United States v. Robert Lester Trzcinski

JAMES HUNTER, III, Circuit Judge

(dissenting):

I am unable to agree with the majority’s holding that a criminal defendant indicted only for receiving stolen property may be legitimately convicted of that offense when the conviction is bottomed on a finding that the defendant was in fact the thief.

The Gaddis footnote, United States v. Gaddis, 424 U.S. 544, 550 n.15, 96 S.Ct. 1023, 47 L.Ed.2d 222 (1976), relied upon by the majority must be analyzed in its context. In the body of the opinion the Court addressed a problem of sequence: when a defendant has been indicted for both theft and receiving,…