U.S. v. Milstead, 81-3056
| Decision Date | 02 April 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 81-3056,81-3056 |
| Citation | 671 F.2d 950 |
| Parties | 10 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 167 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Dolores MILSTEAD, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Richard Haynes, Jan Fox, Houston, Tex., for defendant-appellant.
Fredericka L. Homberg, Michael Schatzow, Asst. U. S. Attys., New Orleans, La., for plaintiff-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Before GEE, RUBIN and GARZA, Circuit Judges.
Appellant Milstead, convicted of various counts of conspiracy to embezzle, aiding and abetting embezzlement, and making false statements to obtain loans from a national bank, assigns five errors on her appeal to us. The basic facts of her case may be simply stated, and we commence by doing so.
In 1974, Milstead, a part-time office worker, was referred by her employer to one Victor Lota, vice-president and loan officer of a national bank, for a small loan she required. A series of loans, consolidated and refinanced as they came due and pyramiding into nearly One Hundred Thousand Dollars, together with an intimate personal relationship between Milstead and Lota, ensued over the next three or four years. Milstead acquired various luxury items-jewelry, furs and expensive automobiles-and made gifts of money and tangibles to Lota. About the beginning of 1978, bank management placed restrictions on Lota's powers, limiting the amount that he could lend any one person. Lota therefore commenced making loans to Milstead in the names of various relatives and acquaintances of hers furnished by her, she signing their names to the loan papers without their knowledge or authorization and rebating to him in various ways. By the time these matters had run their course, in January of 1980, Lota had received several hundred thousand dollars in kick-backs, Milstead almost a million in loans, and the bank had "lent" close to Two Million Dollars to Milstead in one name or another. When the scheme came to light, Lota turned state's evidence, entering into various plea bargains and testifying against Milstead at her trial.
Milstead disputed little or none of the above. Her defense was that, lovestruck and in Lota's power, her state of mind during the playing out of the scheme was such as to preclude her having possessed the specific intent requisite to committing the crimes charged. A principal point of her appeal concerns the refusal of the trial court to give a requested instruction in this regard, and to this we now turn.
The instruction requested was as follows:
You may consider whether or not the Defendant had a good faith belief that what she was doing was legal in determining whether or not she acted wilfully and knowingly.
Refusal to deliver a requested instruction is reversible error only if the instruction (1) is substantially correct, (2) is not substantially covered by others delivered and (3) concerns an important point in the trial, so that the failure to give it seriously impaired the defendant's ability to present a given defense. United States v. Grissom, 645 F.2d 461 (5th Cir. 1981). Whether or not the other necessary elements laid out in Grissom may be present here, it is plain that the second is not. The office of such a charge as that requested is to remind the jury that crimes charged are not such as can be committed by one proceeding upon innocent motives, that each requires, as an element of it, that the actions constituting it be taken voluntarily and with a specific intent. A charge to this precise effect was given by the court and later, at Milstead's request, repeated:
The crimes charged in this case are serious crimes which require proof of specific intent before the defendant can be convicted. Specific intent as the term implies means more than the general intent to commit the act. To establish specific intent the Government must prove that the defendant knowingly did act or acts which the law forbids...
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Lane v. State
...to be authoritative. They illustrate the intense distaste that courts have for like testimony and comments. See alsoUnited States v. Milstead, 671 F.2d 950, 953 (5th Cir. 1982) (wherein the court declared such questioning as ‘[r]eprehensible ... and severely to be condemned’)."We can concei......
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