United States v. Jonikas, 10243.

• Decision Date: 21 February 1951
• Docket Number: No. 10243.,10243.
• Citation: 187 F.2d 240
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. JONIKAS.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

187 F.2d 240 (1951)

UNITED STATES v. JONIKAS.

No. 10243.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

February 21, 1951.

John J. Kelly, Jr., Chicago, Ill., for appellant.

Otto Kerner, Jr., U. S. Atty., Irwin N. Cohen, Asst. U. S. Atty., Chicago, Ill., for appellee.

Before DUFFY, FINNEGAN and SWAIM, Circuit Judges.

SWAIM, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment entered on a jury verdict, which found the defendant, Stanley Jonikas, guilty on an indictment which charged him with a violation of 18 U.S.C.A. § 472, for possessing and passing four counterfeited $20 bills.

In the early morning hours of February 19, 1950, the defendant drove across the city to a community where he was not known. There he visited four different taverns. In each tavern he bought one or more drinks of whiskey and in each case paid for the drinks with a counterfeit $20 bill. In each tavern he accepted and kept the change given to him for the $20 bill.

The defendant testified that he was thirty years old; that he had had difficulty in talking for the past five years; that on the night in question he left his home about 10:00 P.M. and drove to the community where he passed the counterfeit bills, arriving there about 12:00 o'clock; that he made the rounds of the taverns in that vicinity looking for a crap game; that he had about twenty-five drinks of whiskey but was not so intoxicated that he could not have taken care of himself shooting craps; that at the time he was arrested the police found about $250 on his person, and that at the time he passed the $20 bills he did not know that they were counterfeit; that these bills were won by him in a crap game with some negroes on the preceding afternoon.

In the trial an agent of the United States Secret Service testified that he had been with the Secret Service for about eight years and had had occasion to handle cases involving counterfeit money before; he testified that the four $20 bills were counterfeit. It was pointed out that the four bills each bore the same serial number, and that that fact in itself was definite proof that the bills were not genuine but counterfeit. On the following day in the United States Secret Service office Elmer Moore, the Secret Service agent, showed the four bills to the defendant and asked the defendant whether they were the four that he had passed in the four taverns on the preceding morning. To that question the defendant answered, "Yes, those are the bills I passed, all right, but I didn't know they were counterfeit." At that time the defendant wrote his initials on each of the four bills to identify them.

In the hearing before this court counsel for the defendant presented two grounds for reversal of the judgment: (1) that there was not sufficient evidence to show that the $20 bills were counterfeit, and (2) that the defendant was not shown to have had knowledge of the fact that the bills were counterfeit at the time he passed them.

Neither in the trial nor in the brief filed by the defendant here, did the defendant raise the question as to the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the finding that the four bills were counterfeit. We think that there can be no doubt but that the evidence was sufficient to support this finding. The Secret Service agent with eight years of experience, and having had occasion to handle cases involving counterfeit money testified positively that they were counterfeit. He was stopped in an attempt to explain this statement by an objection of the attorney for the defendant. The attorney for the defendant made no attempt to question the competency of this witness as an expert and, in effect, admitted that the bills were counterfeit. The four $20 bills, each bearing the same serial number, were introduced in evidence.

We are also of the opinion that the evidence in this cause furnished a sufficient basis for a reasonable inference by the jury that the defendant at the time he passed these bills knew that they were counterfeit.

As counsel for the Government points out, in the absence of a motion in the trial court for a judgment of acquittal or for a new trial, no question can ordinarily be presented in this court as to the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict and the judgment. United States v. Powell, 7 Cir., 155 F.2d 184; United States v. Earnhardt, 7 Cir., 153 F.2d 472. As said in United States v. Atkinson, 297 U.S. 157, 159, 56 S.Ct. 391, 392, 80 L.Ed. 555: "This practice is founded upon considerations of fairness to the court and to the parties and of the public interest in bringing litigation to an end after fair opportunity has been afforded to present all issues of law and fact."...