United States v. Reginald J. Holzer

840 F.2d 1343, 1988 U.S. App. LEXIS 2533, 1988 WL 15417
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedFebruary 19, 1988
Docket86-1879
StatusPublished
Cited by105 cases

This text of 840 F.2d 1343 (United States v. Reginald J. Holzer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Reginald J. Holzer, 840 F.2d 1343, 1988 U.S. App. LEXIS 2533, 1988 WL 15417 (7th Cir. 1988).

Opinion

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

A jury found Reginald Holzer, formerly an Illinois state trial judge, guilty of mail fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1341, extortion, 18 U.S. C. § 1951 (Hobbs Act), and racketeering, 18 U.S.C. § 1962 (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, Act). Judge Marshall imposed concurrent sentences of 18 years on the extortion and racketeering charges and 5 years on the mail fraud charges. We affirmed. 816 F.2d 304 (7th Cir.1987). Holzer petitioned for certiorari, challenging only the mail fraud counts. While his petition was pending, the Supreme Court decided McNally v. United States, — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 2875, 97 L.Ed.2d 292 (1987), reversing the conviction of a public official for mail fraud based on the same “intangible rights” doctrine on which Holzer’s conviction for mail fraud had been based. At the suggestion of the Solicitor General, the Court remanded our decision in this case for reconsideration in light of McNally. — U.S. -, 108 S.Ct. 53, 98 L.Ed.2d 18 (1987). We invited briefs and argument. Holzer asks us to direct his acquittal of mail fraud and order a new trial for extortion and racketeering, while the government asks us to stand by our previous decision and affirm the judgment in its entirety.

The facts that led up to Holzer’s prosecution and conviction are fully stated in our previous opinion. Over a period of many years Holzer had extracted a long series of bribes, most of them in the form of “loans” that he did not intend to repay, from lawyers with cases before him or from persons who sought appointment as receivers. The government characterized this conduct as a scheme to defraud (among others) the State of Illinois, its citizens, and the parties on the other side of the cases from the lawyers who bribed him, of the right to the administration of justice by an honest judge. The government made no effort to show at trial, however, that Holzer had received any money or property from the victims of the fraud (citizens, litigants, lawyers), as opposed to the lawyers and receivers who were his accomplices. At the time of trial and appeal it was well established in the lower federal courts that no such showing was required to convict a public official of mail fraud; a scheme to deprive persons of their “intangible rights” to honest government was a “scheme or artifice *1346 to defraud” within the meaning of the mail fraud statute.

McNally changed this. A Kentucky official named Gray participated in a scheme to funnel commissions on insurance purchased by the state to an insurance agency in which Gray and a private citizen named McNally had a financial stake. The two were indicted and convicted of mail fraud (McNally as Gray’s aider and abettor) for having deprived the citizens of Kentucky of their right to honest government. The Supreme Court reversed both men’s convictions because the mail fraud statute “does not refer to the intangible right of the citizenry to good government.” 107 S.Ct. at 2879. Holzer, similarly, was indicted for defrauding citizens, litigants, lawyers, and court appointees (presumably applicants for receivership passed over in favor of those who bribed Holzer) “of their rights to have the business of the Circuit Court of Cook County [Holzer’s court] conducted honestly, fairly and impartially, free from corruption, collusion, bias, partiality, dishonesty, breach of duty, conflict of interest, extortion, bribery and fraud, and in accordance with the laws of the State of Illinois-” And, in defining “scheme ... to defraud,” the prosecutor told the jury that such a scheme is “basically a plan to deprive someone of something of value. The thing of value that the Government says was lost here is what the lawyers call intangible rights.” The jury instructions stated in like vein that “a scheme means some plan to deceive another and to deprive another of something of value, including intangible rights.” It might seem obvious, therefore, that McNally governs this case and that Holzer’s conviction of mail fraud must be vacated. But the government disputes this, citing several decisions since McNally in an effort to show that McNally is distinguishable from the present case.

In United States v. Runnels, 833 F.2d 1183 (6th Cir.1987), a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit affirmed a mail fraud conviction where the jury had been instructed on an “intangible rights” theory. A lawyer had bribed the defendant, who was the president of a local union, to refer claims by union members for workmen’s compensation to the lawyer. The court pointed out that under state law Runnels had a fiduciary duty to the union members that he breached when he took the bribes, and therefore a constructive trust was impressed on the bribes at the moment of receipt. See 5 Scott, The Law of Trusts §§ 462.4, 502, at pp. 3421, 3555 (3d ed. 1967). The court reasoned that Runnels’ action in retaining the bribes rather than turning them over to the union members deprived the latter of property belonging to them, so that Runnels had deprived them not only of their “intangible” right to an honest administration of the union but also of their tangible right to a dishonest administrator’s ill-gotten gains. Likewise, argues the government in our case, when Holzer took bribes he became by operation of state law the trustee of those moneys, with the result that, by failing to turn them over to the state, he deprived the state of property belonging to it. “When property has been acquired in such circumstances that the holder of the legal title may not in good conscience retain the beneficial interest, equity converts him into a trustee.” Beatty v. Guggenheim Exploration Co., 225 N.Y. 380, 386, 122 N.E. 378, 380 (1919) (Cardozo, J.).

McNally may have fallen athwart the same principle, except that the prosecutor in McNally had never argued that the defendants’ conduct violated a fiduciary duty imposed by state law and that therefore the insurance premiums they had received and retained were actually the state’s property. The absence of any statutory or case authority in Kentucky for imposing a constructive trust on payments improperly received by agents of the state or their accomplices suggests that more than oversight may have been involved; the situation is different in Illinois, as we shall see. A further complication in McNally was that the moneys the defendants had received were not bribes pure and simple. The state would have paid the commissions to some insurance agency, perhaps in the same amount — perhaps indeed to the same *1347 agency. The deprivation really was of an intangible right.

In United States v. Richerson, 883 F.2d 1145 (5th Cir.1987), the defendant had been convicted of mail fraud for accepting kickbacks from suppliers of his employer. The jury instructions had contained “intangible rights” language. The court held that this was not plain error.

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

Related

United States v. Francis Brooks
747 F.3d 186 (Third Circuit, 2014)
Ryan v. United States
759 F. Supp. 2d 975 (N.D. Illinois, 2010)
Williams v. State
37 So. 3d 717 (Court of Appeals of Mississippi, 2010)
United States v. Lazarenko
Ninth Circuit, 2008
United States v. Ploss
269 F. Supp. 2d 1010 (N.D. Illinois, 2003)
United States v. Alfredo Santos
20 F.3d 280 (Seventh Circuit, 1994)
United States v. Norby Walters
997 F.2d 1219 (Seventh Circuit, 1993)
United States v. Di Girolamo
808 F. Supp. 1445 (N.D. California, 1992)
Evans v. United States
504 U.S. 255 (Supreme Court, 1992)
United States v. Frank A.J. Stodola
953 F.2d 266 (Seventh Circuit, 1992)
United States v. Sepulveda
763 F. Supp. 352 (N.D. Illinois, 1991)
United States v. Levine
750 F. Supp. 1433 (D. Colorado, 1990)
LeFevour v. United States
748 F. Supp. 579 (N.D. Illinois, 1990)
United States v. Johns
742 F. Supp. 196 (E.D. Pennsylvania, 1990)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
840 F.2d 1343, 1988 U.S. App. LEXIS 2533, 1988 WL 15417, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-reginald-j-holzer-ca7-1988.