Court Opinion

ID: 9462121
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:32:30.628142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:24.919587
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. The majority opinion cannot fairly be reconciled with the teaching of Bronston v. United States, 409 U.S. 352, 93 S.Ct. 595, 34 L.Ed.2d 568 (1973), and United States v. Cook, 489 F.2d 286 (9th Cir. 1973).1
Before a grand jury, Cash was asked whether he knew the name, home town, and physical condition of the “seller” of stolen postal bonds. Cash responded that he did not. It is beyond doubt that the questions asked of Cash were fairly susceptible of two interpretations. The questions can be read as inquiring about “Bishop,” who, as the majority recognizes, was only the purported seller of the bonds,2 but they can also be interpreted as asking about the true seller of the bonds, who apparently was someone other than Bishop.
The Government’s evidence against Cash proved only that he knew, or knew of, Bishop. I have searched the record in vain for any proof whatsoever that Cash knew the identity of the true seller of the bonds. Since Cash could reasonably have interpreted the questions as being inquiries about the true seller, and since the Government offered no proof that Cash’s answers, as they related to the true seller, were false, the judgment of conviction should be reversed.
After reviewing the transcript of the trial proceedings, however, the majority has concluded that Cash knew that the prosecutor was asking about Bishop, the purported seller. On this basis, the majority assumes that Cash’s answers related to Bishop and concludes, therefore, that the Government proved that Cash committed perjury. I submit that the majority’s logic is flawed.
Cash may have understood quite clearly that the Government’s interrogator wanted answers about Bishop. But Cash may also have realized that the questions could fairly be interpreted as asking for information about the true seller. He might have chosen, therefore, to answer unresponsively, yet as to the true seller, truthfully.3 Taking this very plausible view of the facts, the prosecution did not prove, beyond a reasonable doubt or otherwise, that Cash’s answers were knowing falsehoods, an essential element of the alleged crime. See 18 U.S.C. § 1623 (“Whoever . . . knowingly makes any false material declaration . shall be fined ... or imprisoned.”).
In Bronston, the Supreme Court expressly noted that the answer for which Bronston was prosecuted might not have been “guileless” and that, in fact, the *1031answer may have been “shrewdly calculated to evade.” 409 U.S. at 362, 93 S.Ct. 595. Yet the Court reversed Bronston’s conviction because the Government had not proved his answer to have been knowingly false. Like the majority has done here, the Second Circuit had examined the transcript of Bronston’s trial and affirmed his conviction after concluding that he fully understood that his examiner was questioning him about his personal bank accounts, not those of his corporation. United States v. Bronston, 453 F.2d 555, 558 (2d Cir.), rev’d, 409 U.S. 352, 93 S.Ct. 595, 34 L.Ed.2d 568 (1973).4
The majority does not base its disposition on a holding that Cash failed to raise the Bronston-Cook issue at his trial. Rather, my Brothers rely on Cash’s use of another line of defense at trial, which was that Cash’s own testimony was more credible than the testimony of Postal Inspector Jones, as support for their conclusion that Cash understood that the questions asked of him were specific inquiries about Bishop. Cash did, in fact, raise the Bronston-Cook issue at trial, and he has properly presented it, along with other issues, on this appeal. At trial, Cash first moved for a judgment of acquittal on the basis of the BronstonCook rationale, and then, when the motion was denied, he requested, unsuccessfully, a jury instruction embodying certain of the Supreme Court’s language in Bronston. It is quite understandable that Cash’s attorney failed to argue the Bronston theory to the jury. First, it was matter that properly should have been argued to the trial judge, as it was, after the prosecution had presented its evidence. Second, the judge refused Cash’s requested instruction on the Bronston theory; consequently, the defense attorney was unjustifiably precluded from presenting the defense in summation.
I would reverse.

. See also my dissent to our court’s first opinion in Cook, which is reported at 497 F.2d 753, 762 (9th Cir. 1972). The first Cook opinion was vacated by our second opinion, which was issued after the Supreme Court decided Bronston and is reported at 489 F.2d 286 (9th Cir. 1973).

. Indeed, there was no evidence at trial to prove that “Jack Bishop” even existed. He may have been a purely fictional character.

. I do not mean to imply that Cash did not know the identity of the true seller of the bonds. From the record, we cannot say whether he did or did not so know. My point is only that the prosecution did not prove, as was its burden to do so, that Cash knew the true seller’s identity.

. In Bronston, the Supreme Court strongly emphasized that a perjury prosecution is not the proper remedy for a witness’s evasive and misleading, yet truthful, answers. The remedy must lie in increased acuity in the examiner’s questions. 409 U.S. at 358-59, 360, 362, 93 S.Ct. 595. That remedy could have been applied so easily here. Had the Government’s counsel asked the following questions, and had Cash continued to answer as he did, I would have no difficulty in voting to affirm Cash’s conviction:
1. Did you tell Postal Inspector Jones that you had a friend named Bishop?
2. Did you tell Postal Inspector Jones that Bishop lived in Bakersfield, California?
3. Did you tell Postal Inspector Jones that Bishop was dying of cancer?
4. Did you tell Postal Inspector Jones that Bishop had placed something like $800,000 worth of postal bonds with Shearson, Ham-mill in Beverly Hills?
Obviously, there is a seminal danger in permitting perjury prosecutions to go forth on the basis of answers given to ambiguous questions. We should foreclose any prospect that an interrogator might choose intentionally to couch his questions in ambiguous terms in the hope that the answers might give rise to a plausible charge of perjury.