United States v. William F. Raborn, III and Samuel H. Cole

575 F.2d 688, 41 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 1077, 1978 U.S. App. LEXIS 11252
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedMay 10, 1978
Docket77-1847 and 77-1860
StatusPublished
Cited by24 cases

This text of 575 F.2d 688 (United States v. William F. Raborn, III and Samuel H. Cole) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth 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. William F. Raborn, III and Samuel H. Cole, 575 F.2d 688, 41 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 1077, 1978 U.S. App. LEXIS 11252 (9th Cir. 1978).

Opinion

SNEED, Circuit Judge:

Appellants Raborn and Cole were employees of the United States Postal Service. This appeal stems from charges that appellants corruptly received gifts from two individuals representing corporations doing business with the Postal Service. The charges resulted in a fourteen-count indictment naming Raborn and Cole as co-defendants.

The counts involving Cole were severed and Raborn was tried first. He was convicted of five counts of bribery, 18 U.S.C. § 201(c), one count of accepting a gratuity, 18 U.S.C. § 201(g), two counts of submitting false claims against the United States, 18 U.S.C. § 287, one count of tax evasion, 26 U.S.C. § 7201, and one count of filing a false return, 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1). He received a five-year sentence for the bribery, false claims, and tax evasion convictions, a two-year sentence for accepting a gratuity, and a three-year sentence for filing a false return. All sentences are to be served concurrently.

Following Raborn’s conviction, Cole pleaded guilty to two counts of accepting a gratuity, and the trial court, sitting without a jury, found him guilty of two counts of tax evasion, 26 U.S.C. § 7201. Cole received a sentence of eighteen months on each count, said terms to run concurrently.

On appeal appellants argue that their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination should bar their convictions on the tax counts. In essence they assert that because their income was derived from illegal sources, an admission on a tax return would be incriminating and therefore, in filing their returns, the rights against self-incrimination adhere. However, appellants failed to raise the privilege at the time of filing their returns and therefore this argument must fail under United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259, 47 S.Ct. 607, 71 L.Ed. 1037 (1927).

*690 Appellants seek to avoid the requirement of raising the defense at the time of filing by arguing that the exceptions raised in Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62, 88 S.Ct. 709, 19 L.Ed.2d 906 (1968) and Mar-chetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 88 S.Ct. 697, 19 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) apply in the present situation. These cases involved the special occupational taxes and detailed tax returns required of gamblers. The court allowed the taxpayers to raise the privilege after filing because Congress, in requiring such detailed returns from gamblers alone, placed the taxpayers within “an area permeated with criminal statutes.” Albertson v. SACB, 382 U.S. 70, 79, 86 S.Ct. 194, 15 L.Ed.2d 165, as quoted in Grosso v. United States, supra at 64, 88 S.Ct. at 712.

Yet, unlike Grosso or Marchetti, the present case involves a federal income tax return, the same return involved in Sullivan. Appellants urge us to extend the gambling tax cases by arguing that because of their status as government employees, a claim of privilege upon filing a federal return would present a real and substantial hazard of incrimination. We decline their invitation.

Marchetti and Grosso spoke only to situations in the gambling tax sphere, where pervasive criminal statutes make submitting a claim of privilege, in lieu of returns, incriminating in and of itself. The Supreme Court has recently rejected a request to apply this rationale to cases involving federal income tax returns. In Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648, 96 S.Ct. 1178, 47 L.Ed.2d 370 (1976) the court indicated that because federal income tax returns are not directed at those inherently suspect of criminal activities, the privilege must be raised at the time of filing when these returns are involved. Id. at 660, 96 S.Ct. 1178. Therefore, under our analysis of Marchetti, Grosso, and Garner, appellants’ assertion of the privilege against self-incrimination must fail because it was not raised at the time of filing.

In addition to the issue considered above, appellant Raborn raises several challenges to his bribery convictions. Because the sentences imposed on the bribery and tax counts are to run concurrently and because we have upheld the tax convictions, however, the concurrent sentence doctrine applies and we need not consider issues relating to the bribery convictions. Barnes v. United States, 412 U.S. 837, 841, 93 S.Ct. 2357, 37 L.Ed.2d 380 (1973); United States v. Monroe, 552 F.2d 860, 865 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 972, 97 S.Ct. 2936, 53 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1977); see Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 787-791, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969).

AFFIRMED.

On Petition for Rehearing

In his petition for rehearing, appellant Raborn challenges our decision, based upon the concurrent sentence doctrine, not to consider his challenges to the convictions for bribery and submission of false claims. This discretionary doctrine is clearly applicable to this case, as we concluded in our first opinion. While appellant is incorrect in asserting that reversal of the bribery conviction w.ould require reversal of the conviction for tax evasion, we conclude that, because of the close relationship among the counts, a discussion of the issues relating to the lesser included offense instructions and the sufficiency of the evidence is warranted. Appellant’s challenges to the accomplice instructions and to a comment by the trial judge on the evidence, and his claim that 18 U.S.C. § 287 (filing false claims) is inapplicable to the postal service we find to be without substance and decline to discuss them.

As he unsuccessfully did below, appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to prove he acted corruptly in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act, a necessary element under § 201(c).

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575 F.2d 688, 41 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 1077, 1978 U.S. App. LEXIS 11252, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-william-f-raborn-iii-and-samuel-h-cole-ca9-1978.