United States v. Anderson

577 F. Supp. 223, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12562
CourtDistrict Court, D. Wyoming
DecidedOctober 20, 1983
DocketCrim. CR83010, CR83013
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 577 F. Supp. 223 (United States v. Anderson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Wyoming primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Anderson, 577 F. Supp. 223, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12562 (D. Wyo. 1983).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

KANE, * District Judge.

This matter comes before me on various motions of the defendants, Lowell Anderson, Carolyn Anderson, William Pilgrim, Donald Bearnson and Arthur Tranakos, to dismiss or quash the indictment. A total of eight defendants are charged with conspiracy to defraud the government and related offenses, including income tax evasion and obstruction of justice, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, 26 U.S.C. § 7201, 26 U.S.C. § 7206(2) and 18 U.S.C. § 1503. The indictment arose out of the promotion and sale of so called “common law trusts.” These trusts are alleged to have consisted of a system of trusts established both in the United States and overseas. The purchasers of the trusts placed various assets in them, in transactions that the government alleges were without any economic substance and which were designed to evade tax liability. The trusts are alleged to have been shams in that the grantors never actually relinquished control of the assets placed in them. I will discuss the various motions individually.

I. MOTION TO QUASH INDICTMENT

In this motion, the defendants claim that violations of the sixth amendment and the Federal Grand Jury Service and Selection Act of 1968, 1 28 U.S.C. § 1861 et seq., require me to quash the indictment of February 24, 1983. To put the motion in proper perspective, a brief description of the district of Wyoming’s jury selection plan is essential.

In response to the Act of 1968, the district court formulated a plan for the ran *227 dom selection of grand and petit jurors. The plan was approved by the 10th Circuit Judicial Council on September 18, 1968. 2 The plan divided the state and district into five divisions for jury selection purposes, Cheyenne, Casper, Sheridan, Evanston and Lander, after the five principal cities in those divisions. As originally passed, grand jurors were randomly selected from the qualified jury wheels of each of the divisions and placed into a pool, from which the grand jury was selected.

By order of April 30, 1976, the plan was modified to read:

In order to ensure the more efficient and regular use of the grand jury, and to ensure that grand juries may be summoned at such times as the public interest requires without delay, unnecessary expenses or undue burden upon the citizens of the district, which delay, expense and burden necessarily result because of the great distances between cities within the district, and because all criminal trials are conducted at Cheyenne, the selection of jurors for the grand jury shall be taken at random from the Qualified Jury Wheel of the aforesaid Cheyenne Division of the district. The persons so chosen shall then be summoned as hereinbefore provided and shall constitute the grand jury array from which the grand jury shall be selected.

This modification, at issue here, was approved by the judicial council on May 19, 1976. 3 The practical effect of the plan is to exempt all persons living in 19 of Wyoming’s 23 counties from grand jury service. The parties have stipulated that the grand jury has never sat anywhere but Cheyenne.

The 1968 act permits groups of persons or occupational classes to be excused from jury service “on individual request ... [where] jury service by such class or group would entail undue hardship or extreme inconvenience to the members thereof ....” 28 U.S.C. § 1863(b)(5). The phrase “undue hardship or extreme inconvenience” is in turn defined

as a basis for excuse from immediate jury service under § 1866(c)(1) of this . chapter [to] mean great distance, either in miles or travel-time, from the place of holding court____

28 U.S.C. § 1869®.

As I understand the defendants’ argument, they say it would be permissible for the plan to permit individual excuses for hardship, 4 but that the wholesale exclusion of persons in 19 counties violates the act’s policy of “juries selected at random from a fair cross section of the community____”

28 U.S.C. § 1861.

I disagree. Section 1861 mandates randomly selected juries from a fair cross section of the community “in the district or division wherein the court convenes.” (Emphasis added.) As defined in § 1869(e), “division” includes:

in judicial districts where there are no statutory divisions, such counties, parishes, or similar political subdivisions surrounding the places where court is held as the district court plan shall determine: Provided, That each county, par *228 ish, or similar political subdivision shall be included in some such division.
(Emphasis added.) The Wyoming judicial district has no statutory divisions. 28 U.S.C. § 131. Accordingly, the Wyoming divisions are those where court is held under the district plan, so long as each county is included in such a division. By statute, 28 U.S.C. § 131, and under the plan, court is held in Casper, Cheyenne, Evanston, Lander and Sheridan. All of the 23 counties in Wyoming feed jurors into the master jury wheel for each of the divisions. None are excluded.

Although this precise issue is one of first impression, other district courts have upheld their plans as they pertain to petit juries against similar challenges. Jeffers v. United States, 451 F.Supp. 1338, 1347 (N.D.Ind.1978) (“A defendant may be indicted by a grand jury drawn from one division of the district and tried by a jury drawn from another division, without offending constitutional or statutory standards”); United States v. Smith, 463 F.Supp. 680, 685 (E.D.Wisc.1979) (“Like-' wise, a petit jury may be drawn constitutionally from only one division and not the whole district.”); (Unites States v. Raineri, 521 F.Supp. 30, 38 (W.D.Wise.1980) aff'd, 670 F.2d 702

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

United States v. Conant
116 F. Supp. 2d 1015 (E.D. Wisconsin, 2000)
State v. Mertz
514 N.W.2d 662 (North Dakota Supreme Court, 1994)
United States v. Levine
750 F. Supp. 1433 (D. Colorado, 1990)
United States v. Tranakos
690 F. Supp. 971 (D. Wyoming, 1988)
Hennigan v. State
746 P.2d 360 (Wyoming Supreme Court, 1987)
Kingsbury v. United States
520 A.2d 686 (District of Columbia Court of Appeals, 1987)
United States v. Kouba
632 F. Supp. 937 (D. North Dakota, 1986)
United States v. Anderson
778 F.2d 602 (Tenth Circuit, 1985)
United States v. Barker
623 F. Supp. 823 (D. Colorado, 1985)
United States v. Turner
620 F. Supp. 525 (D. Colorado, 1985)
United States v. Harry E. Claiborne
765 F.2d 784 (Ninth Circuit, 1985)
United States v. Rogers
602 F. Supp. 1332 (D. Colorado, 1985)
United States v. Kilpatrick
594 F. Supp. 1324 (D. Colorado, 1984)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
577 F. Supp. 223, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12562, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-anderson-wyd-1983.