Court Opinion

ID: 9454602
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:51:22.351559+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:11.376734
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
This conviction should be reversed on either of two grounds. I respectfully dissent.
Appellant was charged with violation of 18 U.S.C.A. § 641 and § 1707. The elements of the first offense are (1) possession of property (2) with knowledge that it was stolen from the United States (3) with intent to convert to the possessor’s use or gain. Section 1707 requires an actual conversion by stealing, purloining, embezzling, or appropriating of property used by the United States.1 On each element the government must present evidence from which jury might find the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Appellant’s motion for judgment of acquittal on both counts, filed at the end of the government’s case was denied. Appellant presented no evidence. My brother judges conclude that the proof was sufficient to sustain the verdict on Count One, the possession count. Since appellant was given concurrent sentences they do not review the evidence on
*526Count Two, the conversion count. In my judgment the evidence was insufficient on both counts. The motion for judgment of acquittal should have been granted.
Only the occurrence in Memphis and the incident in Mobile tend to connect appellant with the stolen property and to support inferences that he was in possession and had the requisite intent.2
The significance of what took place at Mrs. Bolling’s apartment in Mobile rests on the stipulation, ultimately wrung from the government at trial, that appellant said nothing at the apartment, and the evidence that with a single and doubtful exception he did nothing at the apartment other than to be in the presence of the stolen property and of discussion concerning it. The pleas to Mrs. Bolling to pass money orders, the promises of clothing and disguises, the assurances she would not be apprehended, the identification of the two (unopened) boxes as containing money order forms and the punch machine, and the statement of the value of the money orders, all came from Washam and Sweeney, none from appellant. The only inference, and for reasons discussed below it is a tenuous one, tending to show appellant did anything is an ambiguous reference to “they” taking the boxes to the car and putting them in the back seat.
Causey v. United States, 352 F.2d 203 (5th Cir. 1965) requires reversal for insufficiency of the evidence. This court reversed the conviction of Burl E. Cau-sey on one count charging receipt, concealment and retention of postal money orders in violation of § 641, eight counts of forgery and one count of conspiracy. The evidence established that Causey was in and out of the house where the money orders were being forged on the night that the forging took place, that he took an auto trip with the other defendants, that on the trip some of the stolen money orders were passed, that the defendant signed the guest register for the group in a couple of motels. Without discussion the court out of hand rejected the evidence as insufficient on all except the conspiracy count, and after discussing the facts held as to that count nothing had been proved other than an opportunity, by association with the guilty parties, to become a conspirator.
In Montoya v. United States, 402 F.2d 847 (5th Cir. 1968), this court reversed a conviction for transporting and facilitating the transportation and concealment of a quantity of marihuana on evidence of possession considerably stronger than that presented here. Montoya was arrested while riding as a passenger in a pick-up truck with a closed body, containing 25 sacks of marihuana weighing 539 pounds. The driver pleaded guilty to a narcotics offense. But Montoya asserted that he had been along for the ride to visit his brother in jail and merely on the way home. En route the driver went to a ranch, two strange men took the truck away and later returned it, and Montoya and the driver resumed their journey. The road where they were arrested did not lead to Montoya’s house. This court concluded that there was insufficient proof of possession.
*527In my view this case also calls for reversal for prosecutorial overkill in argument, inextricably linked to earlier pros-ecutorial conduct during the taking of testimony.3 Over and over again defense counsel objected, often without success, to efforts in the testimony (describing events at Mrs. Bolling’s apartment) to catch appellant in the sweep of terminology describing what “they” did and “they” said, for the occurrences there are central to the issues of possession by and intent of the appellant. And each time, when forced to the wall of strict accuracy, government counsel, and Mrs. Bolling, receded to recognition that “they” did not include appellant.4
In the first government argument to the jury counsel resumed the “they” approach, including appellant in both what “they” did and “they” said at the apartment. On objection by defense counsel, the court reminded the prosecutor of the stipulation that appellant had said nothing. One would have thought this would, at long last, have ended a prose-cutorial approach which never should have begun. But in final argument the second government counsel picked up the refrain. His highly prejudicial and repeatedly incorrect remarks are set out in the margin.5 There was no objection at this point. But one cannot fairly fault defense counsel. He had met with little success in his efforts throughout the trial to restrain government counsel from tarring appellant with the brush of the plural pronoun, and having literally forced a stipulation on this matter, which went to the heart of the government’s case, he had found it impossible to hold counsel to it.
Statements by official representatives of our government must be taken to mean what they say. And courts must be willing to insist that what is said be adhered to. “Judicial discipline of lawyers is not self-operating. It must be invoked.” Roscoe Pound, Criminal Justice in America, 187 at 195-196 (1930).
Unfortunately this is not a case in which one can fairly say that counsel was momentarily carried away with “the excitement of the trial” and “the ardor of advocacy,6 or that these were mere forensic missteps. A reading of the record discloses the consistent thread of government effort to catch appellant in the net of what was done and said by others by characterizing occurrences in terms that included him.
This is not all. In argument, in attempting to tie in appellant, government counsel overstated what the evidence showed as to critical matters. These included a statement that appellant and Hinds discussed the money orders in Memphis — there was no such testimony. In each instance after objection, the court would instruct the jury that if the statements were not correct to disregard them. In the context of this case those admonitions were not sufficient.
Government counsel over objection referred to defense counsel as having mistreated and maltreated Mrs. Bolling and *528having been cruel to her on the witness stand. One prosecutor referred to the men in the Bolling apartment as “hoods.” Objection to this was sustained, motion for mistrial denied, and the prosecutor apologized to the court. The final sentence of the first government argument was:
“He is guilty. We know he is guilty, and I submit the verdict ought to be guilty.” (Emphasis added)
There was no objection to this statement of extra judicial personal knowledge of guilt, but coming as it did as the last word of the argument, it was plain error.7
There is so much prosecutorial overkill in this case that the single instances, several of which if separately focused upon would alone reverse, tend to be submerged in the whole. The cumulative effect impels the conclusion that appellant was deprived of a fair trial. The ringing proclamation of Berger is still alive:
The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern im-. partially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape nor innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor — indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.
295 U.S. at 88, 55 S.Ct. at 633, 79 L.Ed. at 1321.

