Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-08-03051/USCOURTS-caDC-08-03051-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Queen Nwoye
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 14, 2011 Decided December 9, 2011 

No. 08-3051 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

v. 

QUEEN NWOYE, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No.1:07-cr-00012) 

A. J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender, argued the cause 

and filed the briefs for appellant. Neil H. Jaffee and Jonathan 

S. Jeffress, Assistant Federal Public Defenders, entered 

appearances. 

Suzanne G. Curt, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Ronald C. 

Machen, Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese III, 

Elizabeth Trosman, and Frederick W. Yette, Assistant U.S. 

Attorneys. 

Before: TATEL and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

USCA Case #08-3051 Document #1346730 Filed: 12/09/2011 Page 1 of 19
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Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN. 

 Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

 

 BROWN, Circuit Judge: Appellant, Queen Nwoye 

(“Nwoye”), was convicted of conspiring with a male 

accomplice, Adriane Osuagwu (“Osuagwu”), to extort money 

from Dr. Ikemba Iweala (“Iweala”), by threatening to expose 

their brief extramarital affair to his wife and the medical 

licensing board. At trial, Nwoye’s attorney proffered 

evidence in support of a duress defense. The district court 

permitted Nwoye to testify as to the facts of her alleged 

duress, but declined to instruct the jury about the defense. 

Nwoye now appeals her conviction on the grounds that the 

district court improperly denied her a duress instruction and 

improperly instructed the jury on venue. Because Nwoye is 

not entitled to a duress instruction and because there was no 

plain error regarding the venue instruction, we affirm. 

I 

After Nwoye, a native of Nigeria, came across Dr. 

Iweala’s name on prescriptions she handled as a pharmacy 

technician, she left phone messages pretending to be a relative 

of his in order to get his attention. She succeeded, and for a 

few months in 2002, Nwoye and the doctor were lovers. The 

romantic part of their relationship ended amicably, and 

Nwoye and Iweala remained friendly. Nwoye, who had 

earned an accounting degree in Nigeria, was married and had 

children. She began attending nursing school sometime after 

her affair with Iweala and has since graduated and is a 

registered nurse.

In the summer of 2005, Nwoye and her husband agreed 

to a separation. Around the same time, she met Osuagwu and 

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began a romantic relationship with him. In February of 2006, 

Nwoye told Osuagwu about her affair with Iweala. At 

Osuagwu’s urging, Nwoye telephoned Iweala and asked him 

to speak with Osuagwu, who she introduced, using a 

pseudonym, as her “cousin.” This conversation began a series 

of extortion demands with which Nwoye urged Iweala to 

comply. In fact, the plot spanned two months and featured a 

series of five separate demands for money, three instances in 

which Nwoye herself collected money from Iweala alone, one 

coordinated and successful effort by Nwoye and Osuagwu to 

extract even more money by lying to Iweala and insisting 

Nwoye had kept all of the money for herself, and one 

particularly dramatic incident in which Nwoye lured Iweala to 

meet her in the parking lot of Providence Hospital in 

Washington, D.C. by falsely claiming a desire to return his 

money and to renew their sexual liaison. That night, she went 

with Osuagwu to the hospital parking lot, and once she and 

Iweala were alone in her car, in flagrante delicto, Osuagwu 

took photographs to use as leverage, at which point Iweala 

fled the car. The extortion did not come to an end until the 

conspirators had extracted $185,000; Iweala then confessed 

his indiscretions and contacted the FBI. Shortly thereafter, 

Nwoye returned to her husband and contacted a law 

enforcement agency in Nigeria, the Economic and Financial 

Crime Commission (“EFCC”), to report Osuagwu’s criminal 

activity.

At trial, Nwoye testified she did not want to extort money 

from Iweala but that, throughout this extortion scheme, 

Osuagwu physically abused her and forced her to participate. 

At his insistence, she wore a Bluetooth earpiece so the two 

could be in constant telephone contact and so Osuagwu could 

monitor her conversations and activities. She also claimed 

that Osuagwu said he was an FBI agent, as well as a nurse. 

He threatened to kill her if she failed to cooperate. She feared 

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4 

contacting the police because she thought Osuagwu could use 

his supposed law enforcement connections to discover her 

betrayal and retaliate against her.

