Court Opinion

ID: 9467555
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:51:30.39992+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:24.332102
License: Public Domain

DUMBAULD, Senior District Judge,
dissenting:
It is plain that appellant violated 18 U.S.C. 208, which provides that “whoever, being an officer or employee of the ... United States Government . .. participates personally and substantially as a Government officer or employee, through decision, approval, disapproval, recommendation, the rendering of advice, investigation, or otherwise ... in a matter in which, to his knowledge, he ... has a financial interest” is guilty of a criminal offense. He induced an educational program of HEW, of which he was regional supervisor, to buy audio-visual equipment from an undertaker associated with him in purchasing elsewhere the equipment recommended and reselling it to the HEW program.
However, in my opinion, his criminal conduct was perpetrated more than five years before the indictment was returned on August 29, 1979, and prosecution is thus precluded by the statute of limitations (18 U.S.C. 3282).
The crime was complete when appellant recommended the purchase of equipment from his firm. He would have been guilty even if his subordinate had rejected his suggestion and had purchased from a competitor. His subsequent actions in delivering merchandise or collecting payment (which the Government relies on to avoid the statute of limitations) might perhaps be regarded as acting (under the other hat of his conflicting capacities) as agent of the seller rather than “as a Government officer or employee” on behalf of the buyer. In any event such action is not an element of the crime as defined by Congress. If the equipment broke down ten years later, and appellant repaired it, such conduct would hardly be thought adequate to serve as a basis for prosecution at that late date; but the reasoning of the majority of the panel would lead to that result.
The words “or otherwise” should be interpreted under the rule of ejusdem generis. They obviously refer to other modes of exerting influence or pressure upon the government agency to favor the seller in which appellant has a financial interest. They do not include within the crime mere ministerial conduct on the part of the seller in performing a contract. The majority opinion places on those two words a burden heavier than they can support.
Legislative history offers no support for the majority position. We are not confronted with the question whether appellant’s conduct would have violated the former legislation, 18 U.S.C. 434, making criminal the action of a person with a pecuniary interest in a business entity who “is employed or acts as an agent of the United States for the transaction of business with such business entity.”1 For Congress repealed § 434 when it enacted § 208 in 1962. It is of course true that the purpose of Congress in enacting § 208 was to make criminal preliminary actions which might not amount to actual “transaction of business,” to punish one acting “behind the scenes” as well as the “front man.” But since the language of § 434 was replaced by that of § 208, it is the current wording which governs and controls the case at bar.
Nor are we confronted with a charge of conspiracy, under the general conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371, between appellant and his associate to violate § 208. The delivery of goods and receipt of payment might well constitute overt acts in further*880anee of such a conspiracy.2 But appellant was not indicted for conspiracy, and it is an elementary principle of our law that a defendant cannot be convicted of a crime with which he is not charged. Stirone v. U. S., 361 U.S. 212, 217, 80 S.Ct. 270, 4 L.Ed.2d 252 (1960). Perhaps, to paraphrase Cardozo’s famous aphorism,3 a guilty man here would go free because the draftsman of the indictment blundered in failing to allege conspiracy; but under the language of § 208 effect should be given to the salutary policy of repose which Congress embodied in the statute of limitations.4
I respectfully dissent.

. That legislation was broadly interpreted in the Dixon-Yates affair, U. S. v. Mississippi Valley Generating Co., 364 U.S. 520, 524, 548-53, 81 S.Ct. 294, 304, 5 L.Ed.2d 268 (1961).

. See U. S. v. Payne, in this Court, 635 F.2d 643.

. “The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.” People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13, 21, 150 N.E. 585 (1926), quoted in Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 at 413, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 2013, 29 L.Ed.2d 619.

. Likewise, a court should have no qualms about letting a guilty defendant go free, because of the lapse of time, when Congress has, under the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161 et seq., prescribed that result in cases where court congestion prevents his trial within the time limits set forth in the legislation.