.
No reasonable jury, properly instructed (this one was not, as we shall see), could have found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that fraud was Green’s purpose in mailing the letters. So far as appears, he mailed them only because it was his official duty to notify by mail persons who he discovered had left the scene of an accident. If he hadn’t mailed the letters he would have been fired. He took advantage of the flow of miscreants that the letters generated to extort money; but it was not to generate the flow that he mailed the letters; it was to keep his job. There is no evidence that he took the job because it would give him an opportunity by use of the mails to reel in fish to shake down, or that he mailed letters to people he thought particularly susceptible to being shaken down, or mailed more letters than he would have done if he had not had fraud in his heart or drafted the letters in such a way as to make it easier to shake down the recipients. He did not draft the letters. They were form letters, which he mailed indiscriminately to anyone believed to have left *256the scene of an accident — an average of 1,500 a year. We do not even know whether he contemplated fraud at the time that he mailed any of the letters. In particular we do not know whether he contemplated fraud when he mailed the first one for which he was convicted or when he mailed the letter that brought in a person who offered him a bribe unsolicited, which was the basis of another count. The silence of the government’s brief on these issues is deafening.
It is true that in its rebuttal case the government showed that Green had shaken down a recipient of one of his letters months before the mailing of the letter that formed the basis of the first count in the indictment. As an original matter one might have thought that this evidence came too late; that if Green should have been acquitted at the close of the prosecutor’s case, when his counsel moved for an acquittal (Fed.R.Crim.P. 29(a)), the error in denying the motion could not be cured by rebuttal evidence. The Second Circuit so held recently. United States v. Neary, 733 F.2d 210, 219-20 (2d Cir.1984). This decision seems, however, inconsistent with a long line of cases in this and other circuits holding that a defendant abandons his motion to acquit by putting in his own case after the motion is denied. See, e.g., McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 215-16, 91 S.Ct. 1454, 1471, 28 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971) (dictum); United States v. Tubbs, 461 F.2d 43, 45 (7th Cir.1972); United States v. Aman, 210 F.2d 344, 345-46 (7th Cir.1954); United States v. Foster, 783 F.2d 1082 (D.C.Cir.1986) (en banc). These cases do not deal with rebuttal evidence, but rebuttal is logically and practically as much a part of the defendant’s case as cross-examination of the defendant's witnesses; and under the rule established in our circuit in Aman, evidence favorable to the government that comes out in the defendant’s case can be used to bolster the government’s case in chief.
This is hardly the case in which to reexamine Aman in light of Neary, especially since Green has not asked us to do so. I shall therefore assume that the evidence of the earlier shakedown could be used to help show that when Green mailed the first letter for which he was indicted he did so with a fraudulent purpose. Only that earlier shakedown doesn’t show this. That a letter was mailed for the purpose of extortion cannot be inferred just from the fact that a recipient of a previous letter was shaken down. The logic of such an approach would be that every letter that Green mailed after he first shook down a recipient constituted a separate, indictable offense under the mail fraud statute; we might see an indictment with more than 1,000 counts, brought against a person who had been required by law to make each mailing that formed the basis of a count. The majority might embrace this logic, for its opinion says that “the jury could infer that in mailing each notice Green had in mind prior episodes of extortion and contemplated future ones.” This seems artificial in the extreme. One might as well say that in brushing his teeth every morning he thought about past and upcoming extortion. All that the evidence shows is that he shook down some, perhaps no more than one in a thousand, of the people he sent letters to. Who can say whether, when he sent the particular letters for the mailing of which he was indicted, he thought to himself, “Ah hah! This letter may reel me in a fish”? Who can say this with the confidence required to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? Although it is possible that Green mailed the letters both because it was his job to do so and because they were the bait for his scheme of extortion, the fact that it was his duty to mail these letters makes it impossible to infer a dual purpose from the bare fact that he shook down some of the recipients. He would have shaken them down to exactly the same extent if the fraud had been conceived independently of the mailings.
