IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 97-30285
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-
Appellant,
versus
DONALD L BECKNER,
Defendant-Appellant-
Cross-Appellee.
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Louisiana
February 2, 1998
Before WISDOM, HIGGINBOTHAM, and STEWART, Circuit Judges.
HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:
The government here urges that a former United States
Attorney, engaged to defend an SEC proceeding, joined his client’s
criminal enterprise. A jury convicted the attorney, Donald L.
Beckner, for aiding and abetting his client’s fraud. Beckner
contends to us that the evidence was insufficient to demonstrate
that he knowingly participated in any crime. We agree and reverse.
I.
In 1990, Sam Recile and his companion, V. Rae Phillips, began
raising capital for Place Vendome, a shopping mall project in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana. In 1991, Recile retained Donald Beckner to
assist him in the Place Vendome project. At the time Beckner, a
former United States Attorney for the Middle District of Louisiana,
was a prominent and well-regarded lawyer in private practice in
Baton Rouge. The initial engagement was narrow: Beckner was to
handle some problems Recile was having with the press.
However, in April 1991, the SEC initiated an enforcement
proceeding against Recile, Phillips, and various related corporate
entities. The SEC alleged that Recile was guilty of securities
fraud in issuing mortgage notes from the Hannover Corporation of
America, the “Hannover notes,” to acquire capital for Place
Vendome. According to the SEC, in distributing the notes, Recile
lied to investors and provided them with worthless security.
Recile engaged Beckner as his trial counsel in the SEC enforcement
action. On April 12, 1991, a temporary restraining order was
issued, enjoining Recile from soliciting funds for Place Vendome.
Judge Livaudais of the Eastern District of Louisiana later modified
the order to permit Recile to continue to develop the project, so
long as he used only his own assets as security. On April 30,
1991, by consent, this court directive was continued as a
Preliminary Injunction, and the district court appointed a Special
Master to perform an accounting of the funds that Recile had raised
to date.
The fact is that Recile was in trouble with the SEC when
Beckner arrived on the scene. Nor was he the first lawyer there.
Recile employed a variety of “in-house” attorneys who provided him
with day-to-day assistance in commercial transactions. Recile was
2
also represented by lawyers in major law firms in Atlanta and
Washington, D.C., specializing in securities law.
Beckner was trial counsel. He was not a confidant or everyday
advisor to Recile. Specifically, Beckner disclaimed sophistication
in matters of corporate finance and the intricacies of securities
regulation, asking Recile to obtain that assistance from others.
Aware of his own limitations, Beckner routinely sought guidance
from the Atlanta and Washington lawyers on technical securities
matters. It is also important to keep in mind that the gaps in
Beckner’s experience, that he disclosed, were not bridged by his
two young associates, Glenn Constantino and Henry Olinde. They
were newly minted lawyers with virtually no legal experience. As
we will see, the two associates proved to be a major source of
Beckner’s difficulty as it was these two lawyers who cast suspicion
upon their boss.
In July 1991, Constantino and Olinde became concerned about
certain of Recile’s financing practices. Recile had an interest in
an office building and residence “compound” called Redwood Raevine.
He employed “collateral mortgages” on Redwood Raevine as security
for Place Vendome investors, pledging his interest in the property
to back the Place Vendome notes. Constantino and Olinde, however,
learned from an outside lawyer, Michael Uter, that there were
problems with the collateral mortgages. According to Uter, the
mortgages were not recorded, they had been pledged to multiple
investors simultaneously, and they lacked sufficient equity to
secure their obligations. In early July 1991, Constantino and
3
Olinde told Beckner about these complications. Following this
meeting, Beckner’s firm recorded the mortgages. It also drafted a
Joint Collateral Pledge Agreement to rectify the multiple-pledgee
problem. When Beckner turned to the sufficiency of the equity, he
learned of an MAI appraisal, valuing Redwood Raevine at $2.5
million. By August 1991, Beckner had obtained a list of investors
from Recile, indicating that Recile had only pledged $1.8 million
against the property, well below the $2.5 million appraisal. This
information eased Beckner’s concerns about the property’s equity.
