Court Opinion

ID: 9445607
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:34:16.039115+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:20.722943
License: Public Domain

TUTTLE, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring).
I concur in the decision here, but believe it appropriate to note a somewhat different approach to the result. I think it not erroneous for the court to have permitted in the circumstances of this trial the introduction of the evidence complained of.1 Any evidence that would tend to identify Yawn with the other conspirators in the carrying on of the business of distilling liquor is, I think, relevant, and it cannot be said that the verdict of acquittal decided either that Yawn did riot run'from the house or that there was no still there. The verdict of acquittal is not the finding of any single affirmative fact. Nonetheless, under the ruling of the Supreme Court in the Seal-fon case, proof of the facts alleged in the overt act in the conspiracy case cannot be permitted to establish the overt act on which conviction of conspiracy must depend when there has been an acquittal on the same facts charged in a substantive count. If here, iri other words, the court had admitted the evidence on the question of the existence of the conspiracy and furtherance of other overt acts of the indictment arid had charged that overt act number- 9 could not be the basis of a conviction, there would have been no error.
Although the defendant took no exception to the charge as given and did not request the suggested charge, it is clear that all parties to the proceeding fully understood the issues and the defendant’s counsel had fully sought protection of the defendant’s rights in this regard. The failure to charge was plain error of which we can take note and I agree that the error was prejudicial.

. This was merely the testimony of the agent that he had seen Yawn running from the house on Chapman Road on the-date in question, and that he had later found a still in operation in that house.