The distinction between mailing a letter to execute a fraud and merely taking advantage of a criminal opportunity created by a letter sent for a lawful purpose is at the heart of Parr v. United States, 363 U.S. 370, 80 S.Ct. 1171, 4 L.Ed.2d 1277 *257(1960). The defendants in that case controlled a school board. Among other things they mailed out school tax assessments and then stole the checks that the taxpayers sent in in response. The Supreme Court held that since the board was legally required to assess and collect taxes and the taxes it assessed were in no way unlawful, mailing the assessments did not violate the mail fraud statute. See id. at 390-92, 80 S.Ct. at 1183-84. The letters brought in the money that the defendants stole, but (so far as appeared, at any rate) the letters had been mailed in order to comply with the law rather than to enable a fraud. Likewise here, the letters brought in the people whom Green shook down but there is no reason to think they were sent because they would enable him to commit fraud.
There is an illuminating analogy to the Mann Act, which forbids transporting a woman for an immoral purpose (18 U.S.C. § 2421), just as the mail fraud statute forbids mailing a letter for a fraudulent purpose. If the immoral purpose is not a motivation for the transportation — if the transportation merely creates an opportunity for immoral activity — the defendant cannot be convicted. See, e.g., United States v. Hon, 306 F.2d 52, 55 (7th Cir.1962) (“while these two persons were engaging in a trip in interstate commerce for a proper purpose, she did incidentally engage in prostitution”). Similarly, in this case extortionate motives appear to have played no role in the sending of the letters, as distinct from the shaking down of the recipients when they came in to be interviewed. Green may be guilty of extortion but there is no evidence that he is guilty of the crime for which he was tried.
There is another and even surer path to this conclusion because it does not require that we speculate on what may have been in Green’s mind when he sent the letters. Since, whatever was floating through Green’s mind then, he would have mailed the letters anyway to hold on to his job, any evil intent on his part could not have been a necessary condition — or “but for” cause — of the mailing. This would (with an irrelevant exception) be a decisive objection to tort liability but not necessarily to criminal liability. If you shoot a person intending to kill him and your bullet hits him at the same moment that he dies from some unrelated and entirely innocent cause, you are not guilty of the tort of wrongful death, cf. Weeks v. McNulty, 101 Tenn. 495, 48 S.W. 809 (1898); Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts § 41, at pp. 265-66 (5th ed. 1984), but you are guilty of attempted murder, cf. United States v. Thomas, 13 U.S.C.M.A. 278, 32 C.M.R. 278 (1962); Shavell, Criminal Law and the Optimal Use of Nonmonetary Sanctions as a Deterrent, 85 Colum.L.Rev. 1232,1253 (1985). The difference between that case and this, however, is that while shooting at another person is (in the absence of privilege) wrongful and dangerous conduct, mailing form letters pursuant to the orders of one’s superiors is not; and conduct that is innocent is not usually criminal merely because it is done from a bad purpose.
In any event Green was not convicted of an attempted violation of the mail fraud statute. And to convict him of the completed crime the government had to show that the letters would not have been mailed had it not been for the fraudulent scheme — as is also clear from Parr. The Court said, “we think it cannot be said that mailings made or caused to be made under the imperative command of duty imposed by state law are criminal under the mail fraud statute, even though some of those who are required to do the mailing for the District plan to steal, when or after received, some indefinite part of its moneys.” 363 U.S. at 391, 80 S.Ct. at 1183 (emphasis added). The majority opinion in the present case calls this a dictum. The operational definition of dictum is, the part of a previous opinion that the court in the current case disagrees with. If what I have quoted is dictum, then what is the holding of Parrl That on the particular and nonrecurring facts the defendants could not be convicted?
