Court Opinion

ID: 9468933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:27:08.179122+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:07.366237
License: Public Domain

POOLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I join with the majority as to Count I but must dissent from affirmance of the post-verdict judgment of acquittal on Count III.
The majority concludes that the jury could not find beyond a reasonable doubt that the value of the fur coats ($13,690 in Canadian Dollars) equaled the sum of $5,000 in United States Currency, because the government did not offer proof of the exchange rate in effect at the time. The four cases cited to support this conclusion are clearly distinguishable for in each the reviewing court reversed only after finding total absence of any evidence of value submitted to the jury.
In United States v. Wilson, 284 F.2d 407 (4th Cir. 1960), the government offered no proof of the value of 72 stolen rifles and the court noted that had evidence been introduced for even a single rifle it would have been sufficient to support the jury’s verdict. Similarly, in United States v. Whetzel, 589 F.2d 707 (D.C. Cir. 1978), the government introduced no evidence of the market value of stolen tapes but instead tried to measure their value by the song recorded thereon. The court rejected the approach, holding that under 18 U.S.C. § 2314 the value of the property transported had to be in excess of $5,000 and the only evidence of market value in the record fell far short of the required amount. Again in United States v. Chandler, 586 F.2d 593 (5th Cir. 1978), the government could not prove the value of stolen gasoline transported by trucks because it was unable to establish the amount of gasoline carried by each truck, a figure crucial to its value computation. Finally, in United States v. Atherton, 561 F.2d 747 (9th Cir. 1977), the conviction for transporting a stolen 16mm print of the “Exorcist” *359was reversed because the government only presented evidence of the value of prints suitable for theatre exhibition although the evidence clearly established that the 16mm print was not in that category.
In the instant case, our problem is not to determine value; rather, we must calculate the rate of exchange of Canadian to United States dollars on a specific historical date. It is not disputed that the reasonable market value of the coats was proven to be $13,690 in Canadian dollars. The evidence consisted of the price tags removed from the coats and the testimony of the shopkeepers from whom the coats were stolen. As competent evidence was before the jury, the only issue is whether the jurors could find beyond a reasonable doubt that $13,690 Canadian dollars equaled $5,000 American dollars at the time of the theft.
Seattle, the place of trial, is approximately 100 miles from the long Canadian border. The two countries share a long history of cultural, personal and trade relations sustained and encouraged by easy and warm reciprocal travel on many levels. They interconnect by multi-lane superhighways. Out of this proximity and close relationship the jurors, as people of both countries everywhere, could easily have possessed the elementary and practical knowledge of the worth of Canadian currency.
But even assuming that jurors living so near the Canadian border did not possess such undisputed information about the 1978 exchange rate, the exact American/Canadian Exchange, could and should have been judicially noticed by the trial judge both at trial and when considering, after verdict, the Rule 29 motion. Had the judge done so she would have ruled that the ratio was in fact $1,00 Canadian to $0,877 United States. Therefore, that $13,690 Canadian Dollars was the equivalent in United States currency of approximately $12,006 — was not at the time of trial, and it still is not, a fact open to “reasonable dispute” within the intendment of the Federal Rules of Evidence, because, even were it not a matter “generally known within the territorial jurisdiction of the trial court,” it positively was “capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned,” and this is all that a reasonable rule and a reasonable mind could require. There are myriad commercial, trade, financial and other publications, including daily newspaper files, daily quotes, all carried in every major newspaper. To have overturned this jury verdict because the court treated as a disputable variable what was unalterable historical fact, does scant to hold the judicial process in respect.
The majority has cited United States v. Jones, 580 F.2d 219 (6th Cir. 1978), as authority for a proposition that facts of the kind involved here cannot be the subject of judicial notice. That is not what that case holds. The Sixth Circuit seems to have said that there are judicially noticeable matters which the jury may not be bound to accept. This may be true; but there is such an obvious distinction between “whether South Central Bell was a common carrier which provided facilities for the transmission of interstate or foreign communications,” the issue involved in that case (580 F.2d at 222), and the issue here — the exchange rates between the United States Dollar and the Canadian Dollar on a given past date — that reference to Jones seems only to compound further an already antic result. Whether a jury in a criminal case has the naked power to disregard the truth is not at issue: this jury did not do so. We therefore need no more debate one’s right to declaim that more than twice $5,000 is yet less than $5,000 than that Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria might well have fallen off the earth.
I would reverse the judgment which granted the Rule 29 motion for judgment of acquittal and would order the jury verdict reinstated.