Court Opinion

ID: 9442857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:01:59.330097+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:15.676621
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
SWAN, Circuit Judge.
Three separate grounds for granting a rehearing are asserted in the petition. The petition is denied as to grounds one and three. The court requested the United States Attorney to file a memorandum in answer to th'e second ground. He has done so and counsel for the petitioner has filed a memorandum in reply.
Our former opinion stated that “the jury was not told that it had to find some act of aiding and abetting in Manhattan in order to convict” on count 8 of the indictment which charged transportation of the counterfeit checks from New York to Chicago. We said that the failure to give such a charge was error but was nonprejudicial, because it was so highly improbable that the jury did not believe Larigan’s testimony as to the part Gillett took in the meeting at the restaurant in Manhattan on August 19th that failure to give the charge could not have affected the verdict. The petitioner contends that our ruling upon the charge was in effect an original finding of fact by this court that Larigan’s testimony as to the August 19th meeting was true and that Gillette’s participation in that meeting made him an abettor of the transportation. The United States Attorney replies that to state the problem in terms of probabilities, as the court did, unduly favored Gillette because under the charge as given the jury necessarily found that he abetted in Manhattan the interstate transportation to Chicago. Further study of the charge convinces us that the United States Attorney is right.
The jury was instructed that the substantive offense was “the transporting or causing these counterfeit checks to be transported in interstate commerce, that is, from one state to another * * * ” (fol. 2259). “The charge here is * * * [that] they were carried from the State of New York to other states * * *” (fol. 2260). The court then charged that such transportation is a crime only if “the party charged knew” that the checks were counterfeit and that “they were to be transported” (fol. 2261). Then followed immediately an instruction on aiding and abetting: “In this case the charge of transportation, of course, will include causing to be transported or aiding or abetting. It is not necessary for a jury to find that A himself picked up a forged or counterfeit paper * * * and himself carried it * * * from New York to Chicago * * * But if he caused it to be done or aided or abetted in it, then he is equally as guilty as the person who carried the paper * * * In other words, ladies and gentlemen, one may act through another. I may scheme or devise to commit a crime and I may have you carry some of it out, and you and - I are both guilty provided I actually knew and took part in causing you to take the securities from one state to another * * * ” fols. 2261-3). The court then said that “The eighth count of this indictment applies to the defendant Gillette” 'and shortly thereafter, át fol. 2279, stated that the question is not “whether there was a scheme, because those facts are well-established. * * * But the question for
you is whether George Gillette and Thomas Polo were guilty as charged in connection with the transportation from New York to Chicago for the purpose of cashing, as described to you.”
*454Under these instructions the jury could not have convicted Gillette on count 8 unless they found that he aided and abetted the transportation from New York to Chicago and the only evidence of his participation in the scheme prior to the arrival of the checks in 'Chicago was Larigan’s testimony as to what occurred 'at the meeting in Manhattan on August 19th. Hence the jury must have believed this testimony, unless they disregarded the instructions, which we may not assume. Since the transportation to Chicago had been completed when Gillette telephoned Larigan in Chicago, neither the telephone talk nor the evidence as to Gillette’s acts in Chicago and Los Angeles, could itself be an aiding or abetting of the transportation, although it might well have been taken as strongly confirmatory of Larigan’s testimony as to Gillette’s aiding and abetting at the August 19th meeting. For the foregoing reasons, we do not think Bollenbach v. United States, 326 U.S. 607, 66 S.Ct. 402, 90 L.Ed. 350, upon which the petitioner relies, is controlling.
Petition denied.