Missing from both Parr and this case is a causal connection between the purpose *258and the mailings; the mailings would have occurred anyway. This point has been a ground of decision in other cases besides Parr — showing that Parr is not some legal sport that we are free to ignore because the other courts of appeals have ignored it. See United States v. Curry, 681 F.2d 406, 412 (5th Cir.1982); United States v. Boyd, 606 F.2d 792, 794 (8th Cir.1979) (alternative holding); cf. United States v. Brown, 540 F.2d 364, 377 (8th Cir.1976). The causal point is implicit in United States v. Murphy, 768 F.2d 1518, 1529-30 (7th Cir.1985), where a judge took bribes from criminal lawyers to discharge their clients, and, upon discharge, the client’s cash bond was refunded to his lawyer by mail. These were the mailings that we held violated the mail fraud statute. If the judge had not accepted the bribes, fewer cash bonds would have been refunded. This point, it is true, is not stated in the opinion; but that is because the opinion does not attempt to distinguish the part of Parr that deals with required mailings. Parr is cited, but for a different point. See id. at 1529. In United States v. Mitchell, 744 F.2d 701, 704 (9th Cir.1984), however, the causal point is explicit: “the fraudulent scheme triggered the mailings, which would not have occurred except as a step in the scheme.” (Emphasis added.) In United States v. Bright, 588 F.2d 504, 509-10 (5th Cir.1979), the court noted that “the mailings in Parr would have occurred irrespective of the defendants’ embezzlement____ Here, by contrast, Mississippi’s requirement of notice to the estate’s creditors was triggered by the fraudulent scheme. If Whitten and Ray Bright had not decided to defraud the estate of their late cousin, they would not have had to comply with the state law requiring them to file the creditors’ notice.”
In United States v. Wormick, 709 F.2d 454, 461 (7th Cir.1983), the defendant was a policeman who participated in a scheme of defrauding insurance companies by reporting fictitious accidents and thefts. In one incident an insurance company mailed a check to a rental car agency to pay for the rental of a car by one of the fictitious accident victims. The mailing would not have been made but for the fraudulent scheme. United States v. Fallon, 776 F.2d 727, 729-32 (7th Cir.1985), and the other odometer-tampering cases, involved applications by mail for title documents for cars sold with altered odometers. Without the alterations the cars might not have been sold or might not have been sold so soon. The mailings were the last step in the execution of the fraud and the defendant could be said to have caused them to be made in order to complete, to perfect, the scheme; a person is held to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts, even if he has no particular desire to bring them about. United States v. McAnally, 666 F.2d 1116, 1119 (7th Cir.1981). But if the acts (extortion) have no consequences (altering the pattern of mailings), other evidence of intent becomes necessary. (This assumes, though I do not believe, that we can ignore the part of Parr that requires proof that the mailings would not have occurred but for the defendant’s fraudulent designs, a requirement not satisfied in this case.) As the same number of letters would have been sent at the same time to the same people, saying the same things, even if Green had been as pure as the driven snow, one can’t reason from the mailings backward to the intent with which they were made. Yet no other evidence of intent was introduced — no evidence that if Green had had any discretion in the matter he would have mailed the letters. It seems that he had no intent to use the mails to further his scheme but merely took advantage of the happenstance that the mails brought him potential victims. I cannot see what difference it makes whether a Green steals money from letters replying to his invitations (Parr) or shakes down the addressees.
The difference between requiring proof of purpose and requiring proof of consequence (that the fraudulent scheme affected the timing, number, or contents of the mailings) is not great in practice, which may be why these elements are conflated in Parr. If the mailings are just what they *259would have been if compliance with law had been the defendant’s sole purpose, the government will find it impossible — unless the defendant makes an admission, or unless there is evidence that the defendant had taken the job in order to be in a position to execute a fraud — to prove the counterfactual proposition that even if the mailings had not been required the defendant would have made them. So the precise interpretation of Parr is unimportant; all that is important is that it forecloses conviction in a case with this record. I add that if the decision in this case stands, the mail fraud statute will be ludicrously encompassing. Suppose a clerk in a corner grocery store, as he is required by the nature of his job to do, mails hundreds of bills to customers with charge accounts, and steals from the cash register some of the cheeks he deposits there when the customers pay their bills — and is indicted on hundreds of counts of federal mail fraud. This hypothetical case (minus the hundreds of counts) was as a matter of fact argued to the Supreme Court by Parr’s counsel, and seems to me the type of case the Court meant to rule out of the mail fraud statute and confine to the jurisdiction of state criminal law. The present case is indistinguishable.