In the meanwhile, Beckner moved on another front. He began to
push his client. On June 23, 1991, Beckner expressed concern in a
letter to Recile that a court might construe the notes Recile
issued to borrow money to be a sale of a security, prohibited by
the Preliminary Injunction. On July 10, 1991, Beckner wrote Recile
a second letter. In this letter, Beckner specially instructed
Recile to stop issuing “double-your-money-back” notes, notes that
would almost certainly be considered securities, even if secured by
mortgages on real property. This time, Beckner backed his
instruction by threatening to withdraw from his representation of
Recile if Recile did not cease this fundraising tactic. During
this time when Beckner was increasing his demands upon Recile for
lawful conduct, the SEC requested appointment of a receiver.
On July 16, 1991, Beckner filed a memorandum in the SEC
litigation in opposition to the appointment of a receiver over
Place Vendome. In the memorandum, Beckner argued that the
securities laws did not apply to Recile’s practice of issuing notes
4
secured by mortgages, thus depriving the SEC of jurisdiction.
Beckner cited the fourth prong of a test for “securities” laid out
by the Supreme Court in Reves v. Ernst & Young, 494 U.S. 56 (1990).
In Reves, the Court stated that one criterion for determining
whether an instrument is a security is whether there exists
“another regulatory scheme significantly reduc[ing] the risk of the
instrument, thereby rendering application of the Securities Acts
unnecessary.” Id. at 67. Beckner argued in the opposition
memorandum that “Louisiana law provides protection to parties
involved in similar transactions (notes secured by mortgages).
There is, thus, a body of law that significantly reduces the notes’
attendant risks.”
By August 1991 when Beckner acquired a list of the investors
in the Place Vendome project, concerns raised by Constantino and
Olinde had been met. Nonetheless, Constantino asked Beckner if he
could approach the investors on the list and ask them what
representations had been made to them by Recile. Beckner
instructed Constantino not to do so.
In April 1992, Beckner responded to discovery requests made by
the Special Master in the SEC litigation. Although he produced a
variety of documents, Beckner filed objections to many of the
requests, claiming that they exceeded the scope of the Special
Master’s authority. Beckner declined to produce other documents on
the basis of his clients’ Fifth Amendment privilege against self-
incrimination. The Special Master never responded with motions to
compel.
5
After the document production, events moved rapidly toward
Beckner’s withdrawal. The SEC complained that several important
investors’ files were missing. Beckner communicated this fact to
Recile, who reacted by removing Beckner from supervision of the SEC
litigation. Following a subsequent document production on June 4,
1992, the Special Master wrote to Beckner to confirm his
understanding that all investor files had then been produced. At
the same time, another event was unfolding that accelerated
Beckner’s eroding confidence in his client — the news reports
regarding the Assignment of Proceeds.
The collateral mortgages on Redwood Raevine were not the only
devices used by Recile to attract investors to Place Vendome.
Later, Recile also began using an “Assignment of Proceeds” as a
form of security for Place Vendome investors. The Assignment
represented that the Place Vendome Corporation had obtained a $300
million loan, and it granted its holders a portion of the proceeds
of that loan as security for their investment. In mid-1992, Recile
gave Beckner a variety of documents, including sample notes backed
by various incarnations of the Assignments of Proceeds. In early
June 1992, a reporter contacted Recile to obtain information for a
story he was writing about the Place Vendome financing. Recile
asked Beckner to help him frame a statement on his behalf for the
reporter. Recile’s secretary transcribed Beckner’s response.
According to her written transcription, Beckner stated to Recile
that the Hannover notes were not securities and Recile had not
violated the Securities Act of 1933 in issuing them. On June 5,
6
1992, the reporter’s story appeared in the newspaper and quoted
Beckner as saying that notes secured by the Assignment of Proceeds
were not securities and were legally proper. According to every
witness of the conversation and the secretary’s transcription of
Beckner’s statement, Beckner had said no such thing. Following the
publication of the newspaper article, Beckner promptly wrote a
letter to Recile, complaining that he had been misquoted. Beckner
stated in the letter that he had meant to defend only the Hannover
notes, not any notes backed by an Assignment of Proceeds.
On June 16, 1992, the SEC filed a motion for summary judgment
in its enforcement action, including allegations that documents had
not been produced. Beckner apparently had enough and on June 22,
1992, he wrote to Recile to withdraw from his representation. This
letter was the culmination of a series of written exchanges between
Beckner and Recile, in which Beckner threatened to terminate his
representation unless Recile reformed his business practices.
