U.S. v. Steed

• Decision Date: 09 April 1981
• Docket Number: No. 79-5294,79-5294
• Citation: 646 F.2d 136
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Daryls Foster STEED, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 136

646 F.2d 136

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Daryls Foster STEED, Appellee.

No. 79-5294.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued Aug. 18, 1980.

Decided April 9, 1981.

John S. Edwards, U. S. Atty., Jean B. Weld, Asst. U. S. Atty., Roanoke, Va., for appellant.

Craig T. Redinger, Charlottesville, Va., for appellee.

Before RUSSELL, WIDENER and PHILLIPS, Circuit Judges.

JAMES DICKSON PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge:

Following a jury verdict finding defendant Daryls Foster Steed guilty on mail fraud and false statement charges, the district court entered judgment of acquittal for insufficiency of evidence. The Government gave notice of appeal under the Criminal Appeals Act of 1970. 18 U.S.C. § 3731 (the Act). We hold that the judgment is appealable under the Act, but, for reasons that follow, affirm the acquittal in deference to the district court's assessment that the evidence was insufficient to convict.

I

Steed was indicted and put to trial on one count of mail fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1341, and two counts of furnishing false statements to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in violation of the Interstate Land Sales Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1717. At the close of the Government's case, Steed moved under Fed.R.Crim.P. 29(a) for judgment of acquittal on all three counts. The district court granted the motion as to Count Two but denied it as to Counts One and Three. Upon Steed's renewed motion at the close of all the evidence, the court reserved decision under Fed.R.Crim.P. 29(b), and submitted the case to the jury. After the jury returned a verdict of guilty on the two remaining counts, Steed once again renewed her motion for judgment of acquittal. This time the court granted the motion, setting aside the jury verdict and entering judgment of acquittal on the basis that "no rational finder of fact could have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the evidence that was before the jury at the time." Jt.App.Vol. 4, at 436. From this judgment of acquittal, the government gave notice of appeal.

II

Initially we confront the jurisdictional question whether the post-verdict judgment of acquittal entered by the district court is appealable. ¹ We think that any suggestion of nonappealability is foreclosed despite an attractiveness we frankly concede by a proper reading of the Supreme Court decisions interpreting and applying the Act.

In United States v. Wilson, 420 U.S. 332, 95 S.Ct. 1013, 43 L.Ed.2d 232 (1975), the germinal interpretive decision, the question presented was whether the Act allowed appeal by the Government from a judgment of acquittal ordered, following a guilty verdict, because of prejudicial preindictment delay. The Court first held that the Act was intended to relieve the uncertainties spawned by the extant Criminal Appeals Act of 1907 by removing all nonconstitutional bars to government appeals in criminal cases, leaving as the only limitations those that could be found in the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Constitution. Id. at 337, 95 S.Ct. at 1018. The appeal-limiting factor in the Clause was then identified as that reflected in its protection against retrial once jeopardy has attached. Id. at 342, 95 S.Ct. at 1021. On this basis, the judgment was held appealable. No retrial could be required as a result of the appeal: obviously not, if the defendant prevailed; but neither if reversal were obtained, since in that case the verdict of guilty could be reinstated and judgment entered upon it. Id. at 353, 95 S.Ct. at 1026.

While Wilson therefore held narrowly only that appeal lay from a post-verdict judgment of acquittal based upon factors not related to factual guilt or innocence, the retrial principle that it identified as the appeal-limiting factor had, at that point, the potential for broader, possibly absolute, application in both directions: i. e., allowing all appeals that could not result in retrial; disallowing all that could. The aspect disallowing appeal was soon held to be not an absolute one; ² but the Court has steadfastly continued since Wilson to apply and to refer to the aspect allowing appeal where retrial cannot result as an absolute one. ³

Therefore, while the Court has not yet applied the principle specifically to allow appeal from a post-verdict judgment of acquittal based upon insufficiency of evidence, we do not feel free to disregard its apparent commitment to the absolute rule of appealability where retrial could not result. Notwithstanding the resulting anomaly that a judgment of acquittal on this ground remains nonappealable if entered at any time before jury verdict but will be appealable if entered on a reserved basis after verdict, Fed.R.Crim.P. 29(b), we take this as the indicated rule, and accordingly hold that because no retrial would be required as a result of allowing this appeal, we have jurisdiction to entertain it under 18 U.S.C. § 3671. ⁴

III

We turn then to review of the district court's post-verdict assessment that the evidence was insufficient to support the conviction. When we look for the standard of review, the immediate impulse is to find it in the established standard where the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged by a defendant: i. e., whether there is substantial evidence, when assessed in the light most favorable to the government, from which any jury might rationally find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as to every element of the offense charged. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979); United States v. Sherman, 421 F.2d 198 (4th Cir. 1970) (per curiam).