Even if there was evidence from which it could be inferred that Green mailed the letters in order to execute the fraud, the instructions did not frame the jury’s inquiry correctly. Prosecution and defense each submitted an instruction on mailing and the judge gave them both, resulting in the following mishmash:
The government must prove that the United States mails were used to carry out the scheme. A defendant causes the mails to be used when use of the mails can reasonably be foreseen.
Use of the mails need not be contemplated by the scheme and the defendant need not do any actual mailing.
Although the item mailed need not contain a fraudulent representation or promise or request for money, it must further or attempt to further the scheme.
Legally required mailings or routine mailings made in the regular course of business may further or attempt to further the scheme to defraud. It is for you to decide whether the mailings charged were in furtherance of the scheme.
This says: use of the mails must be reasonably foreseeable but need not be contemplated. Maybe this is an effort to distinguish between what is foreseen and what is foreseeable, but if so it is unclear; and since Green did the mailings there was no issue in the case as to whether the mailings were foreseen, foreseeable, or contemplated. These instructions also say that the mailings must be in furtherance of the scheme but that an attempt to further it is enough; yet the statutory language is execute or attempt to execute; and this is more precise, and narrower, than “further or attempt to further.” The reference in the instructions to legally required mailings gets Parr backwards. Most important, the jury is not told that the purpose of the mailings must be to execute or attempt to execute the fraud.
An earlier instruction, in summarizing the elements of the crime, had told the jury that it must find that the government had proved (among other things) “that, for the purpose of carrying out the scheme or attempting to do so, the defendant used the United States mails or caused the United States mails to be used in furtherance of the scheme in the manner charged in the particular count.” But the reference to purpose is obscure in this passage, and is hopelessly obfuscated by the specific instructions on mailing quoted earlier.
The instructions on mailing are a mass of confusion and irrelevance and it seems to me to make a mockery of trial by jury to allow a person to be sent to jail on the basis of what a jury might have thought such instructions required it to decide. The giving of them was plain error which we can correct even though the point was not preserved by the defendant. See Fed.R. Crim.P. 52(b). Plain error, it is true, is not just clear error, and not just clear error that is not harmless; it is clear error that *260probably changed the outcome of the trial. United States v. Silverstein, 732 F.2d 1338, 1349 (7th Cir.1984). But that high standard is met here. If there is any evidence at all that Green mailed these letters for the purpose of executing this fraud— which I doubt — there is so little that if the jury had been told that it must find such purpose in order to convict Green, probably it would have acquitted him. •
Finally, even if Green could on this record and these instructions have lawfully been convicted of mail fraud, he is entitled to a new trial on the distinct ground of the prosecutor’s misconduct in accusing defense counsel of having stuck a double of Green at counsel table in order to prevent the prosecution’s witnesses from identifying Green. This unfounded accusation was intended and likely to poison the jury against Green and shore up in a most improper way the weakest element in the government’s case. It is no answer that defense counsel should have argued to the jury (as he did to us at argument) that the double was actually there to get credits toward qualifying for membership in the trial bar of the Northern District of Illinois. To make the argument credible he would have had to present evidence; and it was too late to do that in closing argument. Anyway, we can’t expect counsel always to have the mental agility to respond effectively on the spot to an outrageous and unexpected sally by his opponent; and on the spot it would have to be, since this was closing argument. Although the evidence of extortion was strong, it was not so strong, given the vague and unimpressive testimony of the prosecutor’s witnesses, that his dramatic demarche in closing argument can be dismissed as a harmless error. And while I agree that the error in excluding evidence of Novack’s conviction was harmless viewed in isolation, it should not be viewed in isolation; when viewed in combination with the prosecutor’s misconduct it was not harmless.
Although I have little doubt that Green is guilty of extortion (and of a RICO violation as well, see, e.g., United States v. Kovic, 684 F.2d 512, 517 (7th Cir.1982), the predicate offenses for which include extortion punishable under state law, see 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1)(A)), I don’t think he is guilty of mail fraud and I think his trial was unpardonably sloppy. The district judge may have thought the same, as no other explanation comes to mind for the extraordinarily light sentence that he imposed, under which Green will be eligible for parole in six months for a serious abuse of public office that made our streets less safe. A paltry sentence is no cure for a botched prosecution.