United States v. Bayer

• Decision Date: 09 June 1947
• Docket Number: No. 606,606
• Citation: 91 L.Ed. 1654,331 U.S. 532,67 S.Ct. 1394
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. BAYER et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

331 U.S. 532

67 S.Ct. 1394

91 L.Ed. 1654

UNITED STATES

v BAYER et al.

No. 606.

Argued April 2, 1947.

Decided June 9, 1947.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 13, 1947. See 68 S.Ct. 29.

Mr. Frederick Bernays Wiener, of Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

Mr. Charles H. Tuttle, of New York City, for respondents, Samuel Bayer and others.

Mr. Roger Robb, of Washington, D.C., for respondent, Walter V. Radovich.

Mr. Justice JACKSON delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a sordid three-sided case. The Government charged all of the defendants with conspiring to defraud by depriving it of the faithful services of an Army officer. 18 U.S.C. § 88, 18 U.S.C.A. § 88, 35 Stat. 1096. The defendant Radovich, the officer in question, admits receipt of money from the other defendants and admits the questioned actions but denies the conspiracy, claiming the others induced him to accept a bribe. The defendants Bayer admit payment of the money but claim they were victims of extortion by Radovich. The jury found all guilty but recommended 'the highest degree of clemency for all three defendants.' The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed.¹ We granted the Government's petition for certiorari.²

The principal facts are admitted and it is contested inferences which are decisive of the issue of guilt. None of the defendants testified. It would serve no purpose to review the evidence in detail. It justifies finding as follows:

The Bayer brothers were manufacturers of yarn and thread and bore good names in their circle. Samuel had three sons in the service. One of them, Martin, with Melvin Usdan, a nephew of both Bayers, was involved in this case. Martin's health had not been robust. These two boys enlisted in the Air Corps on the day which Samuel had learned was the last on which a volunteer could select the branch in which to serve. They were almost immediately assigned as file clerks at Mitchel Field, Long Island. In January 1943, at a night club, Elias Bayer picked up the acquaintance of two officers stationed there. They were interested in obtaining uniforms at wholesale. The Bayers eventually aided them and others to obtain uniforms and paid for them though they claim to have understood that the officers were to pay for them. The acquaintance extended to other officers, and there was considerable entertainment. In April 1943 replacement of men in clerical positions by Women's Army Corps personnel was impending and one Col. Jacobson requested a transfer of these two boys with the effect, as Samuel understood it, of assuring them a year's assignment at Mitchel Field. Jacobson was given a dinner at the Waldorf and presented with four new automobile tires.

This transfer placed the two boys under command of Radovich. By July there were rumors that the officers were receiving gifts from the Bayers and Radovich old Samuel that the boys would have to be transferred. Samuel wanted them kept at Mitchel Field. Radovich made a transfer from his unit to the medical detachment at the same field, which at first was disapproved and then he accomplished it by an exchange of personnel. After the transfer was made, Samuel paid Radovich some $1,900 or $2,000.

In August 1943 the boys were again transferred, to a unit of airborne engineers for overseas duty. Both Bayers were greatly concerned about this and besought their friends among the officers to prevent it. Radovich had gone. He had joined an Air Commando group with high priority on personnel. But he several times talked with Captain Pepper, in charge of personnel, about transferring these boys from the overseas service to Air Transport Command for service only in continental United States. This could not be done. Then Radovich proposed to use his unit's higher priority to requisition the boys for it, to drop them as surplus, and thereupon to have them transferred to the Air Transport Command for domestic service. Pepper agreed this might be done. Radovich told Pepper it was 'worth his while' to get it done and he would see that doing it was worth Pepper's while.

On November 22, 1943, Radovich requisitioned the transfer of the boys to his unit, to report November 25. Almost at once he also requested that they be transferred out of his unit and to Air Transport Command. This was effected shortly. Elias Bayer and one of name unknown to the record then delivered $5,000 to Radovich, who sent Pepper $500. Pepper testified that he destroyed the check.

