United States v. Harlan M. Balk, David Balk, Paul Patton, and Billy R. Carey, Defendants

The appellants were convicted in the district court of conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 and making and using false documents in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 . The convictions were based on falsified welder certifications, which are documents necessary to obtain certain work as a military contractor or subcontractor. The issues raised in this appeal concern the manner in which the jury was selected, the sufficiency of the evidence, the interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 , and the district court’s ruling on a discovery motion. We affirm.

I

Appellants Harlan Balk, David Balk, and Paul Patton were officers and employees of Precision Welding and Stress Relieving, Inc. (“Precision”), a company which did a considerable amount of ship repair work for the Navy as a contractor and subcontractor.

The Navy requires that welders and welding procedures used by its contractors be certified as meeting certain specifications. In order to obtain a certification, a sample weld must be sent to an outside testing company, which verifies that the weld meets government specifications. The American Testing Institute (“ATI”) was the outside testing company used by Precision. Appellant Carey,…