Court Opinion

ID: 9422150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:01:28.608622+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:32.960312
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom Mr. Justice Clark, Mr. Justice Harlan and Mr. Justice Whittaker join,
dissenting.
This is a prosecution brought under 18 U. S. C. § 6411 upon an indictment containing several counts. One charged the defendant Virginia Milanovich, petitioner herein, with the theft of government property; another charged her with receiving the stolen property with an intent to convert it to her own use. Both counts were allowed to go to the jury which explicitly found the defendant guilty on each of the two counts.
*557This was the evidence on which the jury must have based their verdict against the defendant. She and her husband, as owners of an automobile, transported three others under an arrangement whereby the three were to break into a United States naval commissary building with a view to stealing government funds. Defendant and her husband were to remain outside for the return of their accomplices after the accomplishment of the theft. In fact, for one reason or another, husband and wife drove off without awaiting the return of their friends. Not finding the automobile where they had left it, the thieves buried the booty. No share of the stolen money ever touched the hand of petitioner or was in any sense received by her until seventeen days later when, after she had removed some of the booty from the base, it was soon after discovered by FBI agents during a legal search of the premises. Since she herself was not an active participant in the breaking in and thieving, she was amenable to § 641 because she, as an accessory, was legally deemed a principal under 18 U. S. C. § 2.2 On this basis the trial judge submitted the case to the jury and the jury was enabled to find her guilty of the substantive offense of stealing government property, as well as to return a verdict of guilty on the receiving charge. The trial judge then sentenced the defendant on each of the counts. Because of the extensive criminal record of the defendant, he imposed a sentence of ten years on the thieving count and five years on the receiving count, the sentences to run concurrently.
*558The Court of Appeals, drawing on our decision in Heflin v. United States, 358 U. S. 415, deemed it necessary to set aside the sentence imposed on the receiving count. It read Heflin as holding that the crime of receiving was solely directed to those who were not convicted of stealing; the latter conviction was therefore invalidated. The Court, likewise relying on Heflin, today holds that since the jury should have been instructed that they had power to return a verdict of guilty on only one count, the proceedings against the defendant must start all over again, since a reviewing court cannot predict what the jury would have done under proper instructions.
Both of these conclusions rest, I believe, on a wholly unwarranted reliance on Heflin. They disregard the only issue that was before the Court in that case, and thereby misconceive its holding. Today’s decision reflects the common-law doctrine of merger and the consequences of such merger on the requirements of criminal procedure — specifically, what separate counts may be laid in an indictment and the duty of a trial judge in charging the jury the kind of a verdict they may return to an indictment of multiple counts.
It is hornbook law that a thief cannot be charged with committing two offenses — that is, stealing and receiving the goods he has stolen. E. g., Cartwright v. United States, 146 F. 2d 133; State v. Tindall, 213 S. C. 484, 50 S. E. 2d 188; see 2 Wharton, Criminal Law and Procedure, § 576; 136 A. L. R. 1087. And this is so for the commonsensical, if not obvious, reason that a man who takes property does not at the same time give himself the property he has taken. In short, taking and receiving, as a contemporaneous — indeed a coincidental — phenomenon, constitute one transaction in life and, therefore, not two transactions in law. It also may well be that a person who does not himself take but is a contemporaneous par-*559ticipaiit as an aider and abettor in the taking is also a participant in a single transaction and therefore has committed but a single offense. Regina v. Coggins, 12 Cox C. C. 517; Regina v. Perkins, 2 Den. C. C. 458, 169 Eng. Rep. 582; Rex v. Owen, 1 Moody C. C. 96, 168 Eng. Rep. 1200. In such a case, the jury must be told that the taking and receiving, being but a single transaction, constitute, of course, only one crime. See Commonwealth v. Haskins, 128 Mass. 60. (This, of course, does not bar Congress from outlawing and punishing as separate offenses the severable ingredients of one compound transaction. See Core v. United States, 357 U. S. 386.)
The case before us presents a totally different situation — not a coincidental or even a contemporaneous transaction, in the loosest conception of contemporaneity. Here we have two clearly severed transactions. The case against the defendant — and the only case — presented two behaviors or transactions by defendant clearly and decisively separated in time and in will. The intervening seventeen days between defendant’s accessorial share in the theft and her conduct as a recipient left the amplest opportunities for events outside her control to frustrate her hope of sharing in the booty, or ample time for her to change her criminal purpose and avail herself of a locus poenitentiae. Two larcenies, separated in time, would not be merged; what legal difference between the two situations here?