Unfortunately for his investors, Recile’s fundraising tactics,
although facially in compliance with the Preliminary Injunction,
were in fact fraudulent. Recile had little equity in the Redwood
Raevine property that he was employing as security, and what equity
he did possess was pledged to multiple investors simultaneously.
Moreover, Recile never obtained the $300 million loan that
supposedly backed the Assignment of Proceeds. Recile’s investors
lost approximately $6 million to his scheme. Both Recile and
Phillips eventually pleaded guilty to separate indictments stemming
from their involvement in the Place Vendome project.
7
During a resulting grand jury investigation and a few months
after Beckner withdrew from Recile’s representation, Constantino
and Olinde became apprehensive over their possible implication in
wrongdoing and consulted a local criminal lawyer. They then
contacted the FBI and the local U.S. Attorney’s office. The young
lawyers claimed that Beckner had been intentionally withholding
critical documents from the grand jury investigating Recile.
Constantino and Olinde’s allegations regarding these documents at
trial were shown to be based on highly dubious circumstances.
Olinde alleged that he spotted timesheets relevant to the grand
jury investigation in Beckner’s trash can while working in
Beckner’s office one Sunday morning. Yet Olinde had no reason to
be in the office that day; Beckner’s trash can was typically
positioned in a place outside of Olinde’s view; Olinde changed his
story about the exact day he stumbled across the timesheets; and
Olinde’s and Constantino’s, but not Beckner’s, fingerprints
appeared on the timesheets, in a way suggesting that the two had
crumpled the papers themselves. The jury ultimately acquitted
Beckner of obstructing justice and perjury before the grand jury,
but the damage at the grand jury stage was done. In July 1993, a
grand jury returned an indictment against Beckner, accusing him
both of withholding documents from the government and directly
aiding and abetting Recile’s fraud. Despite the number of
attorneys representing Recile, Beckner was the only lawyer indicted
for participating in the Place Vendome project.
8
II.
The indictment charged Beckner with four counts of aiding and
abetting wire fraud, one count of obstruction of justice, and one
court of perjury. The aiding and abetting counts were based on
four factual predicates: 1) That, to conceal Recile’s fraud,
Beckner made a misrepresentation about the Place Vendome notes in
his memorandum opposing the appointment of a receiver; 2) that
Beckner prevented his associates from informing investors about
Recile’s fraud; 3) that Beckner hindered the production of
documents to the SEC to prevent the appointment of a receiver and
perpetuate the fraud; and 4) that Beckner misrepresented in the
newspaper article that the Assignment of Proceeds was legally
proper, again to prolong the fraud.1 The obstruction of justice
1
Specifically, the indictment alleged:
Beckner’s aiding and abetting of the scheme and artifice included
the following acts:
a) BECKNER falsely represented to others that Louisiana law
provided protection to lenders holding notes and
mortgages which had been provided to them by promoters of
Place Vendome. In fact, Beckner knew of deficiencies in
the mortgage documents and material omissions of fact in
representations to lenders to whom these mortgages were
being given to secure the loans. Because of the
knowledge BECKNER had, his representations were knowingly
deceptive.
b) BECKNER instructed an attorney in his employ not to
contact persons who were lending money to Place Vendome’s
promoters. By Beckner’s doing so, such persons were not
informed of the true nature of their loan transactions.
This conduct on Beckner’s part caused victims of the
ongoing scheme and artifice not to receive disclosures
that could have prevented the deception.
c) BECKNER hindered the production of documents in a federal
civil proceedings to determine whether the Place Vendome
project should be placed under the control of a court-
appointed Receiver. BECKNER knew that production of
these records would have revealed a pattern of deception
in the offering of collateral by Place Vendome’s
9
and perjury charges were premised on Beckner’s alleged withholding
of information from the grand jury.
The case first went to trial in February 1994, but the jury
deadlocked, and the court declared a mistrial. At his second trial
in July 1994, Beckner was convicted on the wire fraud and perjury
counts, but acquitted on the obstruction of justice charge.
However, after finding that the trial judge mishandled the issue of
pretrial publicity during voir dire, we overturned Beckner's
convictions. See United States v. Beckner, 69 F.3d 1290 (5th Cir.
