Court Opinion

ID: 9481640
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:26:59.363503+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:28.931716
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Chief Judge, dissenting.
I concur in Judge Brown’s dissenting opinion and add this comment with respect to footnote five in the majority opinion. This footnote relates to the dissenting opinion prepared by Judge Brown.
The majority opinion does now make clear that the crime committed here under section 1001 was the “use” of the false documents by mailing them to Agent Hall and impliedly representing that the documents accurately described the transaction. The majority opinion now further concludes that the finding that the documents were “material” amounted to a finding that defendant impliedly represented that the documents accurately described the transaction.1 This is so, the opinion states, because the documents would not be “material” unless the defendant impliedly represented that the documents accu*1328rately reflected the transaction. It appears to me, however, that the documents would have been “material” even if defendant had expressly disavowed such a representation. In short, if defendant had added a sentence to his covering letter to Hall: “I do not represent that these documents accurately describe the transaction,” there would, even more clearly, not have been a representation of accuracy and yet the documents would have been “material” to the investigation because they would relate to the investigation of the transaction.
Therefore, it seems to me that the finding of “materiality” does not, by inference, include a finding that the defendant impliedly represented that the documents accurately reflected the transaction. Moreover, and in any event, as is demonstrated by Judge Brown’s dissenting opinion, because defendant did not impliedly represent that the documents accurately described the transaction, there is an absence of proof that he “used” the documents within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1001.

. The trial court determined that the question of materiality was for the court, not for the jury, and the jury was charged that the documents were "material."