Court Opinion

ID: 9484493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:55:03.69621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:16.756918
License: Public Domain

LOKEN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. In denying Selwyn’s post-verdict motion for judgment of acquittal, the district court explained:
The court instructed the jury, as requested by defendant, according to the Eighth Circuit Manual of Pattern Instructions § 6.18.1709:
The crime of embezzling mail as charged in the indictment has three essential elements which are:
One: the defendant was a United States Postal Service employee at the time stated in the indictment;
Two: in his position with the Postal Service, the defendant had possession of a package which was intended to be conveyed by mail; and
Three: the defendant took from that package a dress with the intent to convert it to his own use.
The court instructed the jury that to embezzle means “willfully to take, or convert to one’s own use, another’s money or property, of which the wrongdoer acquired possession lawfully, by reason of some office or employment or position of trust.” The court also gave the standard possession instruction, Devitt & Blaekmar § 16.07, which defines actual and constructive, and joint and sole, possession.
.... The statute is specifically cast in the alternative: that defendant embezzled an article in a package “entrusted to him or which comes into his possession intended to be conveyed by mail” (emphasis added). Although the package with the dress may not have been intended to pass through defendant’s hands in the course of its conveyance by mail, the evidence showed that it did come into his actual or constructive possession in his position as a postal employee. He violated his position of trust as a postal employee with regard to the package. This is sufficient to support his conviction under § 1709. In my view, this is a correct construction of the statute that is factually supported by the trial record. I would affirm.