Court Opinion

ID: 9488158
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:37:48.834766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:43.586426
License: Public Domain

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
While I concur with my colleagues that the prosecution did not demonstrate appellant seriously interfered with the government’s computer time and storage, I respectfully disagree whether 18 U.S.C. § 641 (1988) contemplates a prohibition on the conversion of intangible property. Section 641 criminalizes the conduct of anyone who “knowingly converts to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any ... thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof.” The statute was the product of the revision of Title 18, enacted in 1948. Because I find the statute at best ambiguous as to its application to intangibles, I would apply the rule of lenity and construe the statute in appellant’s favor. Consequently, I would reverse appellant’s conviction.
The rule of lenity is invoked where “there is a grievous ambiguity or uncertainty in the language and structure of [an] Act, such that even after a court has seize[d] every thing from which aid can be derived, it is still left with an ambiguous statute.” Chapman v. United States, 500 U.S. 453, 463, 111 S.Ct. 1919, 1926, 114 L.Ed.2d 524 (1991) (internal quotations omitted; citations omitted). After examining the text and congressional intent of section 641, as informed by Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 72 S.Ct. 240, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952), while I do not find the per curiam position unreasonable, neither do I find it compelling.
First, while section 641 criminalizes the conversion of any “thing of value,” I find it reasonable that Congress may not have intended to prohibit the conversion of purely intangible property such as computer time and storage. While it is uncertain to what extent Congress even considered the conversion of intangible property in 1948, it is extremely likely Congress never contemplated the conversion of intangible property completely divorced from a tangible item, as is the case here. While few, if any, jurisdictions presently limit the conversion of property to that which is solely tangible, “[t]he process of expansion has stopped with the kind of intangible rights which are customarily merged in, or identified with some document.” W. Page Keeton et al„ PROSSER and Keeton on the Law of Torts, § 15 at 92 (5th ed. 1984). Accordingly, the vast majority of jurisdictions have limited the expansion of the tort in conformity with this rule. The law in 1948 could only have been more grudging.
While language exists in Morissette supporting the per curiam position, other language gives equal credence to appellant’s narrower reading. The Court asserted that “where Congress borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed.” 342 U.S. at 263, 72 S.Ct. at 250. In 1948, let alone today, the tort of conversion did not encompass intangible property independent of and unrelated to a tangible chattel. Heeding these words, I am reluctant to interpret “thing of value” in the context of conversion as broadly as the per curiam.
Consequently, I find section 641, as informed by Morissette, ambiguous regarding whether the statute prohibits the conversion of computer time and storage. Therefore, I would invoke the rule of lenity, and conclude that the district court erred in sending to the jury the charge of whether appellant converted government computer time and storage. Because it would thus be impossible to deter*1423mine on which ground the jury actually convicted, I would reverse appellant’s conviction under Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298, 312, 77 S.Ct. 1064, 1073, 1 L.Ed.2d 1356 (1957).