United States v. Hair
United States District Court for the District of Columbia
356 F. Supp. 339 (1973)

- Written by Kelli Lanski, JD
Facts
An informant told police officer James Blackburn that Frank Hair (defendant) had expressed an interest in buying a stolen television set. The informant also told Blackburn that the informant had sold stolen goods to Hair on several occasions in the past year. Hair had purchased the goods from the informant in a grocery store Hair operated. Blackburn bought a new television and gave it to the informant with instructions to sell it to Hair and tell Hair it was stolen. Hair purchased the television and was indicted for attempting to receive stolen property. Hair raised the impossibility defense, arguing that buying property that had not been stolen was not a crime.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Flannery, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 814,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.