Court Opinion

ID: 9639686
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:44:46.490011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:21.000021
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the conclusion of the majority that the record contains ample evidence to support the judgment as to the Ansleys; I dissent from the conclusion that it does as to Bernice Miller Lewis. The offense of which she was convicted was conspiracy to commit and not the commission of a substantive offense. There was proof connecting her with one of the overt acts, the sale by Lewis to the informer. Agreement, however, is the gist of the offense of conspiracy. Overt acts are no part of the offense, and the only effect of their requirement is to afford “a locus pcenitentias, so that before the act done, either one or all of the parties may abandon their design.” United States v. Britton, 108 U.S. 199, 2 S.Ct. 531, 534, 27 L.Ed. 698, as quoted in United States v. Manton, 2 Cir., 107 F.2d 834. There is absolutely no evidence that she knew of or was a party to any agreement between Lewis and Ansley. She testified positively that she knew nothing of it. Nobody testified that she did. She could not be guilty of conspiracy with her husband alone, Dawson v. United States, 9 Cir., 10 F.2d 106, because conspiracy is a criminal relationship which at common law a married woman is incapable of sustaining with her husband. Potter v. Motor Lines, D.C., 57 F.2d 313. More, if a wife act in company with her husband in the commission of a felony other than treason or homicide, it is conclusively presumed that she acted under his coercion and is consequently without any guilty intent, United States Trust Co. of New York v. Sedgwick, 97 U.S. 304, 24 L.Ed. 954. Cf. Haning v. United States, 8 Cir., 59 F.2d 942. The evidence shows that the husband of this woman was a convicted murderer and a whiskey operator and given to heavy drinking. Mrs. Lewis testified: “After we were married, Mr. Lewis told me he was engaged in the liquor business. I did not participate in it. I did not let him have *209the money to engage in it. He wanted me to but I did not let him have it.” It is in evidence, too, that she is now divorced from him. No ordinary woman could refuse to do what she did in this case, go on an errand for this man. There is no evidence that Mrs. Lewis was a super woman. I respectfully submit that to convict her under these circumstances of a conspiracy is unwarranted. The Government, in its brief, is apparently of the same opinion, for while it did not ask for a reversal, it did not insist upon an affirmance as to her. She is now free of Lewis. I think we should free her of the consequences of having gotten into his power by reversing the judgment as to her, and I dissent from its affirmance.