Based on these alleged threats, Nwoye’s attorney 

requested the jury be instructed on a duress defense.1

 A 

defendant is only entitled to an instruction on a theory of 

duress if there is “sufficient evidence from which a reasonable 

jury could find” for the defendant on that theory. United 

States v. Akhigbe, 642 F.3d 1078, 1083 (D.C. Cir. 2011). The 

district court found Nwoye’s testimony insufficient to support 

the instruction. We review this determination de novo. 

United States v. Kayode, 254 F.3d 204, 214 (D.C. Cir. 2001). 

II 

The affirmative defense of duress is only available to a 

defendant who shows she acted “under an unlawful threat of 

imminent death or serious bodily injury.” United States v. 

Bailey, 444 U.S. 394, 409 (1980). The threat must be both 

grave and so “immediate,” United States v. Gaviria, 116 F.3d 

1498, 1531 (D.C. Cir. 1997), as to preclude “any reasonable, 

legal alternative to committing the crime,” United States v. 

Jenrette, 744 F.2d 817, 820 (D.C. Cir. 1984); see also United 

States v. Rawlings, 982 F.2d 590, 593 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (“[A] 

defendant cannot claim duress when he had, but passed up, an 

opportunity to seek the aid of law enforcement officials.”). A 

defendant who has the opportunity to avoid committing a 

crime, either by contacting police or by otherwise removing 

herself from a threatening situation, cannot seek to excuse her 

criminal conduct by claiming to have acted under duress. 

 

1

 Before Nwoye testified, the government objected to the proposed 

instruction but stated it would nonetheless not prevent Nwoye from 

testifying to these threats or her alleged abuse.

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This Court has affirmed denials of the duress defense 

even in quite harrowing situations. In Gaviria, we denied the 

defense for a defendant whose teenage daughter was in the 

physical custody of a co-conspirator, with a history of 

physical abuse against the daughter, who coerced the 

defendant’s cooperation for thirteen months “by reminding 

him that [the daughter] was ‘in his hands.’” 116 F.3d at 1531. 

But, because of the defendant’s “ample opportunities” to 

inform his daughter, other members of his family, his 

daughter’s school principal, or any number of other people 

about that threat, we concluded the defendant’s claim of 

duress “border[ed] upon the frivolous.” Id. The requirement 

of immediacy is also not equivocal. A defendant who had just 

two days between the receipt of a threat and the inception of 

the conspiracy during which he could have contacted the 

authorities or sought help failed to meet it. Jenrette, 744 F.2d 

at 821. 

Our sister Circuits have imposed a similarly high bar. In 

United States v. Alicea, the Second Circuit denied the defense 

to female defendants forced to transport drugs after having 

been raped by their captors, told they were under constant 

visual surveillance during a nine-hour plane flight, and 

threatened with the deaths of their families if they failed to 

cooperate because they could have “complain[ed] to the cabin 

attendants” during the flight or sought assistance from 

Immigration and Customs officers after landing. 837 F.2d 

103, 105–06 (2d Cir. 1988); see also R.I. Recreation Ctr. v. 

Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co., 177 F.2d 603, 604–05 (1st Cir. 1949) 

(affirming denial of defense for defendant accosted by armed 

men who drove him at gunpoint to his office building, ordered 

him to take money out of his safe, and threatened they would 

“take care of” his family if he did not comply, because the 

threat was of “future unspecified harm” and because he was 

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free in the minutes he was alone in the office building to call 

someone for help). 

Without denying the compelling nature of Osuagwu’s 

alleged threats or of the abuse Nwoye claims to have 

received, Nwoye’s testimony falls far short of the duress 

claimed in, and ultimately denied by, our precedents. She had 

ample opportunities to notify law enforcement either directly 

or indirectly or, even more basically, to avail herself of 

“reasonable, legal alternative[s] to committing the crime,” 

Jenrette, 744 F.2d at 820, by extricating herself from the 

conspiracy. Three days a week, she attended nursing school 

classes or worked at a hospital, and was physically separated 

from Osuagwu. While there, she could have contacted police 

herself or asked teachers or classmates to do so or to help her 

escape Osuagwu’s control. She ordinarily met with Iweala 

alone for at least a few minutes when she collected money 

from him, and on one occasion she went to collect money 

from him entirely on her own. She could have told him then 

that she was being coerced, that she needed help, and that he 

should contact authorities himself and put an end to the 

unlawful activity.2

 She let these opportunities pass. 