1995). In August 1996, Beckner went on trial for a third time and
was convicted on the aiding and abetting counts alone.
Beckner timely appealed from the judgment entered following
the third trial, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to
support his conviction and that the district court ordered an
excessive amount of restitution. The government, on the other
hand, cross-appealed, challenging the downward departure from the
Guidelines taken by the district court in calculating Beckner’s
sentence.
III.
In attacking his conviction on sufficiency of the evidence
grounds, Beckner faces a heavy burden. Our review of the
sufficiency of the evidence supporting a conviction requires us to
promoters.
d) BECKNER represented to others that notes secured by an
“Assignment Of Proceeds” were legally proper. In fact,
Beckner knew that the “$300,000,000.00 Collateral
Mortgage Loan” referenced in the Assignment Of Proceeds
had not been obtained. Because of the knowledge BECKNER
had, his representations were knowingly deceptive.
10
determine whether a reasonable jury could find that the evidence
establishes the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt.
See United States v. Pennington, 20 F.3d 593, 597 (5th Cir. 1994).
In doing so, we review the evidence in the light most favorable to
the government, drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the
prosecution. See id. Moreover, when an indictment charges several
acts in the conjunctive, the verdict must stand if the evidence is
sufficient with respect to any one of the acts charged. See Turner
v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 420 (1970). Thus, if we find that
the evidence is adequate on any one of the four predicate acts
underlying Beckner’s aiding and abetting counts, his appeal must
fail.
Although Beckner must defeat each of the four separate
allegations in the indictment, one factual issue dominates this
appeal: whether Beckner had knowledge of Recile’s fraud. In
charging Beckner with aiding and abetting Recile’s crimes, the
prosecution had to show that Beckner acted with criminal intent.
See United States v. Murray, 988 F.2d 518, 522 (5th Cir. 1993)
(“The essence of aiding and abetting is a ‘community of unlawful
intent’ between the aided and abettor and the principal. Although
the aider and abettor need not know the means by which the crime
will be carried out, he must share in the requisite intent.”)
(citations omitted). Whether Beckner possessed such intent
depends upon whether he had knowledge of ongoing criminal activity
engaged in by Recile while Beckner represented him. If he
possessed such knowledge, then Beckner’s legal efforts on behalf of
11
his client can reasonably be interpreted as an attempt to aid and
abet Recile’s fraud. On the other hand, if Beckner lacked
knowledge of Recile’s criminal activities, then Beckner did nothing
more than discharge properly his duties as an attorney, even if his
legal services may have unwittingly assisted Recile in his
misconduct.2
We find that the government offered insufficient evidence to
demonstrate Beckner’s knowledge of Recile’s fraud. The government
presented no direct proof of Beckner’s knowledge. Instead, it
relied on circumstantial evidence. Of course, the government may
prove a guilty mind circumstantially; oftentimes it is impossible
to demonstrate knowledge in any other way. “But the use of
circumstantial evidence does not relieve the government of its
burden of establishing [elements of an offense] ‘beyond a mere
likelihood or probability,’ or by more than mere speculation.”
United States v. Massey, 827 F.2d 995, 999 (5th Cir. 1987))
(citations omitted). We conclude that the circumstantial evidence
here did not permit the jury to draw a reasonable inference of
guilty knowledge; rather, the government’s evidence invited only
speculation and conjecture.
2
In representing Recile in the SEC enforcement action, Beckner
was of course aware that the SEC disapproved of some of Recile’s
fundraising activities. The Preliminary Injunction, however,
permitted Recile to continue to seek financing for Place Vendome,
so long as that financing was secured by Recile’s own assets.
Thus, Beckner’s awareness that Recile was continuing to issue notes
backed by his Redwood Raevine property does not in and of itself
support an inference that Beckner knew that Recile was engaging in
fraud.