It surely is fair to say that in the common understanding of men such disjointed and discontinuous behaviors by Mrs. Milanovich — (1) bringing thieves to the scene of their projected crime and departing without further ado before the theft had been perpetrated, and (2) taking possession seventeen days later of part of the booty— cannot be regarded as a single, merged transaction in any intelligible use of English. And that which makes no sense to the common understanding surely is not required *560by any Active notions of law or even by the most sentimental attitude toward criminals. I venture to believe that not a single case concerned with a situation comparable to that now before the Court can be found in the law reports of England, of any of the States of this country, or of the federal courts, in which it was held or suggested that two disjointed, decisively separated manifestations of conduct constitute as a matter of law a single, fused transaction. An ample canvass of the reports has certainly not revealed the existence of such a case, and one reads the opinion of the Court in vain to find a suggestion that any such precedent is available.
One can say with confidence that Heflin is no warrant for the conclusion pronounced by the Court. There was not the remotest suggestion in the petition that brought that case here, in the briefs that were submitted before argument, in the oral argument, or in the opinion which formulated the decision, that the case was concerned with the power of the court to submit the several counts to the jury and the right of the jury to convict on separate counts for conduct charging separate transactions clearly separated in fact. In Heflin, the jury convicted defendant on separate counts of bank robbery and receiving stolen money. We held that we could find “no purpose of Congress to pyramid penalties for lesser offenses following the robbery,” and therefore ruled against the cumulation of punishments, but found no impropriety in submitting both counts to the jury. I find not a word, not a hint, not a subtle innuendo suggesting that the case dealt with criminal procedure — that is, with submission of different counts to a jury, with the appropriateness of the judge’s charge to the jury, or with the right of a jury to bring in separate verdicts on separate counts on the basis of evidence justifying such submission and such verdicts.
Heflin is one of a recent series of cases having to do with what the Court in Prince v. United States, 352 U. S. *561322, 325, called “fragmentation of crimes for purposes of punishment.” Beginning with Bell v. United States, 349 U. S. 81, these cases concerned the propriety of cumulative sentences within different statutory frameworks.3 “It may fairly be said to be a presupposition of our law to resolve doubts in the enforcement of a penal code against the imposition of a harsher punishment . . . [when] Congress does not fix the punishment for a federal offense clearly and without ambiguity . . . .” Bell v. United States, supra, at 83-84. In not one of these cases will there be found a word having to do with how crimes should be charged, how submitted to the jury, or what verdicts the jury may return. Heflin, like the rest of these cases, was concerned with the duty of the trial judge in sentencing after the jury was through with its job. Indeed, in all these cases, there were several counts on which the jury found a verdict and the issue arose not as to the propriety of leaving all the counts to the jury, but what sentence should be imposed after the verdict had been returned.
*562To draw from Heflin the doctrine that an aider and abettor to a theft who at an appreciably later time receives some of the stolen goods may not be charged on separate counts for both transactions, or that a judge may not leave both counts for a jury verdict of guilt on either one or both, when no such question was in issue or adverted to in Heflin, is to disregard the whole philosophy of our law based on precedents. It is to base reliance on a case for a new doctrine when that case affords no sustenance for it.
I agree with the District Court in the imposition of two sentences to run concurrently.4

 “Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof; or
“Whoever receives, conceals, or retains the same with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined or converted—
“Shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; but if the value of such property does not exceed the sum of $100, he shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

 “(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.
“(b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.”

 In Bell, the defendant pleaded guilty to an indictment under the Mann Act which charged him in two counts with transporting two women, respectively, for immoral purposes on one trip. This Court held that Congress did not intend to make “simultaneous transportation of more than one woman in violation of the Mann Act liable to cumulative punishment for each woman so transported.” 349 U. S., at 82-83.
In Prince, two counts of an indictment charging, respectively, entering a bank with intent to rob and robbery were submitted to the jury, which returned verdicts of guilty on both. The Court held that the sentences could not be cumulated and remanded the case to the District Court for resentencing, but made no reference to the fact that two counts were laid and found by the jury.
In Callanan v. United States, 364 U. S. 587, defendant was convicted on separate counts for conspiracy and extortion. In view of the historic distinctiveness of a conspiracy from the substantive offense which is its object, we held that Congress had made allowable consecutive sentences under the applicable statute.

 I agree with this Court that the husband’s claim of trial error is without merit.