Finally, Osuagwu spent nearly two weeks in California, 

thousands of miles away from Nwoye. During that time, their 

only contact was by telephone. And though Nwoye testified 

they were in constant contact, she could have turned off the 

phone, talked to her husband, her friends, or the police, and 

fled to safety with her children before Osuagwu could even 

 

2

 Nwoye claimed at trial that she tried to confess to Iweala once, 

and that he would not listen to her. But this attempt came weeks 

into the extortion plot and after the parking lot incident, which 

demonstrated to Iweala the likely hollowness of any promise by 

Nwoye to renounce her role in the plot. 

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get through airport security.3

 And even if Nwoye wanted to 

avoid an open breach of her arrangement with Osuagwu, she 

could have explained any gap in their cell phone contact as 

the result of spotty cell coverage, a trip on the Metro, or a 

dead battery. She failed to take any advantage of Osuagwu’s 

absence. A defendant with such “countless opportunities to 

contact law enforcement authorities or [to] escape the 

perceived threats” cannot as a matter of law avail herself of 

the duress defense. United States v. Scott, 901 F.2d 871, 874 

(10th Cir. 1990). Compared to the duress claims of 

defendants who had only days, Jenrette, 744 F.2d at 821, or 

even minutes, Alicea, 837 F.2d at 106, in which they could 

have sought help, Nwoye’s claim of duress is incredibly thin. 

If the attempts of those defendants to avail themselves of a 

duress defense failed, then a fortiori, Nwoye’s attempt must 

fail as well. 

 Nwoye counters that she was especially vulnerable as a 

recent immigrant who believed her fate was in the control of a 

corrupt law enforcement agent. She relies on the Ninth 

Circuit’s decision in United States v. Contento-Pachon, 723 

F.2d 691 (9th Cir. 1984), for the proposition that this belief 

excuses her failures to seek help or to extricate herself from 

the conspiracy. Contento-Pachon involved a defendant who 

transported drugs from Colombia to the United States and 

who was permitted to claim duress, in spite of his failure to 

contact police. The court found the evidence sufficient for a 

 

3

 That this was a viable option is borne out by the fact that Nwoye 

eventually did precisely that even though nothing had changed with 

regard to the threat Osuagwu posed: Nwoye simply testified that 

her “consciousness came back,” at which point she returned to her 

husband’s home and from there contacted the EFCC in her home 

country of Nigeria. Tr. 440, Nov. 1, 2007. And in fact, a month 

after that, Nwoye voluntarily flew to California to visit Osuagwu, 

apparently no longer concerned he would harm her.

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jury to determine he reasonably believed that he was being 

constantly watched and that Colombian and Panamanian 

police were corrupt and were “paid informants for drug 

traffickers.” Id. at 694. 

Assuming Contento-Pachon is applicable, the critical 

question is whether Nwoye’s belief was objectively 

reasonable, see United States v. Posada-Rios, 158 F.3d 832, 

873–74 (5th Cir. 1998), taking into account her particular 

circumstances. Thus, although we take it as true that Nwoye 

believed Osuagwu when he told her he was an FBI agent, we 

must still decide whether the belief itself and the inferences 

she drew from this belief—namely, that all police forces were 

corrupt and that she therefore had nowhere to turn for help—

were reasonable. We are not persuaded that a jury could 

reasonably so find. First, our opinion in Gaviria suggests a 

defendant must “provide[] . . . concrete evidence in support of 

[an] assertion” that the authorities are corrupt and therefore 

not an available avenue of escape. 116 F.3d at 1531; accord 

United States v. Jankowski, 194 F.3d 878, 883 & n.3 (8th Cir. 

1999) (rejecting duress defense where defendant’s “only 

evidence of having no reasonable, legal alternative was that 

he had a subjective belief . . . that going to the police would 

be futile” and observing that the “well-documented 

circumstances” of corruption in the Colombian police force 

are lacking with respect to police in this country absent 

specific evidence); United States v. Riffe, 28 F.3d 565, 568 

(6th Cir. 1994), abrogated on other grounds by Dixon v. 

United States, 548 U.S. 1 (2006) (accepting duress defense 

only because defendant supported his belief in danger of 

contacting authorities with personal prior experience of 

having been stabbed while in protective custody); Scott, 901 

F.2d at 874 (rejecting defendant’s “amorphous belief” of 

futility of contacting police as “neither substantiated by the 

evidence nor defined as to its scope and coverage”). Nwoye 

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has provided no evidence of corruption beyond her 

conclusory assertion that police and FBI “all work together 

for the government” and that anything she told the authorities 

would find its way to Osuagwu. Tr. 417, Nov. 1, 2007.