12
Beckner’s July 1991 confrontation with his associates Olinde
and Constantino regarding the collateral mortgages is central to
the prosecution’s efforts to pin knowledge on Beckner. The
government contends that Constantino and Olinde gave Beckner
information that would lead a reasonable person to believe that
fraud was occurring. We disagree. Constantino and Olinde repeated
to Beckner the opinion of Uter that Recile lacked sufficient equity
in Redwood Raevine to cover the multiple security obligations on
the property. According to the government’s view of the evidence,
Uter’s statement gave Beckner knowledge of Recile’s fraud. Yet
there was uncontradicted testimony at trial that shortly after his
confrontation with Olinde and Constantino, Beckner received an MAI
appraisal valuing Redwood Raevine at $2.5 million. Recile’s
lawyers told Beckner that Recile’s debt on the property amounted
only to about $300,000. Nothing suggests the unreasonableness of
Beckner’s belief that Recile had over $2 million in equity in
Redwood Raevine. Moreover, a few weeks after receiving the MAI
appraisal, Beckner obtained an investor’s list from Recile,
indicating that Recile had pledged Redwood Raevine to secure a
total of just $1.8 million in notes.
In the end, these rosy financial pictures proved to be
incorrect; Recile in fact had little equity in the Redwood Raevine
property. The only evidence the government offered to establish
Beckner’s knowledge of this fact, however, was Uter’s professed
concerns about Recile’s equity, relayed to Beckner by Constantino
and Olinde. Yet Beckner responded. He inquired and obtained hard
13
financial data contradicting Uter’s opinion. The government
produced no evidence demonstrating that Beckner should have
disbelieved this data; accordingly, a jury could not reasonably
infer Beckner’s criminal knowledge from this evidence alone.
The other evidence offered by the government to prove
Beckner’s knowledge of Recile’s crimes, however, was even flimsier.
The government contends that Beckner’s July 10 letter to Recile
evinces Beckner’s awareness of Recile’s crimes, as it instructs
Recile to stop his fundraising practices. Yet the letter only
advises Recile to cease issuing “double-your-money-back” notes, as
doing so would violate the terms of the Preliminary Injunction.
The letter in no way acknowledges that Recile’s other fundraising
activities were somehow fraudulent. The government also posits
that Beckner’s receipt of his legal fees directly from the funds of
investors reveals his knowledge of the fraud. While it may be
unconventional to receive fees in this manner, we fail to
understand how Beckner’s payment from the investors’ funds can in
any way establish knowledge of Recile fraud.
Lastly, the government argues that Beckner knew of the fraud
because he lied to an FBI agent assigned to the case, telling her
that he had nothing to do with the Redwood Raevine mortgages.
Beckner played no role in drafting and issuing the Redwood Raevine
mortgages; he only defended their propriety to the SEC post hoc.
Perhaps Beckner should have explained that he was defending an SEC
proceeding in which the Redwood Raevine mortgage notes were in
play, but the rub for the government is that Beckner could not have
14
been denying this connection to the mortgages. Long before the FBI
interview, the government was well aware that Beckner was defense
counsel in the Place Vendome SEC action.
In short, the government failed to produce evidence
establishing that Beckner was aware Recile was engaged in a
fraudulent activity and knowingly worked to further it. The jury
was left in considering Beckner’s criminal intent with little more
than his status as Recile’s lawyer. That Recile closely controlled
the flow of information to Beckner and routinely lied to him was
uncontradicted in the evidence. The jury was essentially asked to
assume that as Recile’s lawyer, Beckner must have had knowledge
that Recile was cheating. With the paucity of evidence of
knowledge, the deliberate blindness instruction that the trial
court gave to the jury only fuels speculation. For an attorney to
be convicted for aiding and abetting a client’s fraud, that
attorney must have had actual knowledge of the fraud and must have
taken an active role in advancing the wrongdoing. Cf. United
States v. Connery, 867 F.2d 929 (6th Cir. 1989) (holding an
attorney criminally liable when he intimately and knowingly
participated in his client’s filing of a false bankruptcy claim);
United States v. Vaughn, 797 F.2d 1485 (9th Cir. 1986) (upholding
conviction of an attorney who prepared documents to obtain an
airplane for his clients, knowing that they intended to use it to
import narcotics); United States v. Enstam, 622 F.2d 857 (5th Cir.
