United States v. Ann W. McRee Joseph H. Hale

I respectfully dissent. All law students are cautioned about this kind of case in their first semester of law school — one in which hard facts make bad law. The majority of our court today establishes a precedent that places in jeopardy of criminal prosecution recipients who cash or deposit mistakenly issued government checks — -even where the payee did nothing to cause or induce the mistake. This Orwellian result is reached through judicial interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 641 (1988), which is an important issue of first impression.1

*984Pursuant to this judicial rule a government check payable to a…