United States v. McCurry, Cr. No. 18688.

• Decision Date: 21 November 1956
• Docket Number: Cr. No. 18688.
• Citation: 146 F. Supp. 109
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Fred McCURRY.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

146 F. Supp. 109

UNITED STATES of America v. Fred McCURRY.

Cr. No. 18688.

United States District Court E. D. Pennsylvania.

November 21, 1956.

W. Wilson White, U. S. Atty., Robert W. Lees, Asst. U. S. Atty., Philadelphia, Pa., for the United States.

Mark Charleston, Philip Richman, Philadelphia, Pa., for Fred McCurry.

KRAFT, District Judge.

The defendant, Fred McCurry, was found guilty by a jury on all eight counts of an indictment which charged that, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2313, he had received and sold four stolen motor vehicles, knowing them to have been stolen. His motion for judgment of acquittal or, alternatively, for a new trial, is now before us.

The pivotal question of fact during the trial was whether McCurry knew that the cars were stolen when he received and sold them. He now contends that the evidence was inadequate to support a finding of guilty knowledge beyond a reasonable doubt.

The defendant was an executive officer of and manager for McCurry Motors, Inc., a corporation which he controlled and, at times, used as his alter ego. The corporation had a franchise as a dealer in Studebaker automobiles in Philadelphia. Despite the fact that neither the corporation nor McCurry had previously handled Cadillacs, McCurry, within a period of about five weeks, purchased from total strangers four Cadillacs each recently stolen in New York. In the absence of some credible explanation, an inference that McCurry's conduct was not innocent was justified. Seefeldt v. United States, 10 Cir., 1950, 183 F.2d 713; United States v. Laurito, D.C.W.D. Pa.1954, 126 F.Supp. 116.

No colorable explanation was offered by the defendant. There was, however, other persuasive evidence indicative of his guilt. Evidence was presented which warranted a finding by the jury that the price paid by McCurry for each of the four vehicles was so low as to manifest his knowledge that each car was stolen. Two of the purchases were unrecorded transactions in which the defendant paid cash. Though he testified that the failure to record was caused by the bookkeeper's absence on vacation, the jury was not obliged to accept his testimony in view of the sharp evidential conflict on the question of the bookkeeper's absence. In a third purchase McCurry caused two corporate checks to be issued simultaneously, each payable to the purported seller and thereafter endorsed by someone with the payee's name, a method which provided McCurry with a ready means of retention of the proceeds of one check while recording in the corporate records payment by the two checks of an apparently fair price. In a fourth purchase the defendant similarly caused two corporate checks to be issued. In view of the close proximity of the corporation's bank and of the dissimilarity of the endorsements on each set of checks the jury was justified, under all the circumstances, in rejecting defendant's explanation of the purported reason for issuance of two checks in each of the two purchases.

If, as the defendant contends, a fair price was paid for each car the total outlay, under his testimony, would have been $13,000. Though McCurry's corporation was financially weak, this substantial sum was paid by him to four strangers without the semblance of an inquiry or effort to identify the seller with the person designated as owner in the title certificate, and this, despite the odd circumstance that, in each instance, the certificate on its face disclosed a very recent acquisition of the vehicle by the owner named...