At first blush, it might seem that this standard should cut both ways, as the comparable standard of review clearly does in civil cases. On that basis we should review, as the Government urges, by freely assessing the evidence under that standard, according no deference to the trial judge's assessment, and reversing the judgment of acquittal if our independent assessment disagreed with his. Upon reflection, however, we think and here hold for reasons that follow that the established Sherman standard for reviewing evidence sufficiency rulings against criminal defendants is not appropriate for reviewing rulings in their favor. ⁵

Initially, it is important to emphasize why the question of the appropriate standard is an open one. It was first made possible for all courts by the very legislation that in 1970 newly conferred jurisdiction to entertain government appeals from such post-verdict judgments. Before that, direct appellate review of evidence sufficiency rulings could only be undertaken on defendants' appeals from district court orders denying motions for acquittal. It was only in that limited context therefore, that the Sherman-type standard was developed and has since been applied. The question whether it should apply as well in newly authorized government appeals from rulings of evidence insufficiency has not yet been directly addressed either by this court ⁶ or by the Supreme Court as the latter has been forced to explore the "relatively uncharted ground" opened by the Act. See Comment, Double Jeopardy and Government Appeals in Criminal Cases, 12 Colum.J.L. & Soc.Prob. 295, 302 (1976). The slate for us is therefore clean so far as binding precedent is concerned.

We believe that the appropriate standard of review is to be found by considering the effect that it will have upon the traditional powers of federal trial judges to protect criminal defendants from the possibility of jury abuses or excesses as an aspect of their broader, historical function of "filtering out deficient prosecutions." United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 575, 97 S.Ct. 1349, 1356, 51 L.Ed.2d 642 (1977). Until the 1970 Act, that power had been essentially absolute, since no judge-directed judgment of acquittal for insufficiency of evidence was appealable whether entered before or after jury verdict and even if based upon an "egregiously erroneous foundation," Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U.S. 141, 143, 82 S.Ct. 671, 672, 7 L.Ed.2d 629 (1962); see also United States v. Sisson, 399 U.S. 267, 289-90, 90 S.Ct. 2117, 2129, 26 L.Ed.2d 608 (1970). By its continuation of that immunity to any review with respect to pre-verdict fact-based acquittals in the 1970 Act, see United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 98 S.Ct. 2187, 57 L.Ed.2d 65 (1978); United States v. Sanabria, 437 U.S. 54, 98 S.Ct. 2170, 57 L.Ed.2d 43 (1978), Congress presumably intended to continue the traditional protective power unchanged in that context, even while exposing post-verdict acquittals to some degree of appellate review. This gives rise to the anomaly earlier noted in our discussion of the effect of the Double Jeopardy Clause in disallowing appeal in the former and allowing it in the latter context. Because this incident of double jeopardy protection has no apparent relation to the historical purposes of the protective power, we think that the scope and standard of appellate review should be narrowly drawn to avoid any erosion of the power in the post-verdict setting. By this means, an anomaly that we find difficult to attribute to deliberate Congressional design will be reduced in practical effect and appellate review of post-verdict acquittals made more compatible with what we think was the likely overall intent of Congress.

Of course the only way to maintain the power intact in the post-verdict setting is to accord to trial court assessments of evidence insufficiency the same absolute deference that is provided by the nonappealability of preverdict fact-based acquittals. The resulting standard nonreview is, we think, the appropriate one.

To the use of this standard of absolute deference there are two possible objections that justify brief discussion: first, the apparent asymmetry that results from applying different standards to government and defendant appeals; second, the apparent nullification of the government's newly acquired right to appeal...