Court Opinion

ID: 9477272
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:18:59.511282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:47.407042
License: Public Domain

GUY, Circuit Judge
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in Judge Boggs’s thorough and well-written analysis of the Speedy Trial Act issue, but I dissent on the jury instruction issue. Although I concur with the court that the instruction as given was erroneous, I would find any error to be harmless.
There is no doubt that during the course of the trial the government produced testimonial and documentary evidence demonstrating the federally-insured status of the banks that were robbed. Also, there is no doubt that in order to establish federal jurisdiction and prove a violation of section 2113, the government must show the bank was insured by the FDIC at the time of the robbery. United States v. Maner, 611 F.2d 107 (5th Cir.1980). It is true that on cross examination defense counsel attacked the testimonial evidence of coverage and demonstrated that the witnesses were not completely familiar with all the details of the FDIC coverage. Nonetheless, I find more than ample evidence in the record to allow the case to go to the jury, and I do not read the court's opinion to the contrary.
The problem arises from the fact that the court did not allow the issue of FDIC coverage to be determined by the jury, since the trial judge gave a jury instruction which indicated that coverage existed. The government argues that the court appropriately took judicial notice of the coverage pursuant to Fed.R.Evid. 201(g). I agree with the court’s rejection of this argument.
Nonetheless, I would conclude that although the instruction given was erroneous under the circumstances here, only harmless error resulted. In reaching this conclusion, I rely on the reasoning of the court in Hewitt v. United States, 110 F.2d 1 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 310 U.S. 641, 60 S.Ct. 1089, 84 L.Ed.1409 (1940). Although hardly recent authority, Hewitt has not been overruled and its logic is sound. Hewitt is similar to the case at bar in that it involved a bank robbery trial where there was adequate evidence presented by the government for the question of FDIC coverage to be submitted to the jury. However, the court took this issue away from the jury and found coverage as a matter of law. Although the Eighth Circuit found this to be error, they concluded that no reversal was required. The Hewitt court stated:
If the instruction complained of had related to a fact which was in actual controversy, there would be much force in the defendant’s contention that this Court should take notice of it regardless of the fact that it was not expected to. It is obvious, however, that, while in a technical sense the allegation that the bank was an insured bank was controverted, in a practical sense there was no *333controversy about the matter whatsoever. That the bank was insured and that it had been robbed was not, and is not now, in dispute. The government contended that Hewitt was an aider and abettor. He contended that he was not. That presented the real issue. To send this case back for a retrial because the court (probably inadvertently) stated to the jury that as a matter of law the bank was a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, could not, from a practical standpoint, be justified.
110 F.2d at 9 (footnote omitted).
In our case, as in Hewitt, there was no question that a bank robbery occurred. Further, the defense did not revolve around FDIC coverage of the bank but was predicated on alibi. The challenge to FDIC coverage was technical rather than substantial, and the coverage issue did not in any way implicate or impede defendant’s primary defense. Under such circumstances I would conclude, as did the Hewitt court, that reversible error did not occur.