Second, we squarely held in Gaviria that ContentoPachon is distinguishable from cases where a defendant “had 

access to a number of” people other than allegedly corrupt 

police officers, including relatives, and from cases involving 

conspiracies lasting for months at a time rather than for one 

“single flight,” which by their length present more 

opportunities for escape. 116 F.3d at 1531–32. In other 

words, once a defendant has options other than approaching 

law enforcement specifically, and the time in which to pursue 

those options, it is no longer objectively reasonable not to do 

so. In fact, even the Ninth Circuit distinguished ContentoPachon in a case involving a defendant who was not under 

constant visual surveillance by his coercers and who was 

involved in a conspiracy that lasted for more than a year and 

that had “times of inactivity,” finding his claim that he had 

“no reasonable means of escape” fatally flawed as a result. 

United States v. Jennell, 749 F.2d 1302, 1306 (9th Cir. 1984). 

Duress thus requires more than simply having no opportunity 

to contact the police in particular; rather, it requires that a 

defendant have no “legal alternative to committing the 

crime.” Jenrette, 744 F.2d at 820. 

Finally, Nwoye suggests the mere whiff of battered 

woman syndrome (BWS) arising from these facts should alter 

the duress determination or the application of ContentoPachon. Nwoye was permitted to testify at length about the 

facts of her abuse, but she did not present BWS as a theory of 

defense at trial. In fact, although Nwoye described some 

threats and physical abuse, her theory is devoid of the other 

usual indicia supporting a BWS defense—expert witnesses 

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testifying to the effects of isolation, financial dependence, or 

estrangement from family members. E.g. United States v. 

Marenghi, 893 F. Supp. 85, 94–95 (D. Me. 1995). Indeed, as 

discussed earlier, Nwoye had many alternative sources of 

protection and support. 

Like the defendants in Gaviria and Jennell, and unlike 

the defendant in Contento-Pachon, Nwoye had access to 

relatives, classmates, and teachers with whom she could seek 

refuge. She was not under constant visual surveillance. The 

conspiracy in which she participated lasted for months. Even 

if we found Nwoye’s belief regarding the dangers of 

contacting police objectively reasonable, it would not excuse 

her failure to simply seek sanctuary with others, particularly 

in the weeks when Osuagwu was thousands of miles away. 

Because she had several reasonable options, no reasonable 

juror could have found Nwoye lacked a legal alternative to 

committing the crime. The district court correctly declined to 

instruct the jury on the affirmative defense of duress. Bailey, 

444 U.S. at 415 (requiring evidence to “meet a minimum 

standard as to each element” of a defense in order for the jury 

to be instructed on that defense). 

III 

The conspiracy instruction given by the district court did 

not require the jury to find that any overt act occurred in 

Washington, D.C., and Nwoye did not ask the district court to 

have the jury determine venue. In fact, Nwoye’s counsel 

expressly agreed there was “no issue” regarding venue, and 

with his consent, the district court explained to the jury that 

venue is not a question for them and that they simply needed 

to find an overt act had been proven beyond a reasonable 

doubt. Tr. 470–71, Nov. 1, 2007. “[B]efore an appellate 

court can correct an error not raised at trial,” there must be an 

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error that is plain and that affects substantial rights, and the 

error must “seriously affect[] the fairness, integrity, or public 

reputation of judicial proceedings.” Johnson v. United States, 

520 U.S. 461, 467 (1997). 

Here, there was no error of any kind. Venue is a jury 

question only if “the defendant objects to venue prior to or at 

the close of the prosecution’s case-in-chief,” “there is a 

genuine issue of material fact with regard to proper venue,” 

and “the defendant timely requests a jury instruction.” United 

States v. Haire, 371 F.3d 833, 840 (D.C. Cir. 2004), vacated 

on other grounds, 543 U.S. 1109 (2005). Nwoye neither 

objected to venue nor requested a jury instruction, and there 

was no “genuine issue” regarding venue in this case. 

Nwoye’s own testimony described at least one overt act in 

furtherance of the conspiracy that occurred in the District of 

Columbia: the incident in which Nwoye and Osuagwu lured 

Iweala to the Providence Hospital parking lot in Northeast 

D.C. to take compromising photographs. She also collected 

payments from Iweala at Providence Hospital on two 

occasions. Each incident is sufficient to establish venue in the 

District. United States v. Lam Kwong-Wah, 924 F.2d 298, 

301 (D.C. Cir. 1991). 

