United States v. Jackson, No. 13-50215 (9th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseDefendant appealed his conviction for misdemeanor manufacturing, selling, or possessing any badge, identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 701. Defendant, a maintenance worker at a Marine Corps base, was issued a yellow card, a card given to employees of the Maintenance Center for the purposes of "quick identification." After defendant misplaced his last yellow card, it appears that he may have created a new yellow card, although defendant insists that it was created by another person. The court reversed the conviction because the evidence introduced at trial did not support the conclusion that the yellow card defendant was convicted of manufacturing or possessing was "of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States."
Court Description: Criminal Law. Reversing a misdemeanor conviction for violating 18 U.S.C. § 701, the panel held that no rational finder of fact could have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that an identification card the defendant was accused of unlawfully manufacturing or possessing was, as § 701 requires, “of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States.” The defendant was a maintenance worker at the Maintenance Center on the Marine Corps Logistics Base in Barstow, California. The panel wrote that although this is not one of the more significant criminal cases to reach this court in recent years, the defendant had little choice but to make every effort to have his conviction set aside because the United States succeeded in obtaining the conviction without proving its case. Judge Murguia concurred in the opinion’s description of the evidence and its determination that no rational finder of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant’s identification card was “of the design prescribed by the head” of the Maintenance Center or the Marine Corps Logistics Base.
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