Court Opinion

ID: 9478735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:56:53.630252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:35.803884
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur but with great reservation on the mail fraud convictions but dissent as to the bank fraud conviction.

Mail Fraud

I concur without reservation as to Counts 3 and 4. Although neither of these letters contained anything which was untrue, deceptive or a misrepresentation — indeed, each was innocuous in its own terms —each was “for the purpose of executing [the] scheme ... to defraud.” 18 U.S.C. § 1341.
Count 5 is something else, and significantly so since the sentence on this Count was to run consecutively to that imposed on Counts 3 and 4. The federal jurisdictional basis for Count 5 was the mailing of the report of January 6, 1987, from the field insurance adjuster in Fort Worth to the insurer, Western Lloyds.
*710At best, this letter is on the border line and just barely sufficient to establish that its mailing was “for the purpose of executing [the] scheme.” Much like the letters in United States v. Castile, 795 F.2d 1273 (6th Cir.1986), and our opinion in United States v. LaFerriere, 546 F.2d 182 (5th Cir.1977), which the Sixth Circuit favorably embraced, this letter affirmatively stated:
ORIGIN: This loss is a result of an Arson Explosion with the actual explosion occurring in the restaurant next to the insureds.
(Emphasis added.)
The letter went on to state that the “ORIGIN has been investigated by the Fort Worth Fire Department, the ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms] Division of the Treasury Department, other local and state agencies and several engineers, and cause and origin experts.”
More than that the letter stated: “We have discussed the loss with the Fort Worth Fire Department and with the investigators from ATF and determined that they had started interviewing the insured and his partner when they [insured and partner] became upset and employed the services of an attorney who now represents them.” In the remaining portion, the report concluded:
SUBROGATION: This loss is a result of arson and subrogation is questionable at this time....
All that could have possibly saved the sufficiency of this letter report as a jurisdictional mailing was (i) the fact that the assured, McClelland, was not expressly identified as the arsonist, and (ii) as reflected by the report “we hope that the arsonist will be determined which will clear up any subrogation question or possibilities.” But whatever deficiencies the report might have had from this standpoint, we are left with the big Query: How, in heaven's name, could this letter, practically branding (but not establishing) that McClel-land was the arsonist — guilty of a felony in Texas and having no right of recovery under the insurance policy — possibly be sent with the “purpose of executing [the] scheme” to defraud the insurance company?
Were it not for the fact that through my dissenting opinion on the bank fraud count the consequences of this questionable border line might be ameliorated by F.R.Crim. P. Rule 35 on remand, I would dissent, not concur.

Bank Fraud

Although I wonder why the government thought it had to drag this obviously run-of-the-mill Fort Worth crime case into the Federal Court, I agree with the court that the conviction for bank fraud was fully supported if — and the if is a very big one— the defrauded bank was a “federally ... insured financial institution.” 18 U.S.C. § 1344(a)(1).
On this critically decisive, constitutionally indispensable issue calling for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the only evidence was that referred to in the court’s opinion from a vice-president and loan officer of the bank who testified, without objection, that at all times during the period the bank was insured by FDIC. Although his descriptive title as “vice-president” may have given him a status above, say, a custodial janitor, there is not a stitch of evidence as to either his authority or his knowledge, including that of any knowledge or reason to know of the maintainance by the bank of a status as an insured institution under FDIC.
This is another instance, of which there are too many, in which this court — although with apologies which seem to salve the collective conscience — accepts little or no real evidence of this critical insured status. Not that we don’t apologize for it, or more important, demand some improvement. Rather, it is our recognition that what we say is not heeded by prosecutors who are continuously replaced and who, not looking in the books know nothing of this message we have so long sounded at the expense of published volumes of the Federal Reporter.
Since seldom — as would be true in this case — the problem is really not en banc-worthy, my only recourse is, as a single *711voice, to speak out as one claiming the exercise of the supervisory power of the court, to lament the indifference of prosecutors to what we say and, because of this, the necessity for the court finally to take action in a way which will assuredly attract their attention.
In over 30 years this court, and our sister Courts of Appeals, have been struggling with questions of adequate proof of this simple, and nearly always indisputable fact.1 By specific suggestions understandable to the greenest neophyte in the first hour of a career as an Assistant United States Attorney, we have outlined the easy, sure ways to prove this critical fact. See Maner, 611 F.2d at 112, n. 2.
In Maner, stating “we have difficulty comprehending why the Government repeatedly fails to prove this element more carefully since the Government’s burden is so simple and straightforwardf,]” we fix the blame. Id. at 112. “[T]he fault lies not with the Trial Judge. It rests squarely on the shoulders of the prosecutor.” Id.
Now nine years since Maner things are no better. The prosecutor, possibly spared by the lapses of defense counsel continued in their sloppy ways to establish this indispensable fact by the words from one who may never have had the slightest information about obtaining or maintaining FDIC insurance. Maner predicted “the possibility that we or our sister Courts may someday be faced with an insufficiency of the evidence of insurance under § 2113 which would warrant reversal.”2 That is exactly what this court felt compelled to do in United States v. Platenburg, 657 F.2d 797 (5th Cir.1981). If our words are ever to be heeded, a like reversal should be had here. To bring home, to United States Attorneys the message that insurance coverage just as any other constitutionally required fact must really be proved, I think the conviction for bank fraud should be reversed. See United States v. Chiantese, 546 F.2d 135 (5th Cir.), modified en banc, 560 F.2d 1244 (1977), on remand, 582 F.2d 974, 978, cert. denied, 441 U.S. 922, 99 S.Ct. 2030, 60 L.Ed.2d 395 (1979).
I therefore dissent as to it.

. See the cases cataloged in n. 1 of United States v. Maner, 611 F.2d 107, 111 (5th Cir.1980).

. Maner, 611 F.2d at 112.