Court Opinion

ID: 9445177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:21:48.537654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:09.228214
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing.
MURRAH, Circuit Judge.
I dissent only from that part of the judgment of this court which reverses the trial court’s denial of a bill of particulars on the conspiracy indictment Number 13833.
When an almost identical indictment was challenged for uncertainty in Cal-varesi v. United States, 10 Cir., 216 F.2d 891, 897, we said that “It was necessary for the Government to allege only that such an agreement was made and that an overt act occurred”; that “how many jurors they actually contacted or how many friends of jurors they sought to influence was not an element of this charge. All the Government had to prove was the unlawful agreement to tamper with this specific jury in the manner specifically set out therein, for the purpose of violating the two criminal statutes involved. * * * What individual jurors, or how many, or what friends of prospective jurors they undertook to contact would become material only when they went to trial for the substantive offenses.”
While the Calvaresi case was reversed “for retrial before a different judge”, there is nothing in the reversal to militate against the soundness of this concept of pleading. In the language of the Calvaresi case, the conspiracy indictment sets forth all the substantive elements of the offense and informs the defendant of the specific crime of which he is accused. And, this is all the Rule requires. See Rule 7(c) Fed. Rules Crim.Proc., 18 U.S.C.A. Indeed, to require more is to take us back to the anachronisms of ancient pleadings.
With the advent of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, we embraced a new and realistic concept of pleading, one which looks to substantive rather than to technical forms. And, I cannot refrain from expressing apprehension lest this case be used as a precedent for the return to ludicrous forms which we have just now been enabled to discard. There is nothing in this record to indicate that the defendant was taken by surprise in the progress of the trial or that his substantive rights were prejudiced in any way by the refusal of the court to require the Government to name the particular jurors or friends of jurors which the defendant is charged with having conspired to intimidate or influence, and I would affirm the conviction on the conspiracy indictment.