Court Opinion

ID: 9479199
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:11:16.056134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:52.959317
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I concur in the opinion of the court as to the conspiracy and false statement counts, and I dissent as to the mail fraud counts.
A narrow, even technical, issue is presented by this appeal, but when a technicality is used to defeat justice it seems appropriate for a court to construe the law technically to achieve justice.
The question is whether the paper of which Kato defrauded the government constitutes property. I see no reason why it does not. If the paper belonged to a private person, it would indisputably be property. Why should the government be less protected from fraud than a private individual?
The case of a private individual is clear if one thinks of a hypothetical in which A by trick takes from B the deed to Blackacre. Anciently, the law did not recognize the paper deed as protected property. Modemly, “all jurisdictions” recognize that written instruments, such as deeds, can be stolen. LaFave & Scott Criminal Law § 8.4.
It is equally well-established law that blank bonds are securities for the purposes of 18 U.S.C. § 2314 forbidding the transport in interstate commerce of stolen securities. U.S. v. Taylor, 802 F.2d 1108, 1115 (9th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1094, 107 S.Ct. 1309, 94 L.Ed.2d 164 (1987). The fact that these blank instruments have more value when filled in does not deprive the paper of its character of being a thing that can be used for fraud. If blank paper can be stolen and transported, is it not property?
The majority in this case seem to think that we are bound by United States v. Dadanian, 856 F.2d 1391 (9th Cir.1988). But the issue as to whether the paper on which the license was issued in that case was property was not decided by that court.
The Supreme Court decided McNally on June 24, 1987. Congress in effect over*272ruled the court on November 18, 1988 by enacting Pub.L. 100-690, Title VII § 7603(a), 18 U.S.C. § 1346. There is thus no reason to stretch McNally as though it were a landmark decision indicating the proper direction of the law. The Supreme Court itself substantially limited McNally by holding that intangible rights constituted property for mail fraud purposes. Carpenter v. United States, 484 U.S. 19, 108 S.Ct. 316, 320, 98 L.Ed.2d 275 (1987). It is strange to have this court strain to expand the reasoning of McNally in order to acquit the operator of a squalid scheme making money from a practice dangerous to the public safety by a method which involved depriving the United States of tangible property that the government would not have surrendered without being tricked by the fraud of the defendant.