Court Opinion

ID: 9475233
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:21:01.399263+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:35.425527
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The federal mail fraud statute is a difficult one to administer judicially. The fraud it is designed to prohibit is often subtle and difficult to detect. Consequently, proving an allegation in a judicial proceeding is no easy task. On the other hand, it is also difficult to defend against allegations brought under this statute. In most cases, through careful scrutiny of the evidence submitted to support each element of the offense and through careful weighing of evidentiary submissions which have the potential to mislead or inflame the jury, the *266trial judge ensures a just result. In this case, neither of these functions was adequately performed. The result is injustice to this defendant and the creation of a precedent which someday may provide encouragement for further abuse of the mail fraud statute.
I
The government’s theory of this prosecution was that Mr. DeCastris had a duty under section 5-157 of the Illinois Policeman’s Annuity and Benefit Fund Act to report the income which he earned from his employment with Zenith Electronics Corporation.1 It further alleged that he knowingly breached that duty by filing with the Fund affidavits which failed to disclose that income. Neither proposition is established in the record.
First, although the district judge held that, as a matter of law, the statute required the disclosure of the Zenith employment,2 the statutory language hardly supports that reading. The statute requires a reduction of payments for those individuals who earned income from jobs which they assumed during the disability period (or resumed, to use the exact language of the affidavits which the Disability Board sent to potential recipients). As the majority correctly recognizes, “DeCastris had not exactly ‘assumed’ or ‘resumed’ employment.” Supra at 262. Rather, his “second job” employment with Zenith Electronics Corporation had begun quite a while before he took disability leave from the police force. Therefore, since Mr. DeCastris already held a job when he became disabled, he neither assumed nor resumed employment during the disability period. He simply continued employment he had already undertaken. Accordingly, by not disclosing the income from his Zenith job, he did not breach the duty imposed by section 5-157 and, consequently, did not commit the underlying fraud charged in this indictment. In essence, the Policeman’s Annuity and Benefit Fund specifically asked Mr. DeCastris to report all of the income which he had earned from jobs that he either assumed or resumed during the disability period. He reported no such income. That statement was the truth. Consequently, he cannot be guilty of knowingly making misstatements to the Fund.
Furthermore, even if the statute had placed such an obligation upon him, there is no real evidence that he should — or could — have understood such an obligation and, therefore, could have intended to violate it. As the Fourth Circuit stated in United States v. Mallas, 762 F.2d 361 (4th Cir.1985), “[i]t is settled that where [sic] the law is vague or highly debatable, a defendant — actually or imputedly — lacks the requisite intent to violate it.” Id. at 363 (quoting United States v. Critzer, 498 F.2d 1160, 1162 (4th Cir.1974)).3 The obligation suggested by the government is certainly not apparent from the statute’s plain wording. As the government admitted at *267oral argument, it knows of absolutely no decision or opinion — either judicial or administrative — which interpreted section 5-157 prior to the trial in this case. This federal criminal action is the first attempt to define the contours of an extremely vague state statute. Moreover, there is nothing in the record of this case which would have put Mr. DeCastris on notice that he was failing to comply with the law. Mr. DeCastris, like an increasingly large number of people today, held two jobs at the same time. The government offered no evidence to indicate that the police department prohibited that type of “moonlighting.” 4 Mr. DeCastris’ disability payments were the consequence of an actual injury and replaced that portion of his total income formerly attributable to his police salary. It would have been quite understandable for Mr. DeCastris to interpret the Fund’s communication and affidavits as expressing a concern as to whether he had taken on civilian work to replace his police income. Indeed, the record indicates that Mr. DeCastris’ income, including the disability payments, was actually less than if he were still working both jobs.
II
One may fairly wonder, then, how Mr. DeCastris was convicted. The answer can be found in the trial court’s wholesale admission into evidence of almost a dozen documents in which Mr. DeCastris had allegedly lied about other matters.5 Most of these documents contained misstatements about his educational background. These documents did more than — as the majority puts it — “bolster” the government’s case. They were, as a practical matter, the government’s entire case. Through the admission of this material, the government was able to expand the trial into a general review of the defendant’s moral life and to convey to the jury a single, potent message: the defendant was a very bad man who should be punished because he had been “getting away with things” for a long time. This litigation tactic is explicitly forbidden by Fed.R.Evid. 404.
The majority asserts that this evidence is tightly intertwined with evidence of Mr. DeCastris’ intent to defraud. Thus, according to the majority’s analysis, if the appellant’s intent was put in issue in this case, the evidence must be admissible. The majority then concludes that “DeCastris’s counsel put his intent in issue by emphasizing the ambiguity of ‘assume’ and ‘resume.’ * * * The relevant evidence is the pattern of lies in response to questions on forms.” Supra at 264, 265 (emphasis in original). This argument must fail. Whatever relevance the evidence might have had on the issue of intent to defraud was drastically outweighed by the possibility of prejudice. Given the absence of any other evidence tending to show that Mr. DeCastris intended to defraud the Fund by his statements, the admission of this evidence could only have confused the jury with respect to the actual issue before it. Some of the alleged misstatements had occurred in substantially different time frames and involved substantially different matters. Moreover, the trial judge showed little selectivity in determining what information to admit and what to exclude.6

Conclusion

In this case, the government had to prove a very precise allegation. Although *268it specifically charged the defendant with breaching a duty imposed by a specific state statute, it failed to prove that he had such a duty or, if he had such a duty, that he knew or could have known of it. Instead, it simply established that, in his lifetime, he had done other things which were dishonest. This is hardly, under the rule of law, a basis for a federal mail fraud conviction. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

. While it is true that, for a conviction under mail fraud, the underlying scheme to defraud need not be coexistent with a violation of either state or federal law, it is also true that when the indictment premises the fraud on a violation of state law — and, more importantly, when the state statute alone creates a duty on the part of the appellant to report his income — failure on the government’s part to prove that the statute was violated is fatal to the government’s case.

. Oct. 1 Transcript at 13-14. It is difficult to understand why the district judge would have made such a ruling if, as the majority contends, it was not necessary to the prosecution’s case. Apparently, the district judge also understood that the fraud alleged in the indictment was premised on a violation of the state statute.

. The Supreme Court of the United States "has recognized that the requirement of a specific intent to do a prohibited act may avoid those consequences to the accused which may otherwise render a vague or indefinite statute invalid." Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 101, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 1035, 89 L.Ed. 1495 (1945). However, “in order to cure an otherwise vague statute, the scienter requirement must '"envisage not only a knowing what is done but a knowing that what is done is unlawful, or at least, so 'wrong' that it is probably unlawful." ’ ... A scienter requirement cannot eliminate vagueness, therefore, if it is satisfied by an ‘intent’ to do something that is in itself ambiguous.” Nova Records, Inc. v. Sendak, 706 F.2d 782, 789 (7th Cir.1983) (citation omitted).

. Assuming, arguendo, the correctness of the majority’s characterization of the prosecution, this factor is, of course, still crucial. If Mr. DeCastris were permitted to have a second job while a police officer, it was quite reasonable for him to determine that his disability income was to replace his police income, not his entire income.

. The admission of this material would also have been erroneous under the majority’s characterization of the prosecution since this evidence was admitted on the question of intent.

. The one excluded submission dealt with a misstatement with respect to residency. The district judge believed that "[pjeople do feel quite strongly about that residential requirement____” Sept. 27 Transcript at 36-37. At a later hearing, the trial judge further explained that the submission was excluded "because of my own strong feelings about local firemen and policemen who don’t live in the city and tell the city yes, they do live in the city.” Sept. 30, 10:15 a.m. Transcript at 5.