Court Opinion

ID: 9458486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:53:16.238938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:46.945703
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially).
I concur in all of Judge Wisdom’s opinion except the penultimate paragraph.
Under this circuit’s holding in United States v. Jacobs, 451 F.2d 530 (5th Cir. 1971), the conjunctive indictment did not increase the government’s burden under the disjunctive statute to prove more than that Lebman had “reasonable cause to believe” that the person to whom he sold firearms was a nonresident of Texas. For this reason I would hold that Lebman possesses the requisite standing to mount a constitutional attack on this proviso of the act. However, I would hold the proviso to be sufficiently clear and definite to pass constitutional muster. The statute’s coverage of dealers who “know” the purchaser is a non-resident is really not attacked, and rightly so. The precision of this requirement is beyond cavil. The alternative incrimination of those who have “reasonable cause to believe” he to whom they sell is a nonresident does not, in the language of the Supreme Court, fail to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by statute, United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 617, 74 S.Ct. 808, 812, 98 L.Ed. 989 (1953), nor does it encourage arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions. Papachristou v. *75Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156, 92 S.Ct. 839, 31 L.Ed.2d 110 (1972). The statute unmistakably forbids only a sale by one who though he is “in some manner aware” that the buyer is a nonresident, nevertheless completes a knowing, “calculated” sale. See Ginsberg v. State of New York, 390 U.S. 629, 643-644, 88 S.Ct. 1274, 1283, 20 L.Ed.2d 195 (1968). Under this circuit’s recent decision in United States v. Featherston, 461 F.2d 1119 (5th Cir. 1972), the challenged scienter requirement did not expose Lebman to prosecution without first fairly warning him of the nature of the proscribed conduct. See, Rowan v. U. S. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728, 90 S.Ct. 1484, 25 L.Ed.2d 736 (1970). See also United States v. Decker, 446 F. 2d 164 (8th Cir. 1971).