Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/214

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GRIFFIN v. UNITED STATES Opinion of the Court

extension, explicitly invoking neither the Due Process Clause (which is an unlikely basis) nor our supervisory powers over the procedures employed in a federal prosecution. Our continued adherence to the holding of Yates is not at issue in this case. What petitioner seeks is an extension of its holding—an expansion of its expansion of Stromberg—to a context in which we have never applied it before. Petitioner cites no case, and we are aware of none, in which we have set aside a general verdict because one of the possible bases of conviction was neither unconstitutional as in Stromberg, nor even illegal as in Yates, but merely unsupported by sufficient evidence. If such invalidation on evidentiary grounds were appropriate, it is hard to see how it could be limited to those alternative bases of conviction that constitute separate legal grounds; surely the underlying principle would apply equally, for example, to an indictment charging murder by shooting or drowning, where the evidence of drowning proves inadequate. See Schad v. Arizona, 501 U. S., at 630–631. But petitioner’s requested extension is not merely unprecedented and extreme; it also contradicts another case, postdating Yates, that in our view must govern here. Turner v. United States, 396 U. S. 398 (1970), involved a claim that the evidence was insufficient to support a general guilty verdict under a one-count indictment charging the defendant with knowingly purchasing, possessing, dispensing, and distributing heroin not in or from the original stamped package, in violation of 26 U. S. C. § 4704(a) (1964 ed.). We held that the conviction would have to be sustained if there was sufficient evidence of distribution alone. We set forth as the prevailing rule: “[W]hen a jury returns a guilty verdict on an indictment charging several acts in the conjunctive, as Turner’s indictment did, the verdict stands if the evidence is sufficient with respect to any one of the acts