U.S. v. Crawford

• Decision Date: 13 October 2000
• Docket Number: PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE,No. 99-50803,DEFENDANT-APPELLANT,99-50803
• Citation: 239 F.3d 1086
• Parties: (9th Cir. 2001) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,, v. JANE CRAWFORD,
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 1086

239 F.3d 1086 (9th Cir. 2001)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, v. JANE CRAWFORD, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.

No. 99-50803

U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

Submitted October 13, 2000¹

January 23, 2001

As Amended Feb. 14, 2001.

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Gail Ivens, Glendale, California, for the defendant-appellant.

Alejandro N. Mayorkas, United States Attorney, John S. Gordon, Assistant United States Attorney, Ranee A. Katzenstein, Assistant United States Attorney, Los Angeles, California, for the plaintiff-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California D.C. No. CR-99-531-RSWL Ronald S. W. Lew, District Judge Presiding

Before: A. Wallace Tashima and Richard C. Tallman, Circuit Judges, and William Alsup, District Judge.²

Alsup, District Judge

Jane Crawford appeals her jury convictions for two counts each of wire fraud and interstate transportation of property stolen, converted, or taken through fraud. The jury implicitly found that Crawford took a valuable oil painting from her office at UCLA, intending to deprive the owner of its use, and sold it for profit, knowing that it had been stolen, converted, or taken through fraud. The jury also implicitly found that Crawford (or a co-schemer) had sent and received interstate faxes to advance her scheme to obtain money through false pretenses. The dispositive issue in this appeal is whether sufficient evidence supported the convictions. We conclude that it did, and affirm.

Statement

Frost Flowers, Ipswitch 1889, an oil painting by the influential arts-and-crafts artist Arthur Wesley Dow, hung on the wall of Crawford's UCLA office in the early 1990s.³ Crawford was UCLA's Director of Counseling, College of Letters and Sciences. In 1995, she took the painting from her office and, with the help of a middleman named Ken Weaver, secretly sold it.

In May 1999, a federal grand jury indicted Crawford on two counts of wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C.S 1343, and two counts of interstate transportation of property converted and obtained through fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2314.⁴ Crawford pleaded not guilty, and a three-day jury trial began. At the end of the government's case, and after hearing argument, the court denied Crawford's Rule 29 motion for acquittal. The jury found Crawford guilty on all four counts.

The parties agree that Arthur Wesley Dow's widow gave Frost Flowers, along with seven other Dow paintings, to the Arthur Wesley Dow Association in 1928. The government presented evidence that the Association had been affiliated with the University of California, Southern Branch -- the precursor to UCLA. In addition, "Los Angeles Normal School" was stenciled on the back of the canvas. Los Angeles Normal School, a teachers' college in the 1880s, later became part of the University of California, Southern Branch. When the Arthur Wesley Dow Association dissolved, the government asserted, Frost Flowers remained with UCLA (or its predecessor).

Craig Cunningham, a UCLA employee supervised by Crawford, first saw Frost Flowers in UCLA's Office of the Registrar in Murphy Hall in the 1970s. In 1979, he took the painting to his office at the urging of the Registrar, who was remodeling. When Cunningham found that his office did not have enough wall space, he took the painting home. Frost Flowers hung over his mantel for about ten years. He testified that he had never thought of Frost Flowers as his, but considered it UCLA's property. He did not hide it from his UCLA supervisors and colleagues when they visited his home, and he told them that it belonged to the University.

In the early 1990s he brought it back to UCLA, placing it in a storage room, and mentioning it to Crawford because he knew that she had admired the painting. She retrieved it from the storage room, and hung it on her office wall, where it remained for several years. During that time, she had conversations with her UCLA colleague Judith Collas in which, Collas testified, Crawford indicated her understanding that UCLA owned the painting. In one such conversation, they spoke about the "irony that UCLA owned such a valuable painting and didn't know it."

In 1994, however, Crawford began preparations to sell the painting. The government presented evidence that she called her father's trust attorney and asked about selling some paintings, including Frost Flowers by Arthur Wesley Dow, that her father had bought, she falsely claimed, while living in Utah years before. At Crawford's (or her father's) direction, the attorney wrote a "to whom it may concern" letter on the trust's behalf, noting that it had retained Kenneth Weaver to secure buyers for the paintings. In March 1995, Crawford called her tax accountant to ask about the tax consequences of selling a painting that had been given to her, she said, by a professor friend at UCLA.

