Wiley Blount Rutledge

“ Here, apart from the weight which the proof of the unknown owner's existence and participation added to the convictions of Weiss and Goldsmith, it added no essential feature to the charge against the five defendants. The whiskey was the same. The agreements related alike to its disposition. They comprehended illegal sales in the guise of legal ones. Who owned the whiskey was irrelevant to the basic plan and its essential illegality. ”

“ Hence the law rightly gives room for allowing the conviction of those discovered upon showing sufficiently the essential nature of the plan and their connections with it, without requiring evidence of knowledge of all its details or of the participation of others. ”

“ It is one likely to arise in any conspiracy trial and more likely to occur as the number of persons charged together increases. Perhaps even at best the safeguards provided by clear rulings on admissibility, limitations of the bearing of evidence as against particular individuals, and adequate instructions, are insufficient to ward off the danger entirely. ”

“ The Government has conceded, in effect, that prejudice has resulted if more than one conspiracy has been proved. [5] But it insists that the evidence establishes a single conspiracy and no more, an issue not presented or determined in the Kotteakos case.
The proof, in relation to whether one or more conspiracies were shown as well as relative to whether any was made out, requires somewhat different treatment concerning the two groups of defendants, Weiss and Goldsmith, on the one hand, and Blumenthal, Feigenbaum and Abel, on the other. ”

“ Each loan was an end in itself, separate from all others, although all were alike in having similar illegal objects. Except for Brown, the common figure, no conspirator was interested in whether any loan except his own went through. And none aided in any way, by agreement or otherwise, in procuring another's loan. The conspiracies therefore were distinct and disconnected, not parts of a larger general scheme, both in the phase of agreement with Brown and also in the absence of any aid given to others as well as in specific object and result. ”

“ The grave danger in this case, if any, arose not from the trial court's rulings upon admissibility or from its instructions to the jury. As we have said, these were as adequate as might reasonably be required in a joint trial. The danger rested rather in the risk that the jury, in disregard of the court's direction, would transfer, consciously or unconsciously, the effect of the excluded admissions from the case as made againt Goldsmith and Weiss across the barrier of the exclusion to the other three defendants.
That danger was real. ”

“ Goldsmith and Weiss knew that there was a margin of only about 77¢ between the legal price ceiling and the $24.50 per case they received by check in payment for the whiskey. [7] They knew that the invoices sent by Francisco to each purchaser gave no room for even that slender margin but represented only the owner's cost figure. ”

“ This whiskey was shipped by rail from the distiller or his agent to the Francisco Distributing Company, in San Francisco, in December, 1943. Goldsmith was the individual and sole owner of that business and held a wholesale liquor dealer's basic permit as required by federal law. Weiss, his former partner, was sales manager for the business. Feigenbaum operated the Sunset Drugstore in San Francisco. Blumenthal owned and operated the Sportorium, a sporting goods and pawn shop in the same city. Abel either owned or worked in a jewelry store in Vallejo, California. ”

“ The indictment charges a single conspiracy in a single count. Ten overt acts are specified. The Government alleged and sought to establish that all of the defendants and other unidentified persons conspired together to dispose of two carloads, each consisting of about 2,000 cases, of Old Mr. Boston Rocking Chair Whiskey at over the ceiling wholesale prices. ”