United States v. Oddo

• Decision Date: 26 February 1963
• Docket Number: Docket 27634.,No. 205,205
• Citation: 314 F.2d 115
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John ODDO, also known as Giovanni Oddo, John Addo, and as Johnny Bath Beach, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

314 F.2d 115 (1963)

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John ODDO, also known as Giovanni Oddo, John Addo, and as Johnny Bath Beach, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 205, Docket 27634.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued January 21, 1963.

Decided February 26, 1963.

Jerome C. Ditore, Asst. U. S. Atty. (Joseph P. Hoey, U. S. Atty., for the Eastern District of New York, on the brief), for plaintiff-appellee.

Maurice Edelbaum, New York City, for defendant-appellant.

Before FRIENDLY, SMITH and MARSHALL, Circuit Judges.

MARSHALL, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal by John Oddo from a decree of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Bruchhausen, J., which revoked and set aside the order admitting him to citizenship entered by that court on December 1, 1931. The decision is reported at 202 F.Supp. 899 (E.D.N.Y.1962).

The Government brought this proceeding on June 21, 1957, pursuant to § 340 (a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which authorizes denaturalization when it appears that the certificate of naturalization was "procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation." 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a). It was the Government's contention that during the course of his naturalization proceedings Oddo concealed a material fact in swearing under oath that he had never been arrested or charged with the violation of any law when, in fact, he knew that he had been arrested a number of times prior to the date of his naturalization. The District Court sustained this contention, holding that the Government had "clearly established that this defendant deliberately concealed his criminal record and thereby committed a fraud upon the Government which supports the revocation of citizenship" 202 F.Supp. at 900. We are asked to review that decision.

The right to acquire American citizenship is a precious one. Once acquired, the loss of citizenship can have severe and unsettling consequences. For this reason, the Government properly "carries a heavy burden of proof in a proceeding to divest a naturalized citizen of his citizenship." Costello v. United States, 365 U.S. 265, 269, 81 S.Ct. 534, 5 L.Ed.2d 551 (1961). The evidence justifying divestment must be "clear, unequivocal, and convincing" and not leave "the issue * * * in doubt." Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U.S. 118, 125, 158, 63 S.Ct. 1333, 87 L.Ed. 1796 (1943). See Chaunt v. United States, 364 U.S. 350, 81 S.Ct. 147, 5 L. Ed.2d 120 (1960); Baumgartner v. United States, 322 U.S. 665, 64 S.Ct. 1240, 88 L.Ed. 1525 (1944). A standard less exacting would be inconsistent with the importance of the right at stake. We have examined the District Court record in light of this standard. Because we have concluded that the Government adequately met its demanding burden of proof, the judgment below must be affirmed.

The appellant Oddo was born in Palermo, Italy, in 1903 and entered the United States in 1907. In 1926 he filed a Declaration of Intention, seeking American citizenship, and on August 3, 1931, was examined orally by both a preliminary examiner and a designated examiner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. His petition for naturalization was granted and appellant was naturalized on December 1, 1931.

At the hearing in the District Court, the Government introduced evidence that Oddo had a record of arrests for the years immediately preceding his naturalization. The record included arrests upon charges of burglary in 1927, disorderly conduct in 1928 and 1929, homicide in 1930, vagrancy in 1931, assault and robbery in 1931, and violation of an illegal occupation statute in 1931. Oddo did not take the stand or offer any evidence of his own. He does not seriously dispute on appeal, as he could not, that the Government's evidence was sufficient to establish the existence of his arrest record. Nor does he dispute the general principle, as again he could not, that the failure to disclose a record of arrests during naturalization proceedings can constitute concealment of a material fact that will justify a decree of denaturalization. United States v. Montalbano, 236 F.2d 757 (3 Cir.), cert. denied, Genovese v. United States, 352 U.S. 952, 77 S.Ct. 327, 1 L.Ed.2d 244 (1956); Corrado v. United States, 227 F.2d 780 (6 Cir., 1955), cert. denied, 351 U.S. 925, 76 S.Ct. 781, 100 L.Ed. 1455 (1956); United States v. Accardo, 113 F.Supp. 783 (D.C.N.J.), affirmed per curiam, 208 F.2d 632 (3 Cir., 1953), cert. denied, 347 U.S. 952, 74 S.Ct. 677, 98 L.Ed. 1098 (1954). What Oddo does dispute is the District Court's conclusion that the Government adequately proved the fact of concealment. We find this argument without merit.

The Government introduced into evidence the Application for a Certificate of Arrival and Preliminary Form for Petition for Citizenship which Oddo had completed and signed. In response to Question 29, which read, "Have you ever been arrested or charged with violation of any law of the United States, or any State, or any City ordinance or traffic regulation?", Oddo answered "No". He made that statement and signed the form despite the fact that it contained the sentence, "I certify that all these statements made by me in this application and form are true to the best of my knowledge and belief." In the absence of an offer of any mitigating or explanatory evidence, the District Court was free to conclude that Oddo's act of signing his name to this form constituted concealment of the record of arrests which the Government had already proved.

To strengthen its case on the issue of concealment, the Government introduced evidence that Oddo twice denied under oath — when interviewed by the preliminary examiner and when interviewed by the designated examiner — that he had ever been arrested. Because both the preliminary examiner and the designated examiner were deceased, the Government relied upon the testimony of a former employee of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to establish the customary practices and procedures employed in 1931 at the office which processed Oddo's petition for naturalization. His testimony was that the existence of certain checkmarks and initials on Oddo's Preliminary Form indicated that both examiners, having placed Oddo under oath, had orally asked him each of the questions on the form, including Question 29, and had received the same answer as the one that he had given in writing. Testimony as to custom and practice is admissible as circumstantial evidence, subject to the usual condition that its probative value outweigh any possible prejudicial impact. McCormick on Evidence § 162 (1954); I Wigmore on Evidence, §§ 92-93 (3d ed. 1940). No error was committed in admitting the testimony in the present case.¹

Appellant advances two arguments which seek to mitigate the significance of his failure to disclose his record of arrests. The first, based upon the in banc decision of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in United States v. Kessler, 213 F.2d 53 (3 Cir., 1954), is that the duty of an applicant for naturalization to disclose his record of arrests does not include an obligation to disclose "false arrests." Although the Kessler case so held, it did so in a factual situation importantly different from the present. The applicant in that case had been arrested seventeen times for obstructing the highway, a crime "unknown to the law of Pennsylvania," 213 F.2d at 56, and had been discharged each time by the same magistrate who had each time informed her "that she had committed no crime cognizable at law." Id. at 58. These circumstances were held to preclude a finding that the applicant had denied her record of arrests with knowledge that her denial was false and in a willful and deliberate attempt to deceive the Government. Assuming in appellant's favor that Kessler was correctly decided, Oddo's assertion that his arrests were either of a trivial nature or the result of arbitrary action by the police does not bring him within its rationale; he has presented no evidence that he was arrested for crimes which do not exist.

Appellant's second argument, based upon Chaunt v. United States, 364 U.S. 350, 81 S.Ct. 147, 5 L.Ed.2d 120 (1960), is that the failure to disclose a record of arrests in naturalization proceedings is not by itself an automatic disqualification when an inquiry into the "totality of the circumstances surrounding the offenses charged makes them of extremely slight consequence," 364 U.S. at 354, 81 S.Ct. at 150, so far as their materiality to any...