The Government from these facts and other evidence draws, as did the jury, the inference of conspiracy. The Bayers say they were victims of extortion and there is evidence that Radovich used the transfer to his own unit, one of extremely dangerous mission for which these boys had neither training nor aptitude, to force money out of the Bayers. Radovich denies the conspiracy and pleads certain courtmartial proceedings as a bar.

The issue as to whether the Bayers tempted Radovich with a bribe or Radovich coerced them with threats is one with evidence and inferences both ways. Radovich was a gallant and skillful flier and explained his conduct thus: 'I was going overseas on a very hot job and didn't expect to come back, had the wife and the baby, figured I might just as well take care of them.' The Bayers were persons of some means, thoroughly frightened at the prospect of service for these boys in combat areas, and ready to use their means to foster the boys' safety. Whether they were victims of extortion or voluntary conspirators was for the jury to say, and the reversal does not rest on any inadequacy of proof. The grounds of reversal by the Court of Appeals raise for our consideration four questions of law.

1. The Bayers assigned as error the trial judge's charge as to conspiracy. The Court of Appeals unanimously said, 'There is no question but that this charge was an accurate, albeit brief, statement of the law.' But a majority thought that 'the statement was so cryptic as to be difficult to understand, if not to be actually misleading to a jury to laymen,' while one Judge thought it 'a welcome relief from much judicial verbosity.'³ We are not certain whether a reversal as to the Bayers would have been rested on this criticism of the charge alone. We do not consider objection to the charge to amount to reversible error. Once the judge has made an accurate and correct charge, the extent of its amplification must rest largely in his discretion. The trial judge in the light of the whole trial and with the jury before him may feel that to repeat the same words would make them no more clear, and to indulge in variations of statement might well confuse. How far any charge on technical questions of law is really understood by those of lay background would be difficult to ascertain, but it is certainly more evident in the living scene han in a c old record. In this case the jury asked a rereading of the charge on conspiracy. After repeating his instruction, the court inquired of the jury whether anything about it was not clear, or whether there was anything which they desired to have amplified. Nothing was suggested, although inquiry was made as to other matters. While many judges would have made a more extended charge, we think the trial court was within its area of discretion in his brevity.

2. The Bayers won reversal on another ground. After the jury had been out about four hours, it returned for instructions and asked to have parts of the summations of counsel read. The court declined to read parts. It was at this point that counsel for the Bayers asked to reopen the case and to put in evidence a long distance call slip from telephone company records. It was the memorandum of a call on November 24, 1943, from one we assume to be Radovich, spelled on the ticket 'Ravish,' from Arlington, Virginia, to Bayer's number in New York. The ticket tended to corroborate Samuel Bayer's secretary who testified to receiving such a call and who was the Bayers' chief witness on the subject of extortion. It also tended to contradict a Government witness. The matter had become of importance because of the District Attorney's argument that the Bayers' witness falsified her story. The court had already, at respondents' request, after the jury had been instructed, told them that a check of the Bayers' records showed a collect-call from Washington that day, but on request of counsel for Radovich the court had also stated that the record did not show who made the call. We will assume that the proffered evidence was relevant, corroborative of the Bayers' contentions, and had the offer been timely and properly verified, its exclusion would have been prejudicial error.

But the item of evidence was disputed. The District Attorney had not seen the slip and did not admit the interpretation Bayer's counsel put upon it. Counsel for Radovich objected. To have admitted it over his objection might well have been prejudicial to him. The trial court had already, as he admitted, and as Radovich's counsel charged, given the Bayers the benefit of an irregular conveyance of information to the jury about the call which had not been regularly proved. Moreover, defendants offered no witness to authenticate the slip. As the trial court pointed out to counsel, his proposal was merely to hand to the jury 'an unverified memorandum from the telephone company.' Even during the trial such an offer, with no foundation in testimony and against objection, would have been inadequate. To have admitted it with no witness to identify or support it, would have cut off all cross-examination by both the Government and Radovich, and cross-examination would not have been unreasonable concerning a slip in which the Bayers wished Arlington to be taken as equivalent to Washington, and 'Ravish' to identify Radovich. The evidence, if put in after four hours of deliberation by the jury, would likely be of distorted importance. It surely would have been prejudicial to the Government for the District...