. For a discussion of the elements of both offenses, nee Conerly v. United States, 350 F.2d 679 (9th Cir. 1965).

. The answer of Hinds, quoted by the majority, concerning the money for a car payment, seems to imply that Hinds evaded answering that part of the quoted question which asked if the money was given to induce appellant to come to Mobile and pass money orders. But between the question and the answer there was an objection and a ruling by the court as follows:
MR. HAAS [Defense Counsel]: Now, if the Court please, this witness doesn’t know what may or may not have
been in the mind of someone else, calls for a conclusion.
THE COURT: He can only answer what he saw and heard. On that basis you may answer the question.
Thus all we know from the Memphis occurrence is that Washam gave appellant the money for a car payment and that passing money orders was not discussed. We know that subsequently appellant was in Mobile with Washam and Sweeney, but in whose car we do not know.

. For a full discussion of the problem, see R. Singer, Forensic Misconduct by Federal Prosecutors — How it Grew, 20 Ala.L.Rev. 227 (1968).

. On cross-examination of Mrs. Bolling defense counsel, most of his objections to the “they” testimony having been unsuccessful, sought to show a prior inconsistent statement by Mrs. Bolling to the effect that appellant had said nothing. It was not until this time that the government, in objecting to the statement as irrelevant, acknowledged that appellant had said nothing at the apartment.

. MR. SEGREST : Gan it be doubted that Luther M. O’Brien and Washam, one of the people that there is testimony to you that burglarized this Nesbitt, Mississippi Post Office — came here to Mobile to Church Street, and went into a house together — O’Brien, Washam, and Sweeney. That they took these two boxes in there. That they discussed the fact that in those boxes were the money orders and the stolen print-punch money order machine. And they discussed passing them. They needed help passing them. And they asked these girls to go with them. (Emphasis added)

. Dunlop v. United States, 165 U.S. 486, 498, 17 S.Ot. 375, 41 L.Ed. 799, 803 (1897).

. Justice Sutherland said in Berger “[Assertions of personal knowledge [by the prosecuting attorney] are apt to carry much weight against the accused when they should properly carry none.” Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78 at 88, 55 S.Ct. 629, at 633, 79 L.Ed. 1314 at 1321 (1935).
This record does not fairly support any inference that defense counsel was “riding the verdict,” Cf. Crocklin v. United States, 252 E.2d 561 (5th Cir. 1958). He repeatedly sought to keep government counsel within bounds and once in oral argument moved for a mistrial (for the reference to “hoods”).