1980) (upholding conviction of an attorney for helping his client
to establish a dummy corporation, knowing that it would be used to
15
conceal drug income from the I.R.S.), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 912
(1981). Of course, where an attorney has an intimate association
with his client’s activities, a jury may reasonably infer that the
attorney had knowledge of their illegal nature, even absent direct
evidence to that effect. See, e.g., United States v. Brown, 943
F.2d 1246, 1251-52 (10th Cir. 1991) (permitting inference of
criminal knowledge where an attorney was heavily involved in
client’s embezzlement scheme); United States v. Serrano, 870 F.2d
1, 11 (1st Cir. 1989) (inferring criminal knowledge where an
attorney “had his foot in all the elements of the transactions that
led to the fraud[]”); Wallace v. United States, 281 F.2d 656, 659-
60 (4th Cir. 1960) (inferring knowledge of client’s tax fraud where
an attorney could not possibly have performed his job without
having investigated his client’s books).
This situation is different. Beckner was Recile’s outside
trial counsel — his stand-up lawyer. Recile tightly restricted the
flow of information to Beckner, Beckner had nothing to do with
drafting and issuing the fraudulent notes, Beckner undertook his
representation of Recile only after the SEC began investigating
Recile’s activities with able securities lawyers at his elbow, and
Beckner took reasonable steps to correct the problems that he
discovered in Recile’s financing. The jury could conclude that
Recile was committing a crime, but it could not reasonably conclude
that Beckner knew about it. Beckner’s representation of Recile
only unwittingly, but not knowingly, promoted Recile’s fraud. To
16
convict Beckner on this basis is to make him a criminal for being
a lawyer.
Without evidence of Beckner’s guilty knowledge, the indictment
crumbles. The predicate acts charged in the indictment amount to
nothing more than routine legal services. First, the indictment
alleged that Beckner was deceptive in arguing in the memorandum
opposing the appointment of a receiver that Louisiana law protected
investors who received the Hannover notes. Yet Beckner’s argument
in the SEC litigation was nothing more than a correct statement of
the law, asserted to defend what Beckner believed to be his
client’s legitimate interests.
Second, the indictment accused Beckner of failing to contact
investors once he learned of the problems with the collateral
mortgage instruments, thereby contributing to the deception of the
investors by Recile. Yet under the evidence, Beckner acted
promptly to correct all problems with the mortgages of which he had
knowledge. If Beckner had no knowledge of a crime, his ethical
obligations as an attorney required him not to inform third parties
about information relating to the representation of his client.
See Rule 1.6 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Louisiana.
This cannot be turned over to a contention that not making the
contact is evidence that Beckner had the requisite knowledge.
Third, the government alleged that Beckner hindered the
production of documents to the SEC during discovery, thus
prolonging the fraud. Again, without knowledge of the fraud,
Beckner’s objections to discovery requests amounted only to zealous
17
advocacy, not criminal conduct. Although the SEC at one point
complained that Recile had not turned over all of the requested,
non-privileged information, the fault for that omission lies with
Recile himself, not with Beckner.
Finally, the government charged that Beckner represented to
others, through the newspaper article, that the notes backed by the
Assignment of Proceeds were legally proper. As we have detailed,
the evidence was overwhelming that Beckner was misquoted by
Recile’s office or by the newspaper. According to the evidence,
Beckner referred only to the Hannover notes, which he had no reason
to believe were fraudulent. And that misquote was part of the
cascading events leading to Beckner’s withdrawal.
Attorneys are not outside the normal reach of the criminal
law. See United States v. Cavin, 39 F.3d 1299, 1308 (5th Cir.
1994) (“At attorney is not above the law; like everyone else, he
may not assist in the perpetration of a criminal offense.”). That
said, lawyers at the least are due its protection. The government
did not prove that Beckner had knowledge of criminal wrongdoing.
Beckner was hired to be Recile’s trial lawyer, and in representing
Recile he did what trial counsel is supposed to do. Without more
substantial evidence of Beckner’s criminal intent, we cannot agree
that Beckner was a corrupt attorney, complicit in his client’s
crimes. A reasonable juror could not find the requisite intent on
this evidence without speculating. Beckner may have exercised poor
judgment and he may have been overly combative in fighting the SEC
18
proceedings. But it is a large step from there to joining a
criminal conspiracy.
IV.
Finding that the government offered insufficient evidence of
Beckner’s guilt, we REVERSE his conviction. We do not reach the
sentencing issues presented by the appeal and cross-appeal.
REVERSED.
19