Court Opinion

ID: 9650669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:48:21.006587+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:24.939485
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing.
Apparently we misunderstood the oral argument of counsel for the defendant. On petition for rehearing we are informed that the court below did not give to the jury a copy of the statute under which the indictment was laid, but that what happened was that it allowed the jury to have a copy of a memorandum dated December 15, 1941, addressed by National Headquarters of the Selective Service System to all State Directors (Local Board Release No. 66) on the subject of “Classification and Physical Examination Amendment to Regulations III.” This, we are now informed, is the alleged error of which counsel for the defendant complained at length in his oral argument before us.
Since this memorandum was offered and admitted as an exhibit in the case it was not error for the court below to have sent it out to the jury for them to examine during their deliberations. It would have been error to have done otherwise. The question is whether or not it was error to have admitted the memorandum in evidence as an exhibit in the first place. We address ourselves to that question.
Turning to the record it appears that when the exhibit was offered, counsel for the defendant objected, but the district court overruled the objection stating, according to the bill of exceptions, “that the memorandum was admitted only for the purpose of showing what instructions were received by Dr. Musgrave as of December 15, 1941, with respect to his'work as an examining physician of Local Board No. 128, Revere”. We find no error in the ruling of the court below admitting this document in evidence.
As appears above the statute proscribes the act of promising money to any person acting for or on behalf of the United States in any official function with intent to influence that person’s decision upon “any matter which may by law be brought before him in his official capacity.” So, to make out its case, the government had to show that the condition of the defendant’s heart was a matter which the draft board doctor was called upon by law to consider. This the government accomplished by the exhibit which gives in full the text of the regulations, as they were then, with respect to the duties of the examining physicians of local boards, and among the duties enumerated in the regulations was the duty to examine for certain specified heart conditions. We fail to see how the government could prove this necessary element of its case in any more satisfactory way than by introducing in evidence the written instructions to the doctor. It seems to us that the admission of the exhibit was so clearly correct that further discussion is unnecessary.
*241The other matters urged upon us in support of this petition have either been considered already or else are too trivial to warrant comment.
The petition for rehearing is denied.