Signing Wrong Name On Postal Delivery Form Leads To False Statements Conviction

Here’s a federal case you don’t see every day, involving a conviction on a charge of making a materially false statement about a matter within the jurisdiction of the Postal Service, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2) – and a federal circuit court of appeals decision affirming the conviction. 

As the circuit court explained, inspectors from the U.S. Postal Service intercepted a package containing cocaine and addressed to Karen White, whom the Postal Service believed was a “fictitious person,” at an address in Washington, D.C.   The Postal Service and the Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) organized a “controlled delivery” to apprehend the recipient of the package.  The MPD got a warrant authorizing it to replace most of the cocaine inside the package with flour, to place a tracking device inside the box, and to monitor the delivery of the package.  Postal Inspector Alicia Bumpas, posing as a letter carrier, attempted to hand deliver the package to the indicated address. At that time, Marlin Moore arrived at the house and used a key to open the front door.
 
Bumpas told Moore she had an Express Mail package for Karen White, and asked whether White lived there and whether she was home.  Moore said White was not home and he would sign for the package.  When asked his relationship to White, Moore said he was her boyfriend. Bumpas asked Moore to sign the delivery form and the Express Mail label and Moore signed the name “Kevin Jones” on each.  Moore then took the package, placed it inside the house, shut the door, and left the premises.  Soon thereafter he returned to the house and retrieved the package.   He was arrested when he attempted to leave with it.
 
Among other things, Moore was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2). He admitted at trial that he signed the delivery form and the Express Mail label using a false name. After he was convicted of making a materially false statement, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2), he appealed, arguing that no rational jury could have found the false name was “material” to any matter within the jurisdiction of the federal government.
 
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has just affirmed the conviction.
 
The circuit court reasoned that a statement is material if it has “a natural tendency to influence, or is capable of influencing, either a discrete decision or any other function of the agency to which it was addressed.” In the appellate court’s view, the evidence that was presented “more than sufficed” for a reasonable jury to conclude, as the government argued at trial, “that Moore’s false statement was capable of affecting the Postal Service’s general function of tracking packages and identifying the recipients of packages entrusted to it.” Moreover, it added, “Moore’s use of a false name also could have impeded the ability of the Postal Service to investigate the trafficking of narcotics through the mails.”
 
A concurring judge added the following:  "As many have noted, § 1001 prosecutions can pose a risk of abuse and injustice. In part, that’s because § 1001 applies to virtually any statement an individual makes to virtually any federal government official – even when the individual making the statement is not under oath (unlike in perjury cases) or otherwise aware that criminal punishment can result from a false statement.  See, e.g., Alex Kozinski & Misha Tseytlin, You’re (Probably) a Federal Criminal, in IN THE NAME OF JUSTICE 43, 47 (2009) (“Your mom taught you not to lie, but she probably didn’t tell you that making a false statement to any federal official dealing with any matter in his jurisdiction will make you a federal criminal.”); cf. United States v. Yermian, 468 U.S. 63, 82 (1984) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (§ 1001 can be used to punish “the most casual false statements so long as they turned out, unbeknownst to their maker, to be material to some federal agency function . . . [making] a surprisingly broad range of unremarkable conduct a violation of federal law”) (internal quotation marks omitted)."
 
The case is U.S. v. Moore, No. 06-3085 (D.C. Cir. July 27, 2010). Attorneys involved include Sandra G. Roland, A. J.  Kramer, and Lisa  B.  Wright; and  Sarah T. Chasson, Ronald C. Machen, Jr., Roy W. McLeese III and Elizabeth Trosman.