United States v. Clarence Epperson

Appellant Epperson has been convicted of transporting in interstate commerce a motor vehicle known to have been stolen, in violation.of 18 U.S.C. § 2312 . He challenges the sufficiency of the evidence and finds fault with the trial court’s instruction defining a stolen motor vehicle. We affirm.

Epperson rented an automobile in Los Angeles on January 8, 1970. The rental contract specified return by January 16 and forbade removal from the state. He did not return the car on January 16, nor did he secure an extension of the rental period.

A traffic officer in Ensenada, Mexico, stopped Epperson in the vehicle on January 19, having received a telephone call indicating that its occupants had attempted to sell it “very cheap.” The officer impounded the car since the rental period had expired. Epperson was not arrested.

Later the same day Epperson told police in Huntington Park, California, and the car rental agency, that the car had been stolen from him on January 18. The police by then had received a report that the car had been involved in a hit- and-run accident on January 18.

From this evidence the jury could have found that Epperson had knowingly kept the car beyond the rental…