United States v. Walter L. Ballard, James R. Clark, Ronald B. Pruitt and John L. Burns, United States of America v. Walter Ballard

The United States has filed a petition for rehearing asserting that we misunderstood certain facts which were crucial to our disposition of this case. We deny the petition, but we modify our opinion (reported at 5th Cir., 663 F.2d 534) as explained below in order to clarify the grounds upon which we reversed the appellants’ convictions.

The appellants 1 were convicted on charges of conspiracy and mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 1341. The charges were based on their involvement in a scheme in which corporate employers were allegedly defrauded when their employees failed to…