United States v. Fred Napier

Appellant Fred Napier is a former Montana Commissioner of Financial Institutions, an office in the state’s Department of Commerce. As Commissioner, Napier supervised the regulation of all state-chartered financial institutions. It was his job to oversee the conduct of bank examinations and to act on the findings of those examinations. While serving as Commissioner, Napier obtained a loan from James Edmiston, the president of a bank-holding company which owned a number of state-chartered banks that were insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. As a result of accepting this loan, Napier was tried and convicted of violating 18 U.S. C. § 213, which provides in relevant part:

Napier’s conviction cannot stand because there is no evidence that Napier had examined any bank with which Edmi-ston was connected prior to the time that he received the loan. Nor is there any evidence that the Montana Department of Commerce had examined any such bank between the time that Napier was appointed Commissioner and the time that Edmi-ston made the loan. All the evidence shows is that the Department of Commerce routinely conducted bank examinations and that Napier, as Commissioner of…