Justia Federal District Court Opinions

Appellant, Clifford Taylor Lee (hereafter Lee or defendant), was tried and convicted by a jury in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on all counts of a ten-count indictment. He was charged in four counts with forging Government Transportation Requests (GTR's) and in four counts with uttering the same, all in violation of 18 U.S. C. Sec. 508. In the two counts remaining the defendant was charged with obtaining property by false pretenses in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 13 assimilating Secs. 18.1-118 and 18.1-107 of the Code of Virginia, 1950, as amended, on lands under the territorial jurisdiction of the United States (18 U.S.C. Sec. 7). On appeal the parties submitted an agreed statement of facts which may be stated in abbreviated form in the paragraphs to follow.

According to testimony it was shown that a GTR is a form of negotiable instrument and constitutes a request by a government agency (in this case the United States Department of Labor) to a carrier to furnish transportation to the designated bearer. At trial in 1972 none of the ticket agents had any recollection of the transaction involving any particular GTR and thus no agent was able to state whether or not the signature of the traveler or issuing officer thereon was made in his presence. Each agent was able to state positively that a particular GTR was passed to him at his ticket counter at Washington National Airport by virtue of the stamp appearing on the back of the GTR which reflected the day of the uttering, the ticket agent's number, and the place where the GTR was received.

Each of the four GTR's has thereon a space for the signature of the issuing officer and a space for the signature of the traveler. All signatures on the four GTR's involved in this case were of unknown or fictitious persons except the purported signature of Thomas W. Hall. The head of the personnel department of the Department of Labor testified from his official records that no one by the name of Barry Adams, Terry Bell, John Thompson, Mary French or John Taylor had ever worked for the Department and no such names were reflected in any records of the Department.¹ The Government produced the real Thomas W. Hall, an employee of the Department, who testified that the signature on the GTR's bearing his name were forgeries and that he had never authorized anyone to sign his name; that he had never handled or received any of the GTR's here involved. There was other evidence to show that the GTR's were false and forged but that all of the tickets which were issued in exchange for them were, in fact, used for airline transportation.

The evidence disclosed that the defendant, Lee, was an attorney in the Solicitor's office of the United States Department of Labor. Extensive handwriting exemplars were taken from Lee and two handwriting and document analysts testified that the defendant was the forger of six of the eight names on the four GTR's with the high probability that the defendant affixed the remaining two signatures.

A forged GTR, admitted in evidence but not included in the indictment, had been passed on May 20, 1970, at the Northwest Airlines ticket counter of the Statler-Hilton Hotel in Washington, D. C. This instrument bore a number consecutive to that of one of the GTR's described in the indictment and there was circumstantial evidence to indicate that the two GTR's bearing consecutive numbers were used to provide transportation for a man and woman for round trip travel to Chicago, Illinois.

The defendant did not testify and the only witness for the defense was a fingerprint expert who testified that none of the fingerprints found on three of the four GTR's matched those of the defendant and that one which was passed at the Washington National Airport had no identifiable fingerprints on it. On cross-examination the expert testified that the defendant could have handled the forged instruments without leaving fingerprints thereon.

At the close of the Government's case Lee moved for a judgment of acquittal, pursuant to Rule 29, F.R.Crim.P., on the ground that the prosecution had failed to prove that venue lay in the Eastern District of Virginia since there was no evidence of any kind to show that the accused was ever in Virginia or that he committed a crime there. The United States countered with the argument that there was evidence sufficient to prove that Lee forged the instruments and that the prosecution was entitled to the benefit of a presumption that the forgery occurred in the Eastern District of Virginia because the GTR's were uttered there and were first found there in their forged condition.

Included in the court's charge to the jury appear the following:

"Insofar as the offense of uttering or obtaining property or money by false pretenses, there is no evidence that the Defendant was the actual passer-which is what uttering is, passing or attempting to pass-or that he in fact actually tried to obtain or did obtain any airline tickets by means of false pretenses. Therefore, if the Defendant is to be found guilty of the offense of uttering or the offense of obtaining money or property by false pretenses he must be found guilty because he is what is known as an aider or abettor in a crime.