In June 1995, Weaver contracted with Spanierman Gallery to sell Frost Flowers for $200,000. The contract was faxed between California and New York for signatures. Weaver deposited the $200,000 from Spanierman Gallery into an account in his name. He wrote several checks on the account to pay for goods and services for Crawford. He also wrote checks on the account to pay off her debt.

Meanwhile, Crawford's UCLA colleague Judith Collas noticed that Frost Flowers was no longer in Crawford's office. Crawford told her that a student at Cal Arts in Valencia was restoring it, under a professor's supervision. She told Cunningham the same story. In fact, there was no evidence that Crawford had ever sent the painting to be restored, and a Spanierman Gallery representative testified that it arrived in poor condition.

The government called Michael Trentalange, UCLA's Executive Director of External Affairs, to testify about the University's policies for acquiring and disposing of property. Before his current post, he had served as Executive Director of Information Systems and as Executive Director of Gift Policy and Information Systems.

When an "affiliated organization" dissolves, Trentalange said, its property remains with UCLA. He testified over Crawford's objection that UCLA considers an "affiliated organization" to be one that uses the University's name, facilities, personnel, or equipment in its activities.

He next testified about UCLA's procedures for disposing of property. Typically a unit head -- such as a dean, a director, or a faculty chairperson -- decides that a particular asset is no longer needed or wanted. The University then offers the property to its other departments. If no department wants it, the University sells it. Since at least 1981, the University has had "an obligation to get the highest and best return on the sale of property." When the University decides to dispose of art, it auctions it to the highest bidder. UCLA cannot give property away, Trentalange testified. Nor, he testified over Crawford's objection, can it abandon property.

Trentalange further testified that for all items above a certain dollar threshold in value, each UCLA department keeps an inventory, describing the item and listing its location, value, means of acquisition, and means of disposal (if appropriate). An item's absence from an inventory list, Trentalange testified, does not mean that the University does not claim ownership. If an item were undervalued, for example, it might inadvertently be left off the list.

On cross-examination, Trentalange testified that he had learned of three people who identified the painting as having hung in Murphy Hall since the 1940s. Based on that fact, he executed a declaration in 1998 that UCLA owned Frost Flowers.

Crawford now appeals her conviction, arguing that the district court abused its discretion in admitting much of Trentalange' testimony, and that insufficient evidence of the University's ownership supported the jury's verdict.

Analysis

Crawford's appeal raises two questions. The first is whether the district court abused its discretion by admitting Trentalange's recounting of the UCLA definition of "affiliated entity," that the property of an "affiliated entity" stays with the University when the entity dissolves, that UCLA is not authorized to abandon property, and that an asset's absence from University inventory lists does not indicate that UCLA makes no claim of title to the asset. The second is whether sufficient evidence supported the jury's implicit findings that Crawford had the requisite mens rea for any of the charged crimes. In particular, Crawford argues that the government did not produce sufficient evidence that UCLA owned Frost Flowers, and therefore did not produce sufficient evidence to prove criminal intent to deprive the rightful owner of its possession.

A. Evidentiary Issues

The Court reviews evidentiary rulings at trial for abuse of discretion. Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 174 n.1, 117 S. Ct. 644, 136 L. Ed. 2d 574 (1997). The Court reviews only for plain error the admission of testimony to which the defendant failed to object at trial. United States v. Hanley, 190 F.3d 1017, 1029 (9th Cir. 1999).

A lay witness may testify only to "those opinions or inferences which are (a) rationally based on the perception of the witness and (b) helpful to a clear understanding of the witness' testimony or the determination of a fact in issue." Fed. R. Evid. 701. A lay witness may testify as to an ultimate issue of fact, so long as the testimony is otherwise admissible. Fed. R. Evid. 704. The lay witness may not, however, testify as to a legal conclusion, such as the correct interpretation of a contract. Evangelista v. Inlandboatmen's Union of Pacific, 777 F.2d 1390, 1398 n.3 (9th Cir. 1985).

At trial, Crawford objected that three questions put to Trentalange called for legal conclusions. Crawford alleges that the court abused its discretion in overruling each objection, and that it plainly erred in admitting two other instances of legal...