Court Opinion

ID: 8862066
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 17:51:58.263847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:05:51.633784
License: Public Domain

PARDEE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). While congress may have the power to make the aiders and abettors of national bank officials in the embezzlement and misapplication of bank funds principal offenders, and triable as such, yet. in section 5209, Rev. St., it has not done so. This appears from the plain reading of the section, and is the construction given by the supreme court of the United States. In Coffin v. U. S., 162 U. S. 664, 669, 16 Sup. Ct. 943, 946, that conrt, in considering the proper construction of section 5209, says:
*452“However, the real premise upon which the whole argument rests, Is that, If the accused was guilty at all, he was guilty as a principal, and not as an aider and abettor. But it is not necessary to give much time to the consideration of this claim, in view of the clear intent of congress as expressed in the statute under review. It is evident that, no matter how active the co-operation of third persons may have been in the wrongful act of a bank officer or agent, such third person is required to be charged as an aider and abettor in the offense, and prosecuted as such. The primary object of the statute was to protect the bank from the acts of its own servants. As between officers and agents of the bank and third persons co-operating to defraud the bank, the statute contemplates that a bank officer shall be treated as a principal offender. In every criminal offense there must, of course, be a principal, and it follows that without the concurring act of an officer or agent of a bank third persons cannot commit a violation of the provisions of section 5209. If, therefore, a violation of the statute in question is committed by an officer and an outsider, the one must be prosecuted as the principal and the other as the aider and abettor.”
There is no warrant in the common law, nor in any statute of the United States, for indicting, trying, and convicting an accessory or aider and abettor, or a subordinate offender, when the principal offender dies before indictment and trial. In the same case the following instruction to the jury was approved:
“The burden of proving Haughey and the defendants guilty as charged rests upon the government, and this burden does not shift from it. Haughey and the defendants are presumed to be innocent until their guilt in manner and form as charged in some count of the indictment is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. To justify you in returning a verdict of guilty, the evidence should be of Such a character as to overcome this presumption of innocence, and to satisfy each one of you of the guilt of Haughey and the defendants as charged, to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt.”
Without warrant from the common law, and in the absence of statutory authority, and in the teeth of the presumption of innocence, how can a court and jury find a dead man guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt? Congress has seen fit to declare the offenses denounced by section 5209 to be misdemeanors. All the same they are conceded to be infamous crimes, because of the punishment awarded, and offenders under the statute must be tried accordingly. It is submitted that if congress, by naming an offense, can place infamous crimes in the category of misdemeanors, congress can also provide for principal and subordinate offenders' in misdemeanors, and intend that the trial and proceedings under the statute shall be according to the well-known and understood rules heretofore governing the trial of subordinate offenders. I do not deem it necessary to further elaborate my reasons. The exhaustive brief of the learned counsel for the plaintiff in error deals with, this question, in a masterly manner, and the convictions resulting from its study compel me to announce my very respectful dissent from the opinion and judgment of the court.