Larceny as trespassory taking

The case began when eight petitioners, together with seven unindicted coconspirators and six codefendants, were tried in the Western District of Pennsylvania under a six-count indictment that alleged federal gambling offenses. Each petitioner faced charges of conspiring to violate and of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1955, a statute that makes it a federal crime for five or more persons to conduct, finance, manage, supervise, direct, or own a gambling business prohibited by state law. At trial the evidence showed that the petitioners owned and operated a large-scale illegal numbers game violating state law. The jury convicted each petitioner of both the substantive offense under § 1955 and the conspiracy offense under 18 U.S.C. § 371. The trial judge then imposed sentences on both counts for every petitioner. On appeal the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the conspiracy convictions. It reversed the substantive convictions, however, because the evidence failed to prove that each petitioner had conducted a gambling business involving five or more participants. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether Wharton's Rule barred the conspiracy convictions.

In December 1948, Morissette went hunting on a large tract of land in Michigan that the Government had used as a practice bombing range for the Air Force. Spent bomb casings from the range had been dumped into heaps and left exposed to the weather for four years or more. Morissette collected three tons of the casings, flattened them at a nearby farm, and sold them for eighty-four dollars. Morissette worked as a fruit stand operator in the summer and as a trucker and scrap iron collector in the winter. He was an honorably discharged veteran of World War II who had a good reputation among his neighbors. He loaded the casings onto his truck and transported them in broad daylight without any effort to conceal what he was doing. When authorities began an investigation, Morissette voluntarily and candidly told them the whole story, explaining that he believed the casings were abandoned and that he had no intention of stealing them. He was indicted for unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly stealing and converting property of the United States valued at eighty-four dollars in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 641. At trial, the District Court refused to permit Morissette to show that he thought the property was abandoned or to argue that he lacked criminal intent. The court instructed the jury that if it believed the government testimony, Morissette was guilty, and the jury convicted him. The court sentenced him to two months in prison or a fine of two hundred dollars. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Robert Apodaca, Henry Morgan Cooper, Jr., and James Arnold Madden were each convicted in separate trials before Oregon juries of assault with a deadly weapon, burglary in a dwelling, and grand larceny respectively, and in each case the jury returned a less-than-unanimous verdict that satisfied the minimum vote requirements under Oregon law for sustaining a conviction. The vote stood at eleven to one in the cases of Apodaca and Madden, while Cooper's jury voted ten to two. Following affirmance of the convictions by the Oregon Court of Appeals in a decision reported at 1 Ore. App. 483, 462 P. 2d 691 (1969) and denial of review by the Supreme Court of Oregon, the defendants petitioned the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. They contended that conviction by a less-than-unanimous jury violates the right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment and made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, as established in Duncan v. Louisiana. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 400 U. S. 901 (1970) to consider this claim, which it ultimately found to be without merit.