Nwoye chooses to focus on procedure, arguing that the 

question of venue cannot be left in the hands of the judge to 

be decided by a preponderance of the evidence, e.g. United 

States v. Morgan, 393 F.3d 192, 195 (D.C. Cir. 2004), but 

must be submitted to the jury to be decided beyond a 

reasonable doubt. She argues the former is inconsistent with 

the Sixth Amendment and with the Supreme Court’s decision 

in United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 522–23 (1995), 

requiring “every element of the crime” to be decided by a 

jury. But the Supreme Court in Gaudin “did not reach the 

question whether venue is an element of the offense.” United 

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States v. Shepherd, 102 F.3d 558, 565 (D.C. Cir. 1996). In 

fact, three justices concurred in Gaudin to explain that venue 

remained a question to be decided by the judge by a 

preponderance of the evidence. 515 U.S. at 525–26 

(Rehnquist, C.J., O’Connor & Breyer, J.J., concurring). We 

have not decided the question, Shepherd, 102 F.3d at 565, and 

need not resolve it here. Absent controlling precedent on the 

issue or some other “absolutely clear” legal norm, the district 

court committed no plain error. In re Sealed Case, 573 F.3d 

844, 851 (D.C. Cir. 2009). 

IV 

The district court properly denied Nwoye’s request for a 

duress instruction and did not plainly err in its jury instruction 

relating to venue. The conviction is therefore 

Affirmed. 

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TATEL, Circuit Judge, dissenting: Born, raised, and 

educated in Nigeria, Queen Nwoye came to the United States

only five years before the events in this case. At her trial, 

Nwoye took the stand and gave a harrowing account of her 

relationship with her boyfriend Adriane Osuagwu—testimony 

that we must accept as true for purposes of the issue before 

us. United States v. Glover, 153 F.3d 749, 752 (D.C. Cir. 

1998). According to Nwoye, Osuagwu regularly assaulted 

her, “slugg[ing]” and “beating” her even “for little 

arguments.” Trial Tr. at 371, 391, 393 (Nov. 1, 2007). He 

controlled her finances, used her ATM card, charged her 

credit cards, and told her how to spend her money. She 

testified that Osuagwu “was in total control,” id. at 370,

monitoring her constantly and forcing her not only to keep her 

phone on and answer immediately, but also to stay on the 

phone with him via Bluetooth headset during her nursing 

school classes. 

When Osuagwu learned that Nwoye had had a previous 

affair with a married man, Ikemba Iweala, he demanded that 

she introduce him to Iweala. Osuagwu suspected that Iweala 

would be willing to pay a handsome amount to keep the affair 

secret. When Nwoye refused to make the introduction, 

Osuagwu beat her, she capitulated, and the extortion began.

When she later resisted continuing with the plot, Osuagwu 

beat her until she was “helpless.” Id. at 373. Each time Nwoye 

met with Iweala, Osuagwu either accompanied her or, as 

Nwoye’s phone records confirm, monitored her by phone. He 

hit her when she failed to “do [her part] right” and threatened 

to “strangle” and “bury [her] right in [her] house” if the 

scheme was exposed. Id. at 374, 381. “I was so scared. I 

didn’t know who to talk to.” Id. at 380. She followed 

Osuagwu’s instructions because “I was scared. I was so 

scared of this guy.” Id. at 371. 

Nwoye testified that Osuagwu told her that he worked for

the FBI. Asked by the government why she never called the 

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2

police about the extortion or Osuagwu’s threats, Nwoye 

explained that she thought that police “all work together for 

the government” and that reporting him would lead to “more 

trouble.” Id. at 417. “It’s not easy,” she testified. “This is an 

FBI guy. He would find out.” Id. at 400. When the prosecutor 

pointed out that law enforcement agents could be arrested if 

reported, Nwoye responded, “Who are you going to tell?” Id.

Based on this testimony, Nwoye requested a duress 

instruction. The district court refused, and the jury convicted 

her. 

***

Duress is a classic affirmative defense. To prevail on a 

duress defense, a defendant must convince the jury that (1) 

she “acted under the threat of immediate death or serious 

bodily injury,” United States v. Gaviria, 116 F.3d 1498, 1531 

(D.C. Cir. 1997) (per curiam), and (2) that she “had no 

reasonable legal alternative to committing the crime,” id., i.e., 

no “chance both to refuse to do the criminal act and also to 

avoid the threatened harm,” United States v. Bailey, 444 U.S. 

394, 410 (1980) (internal quotation marks omitted). “[A]

defendant is entitled to an instruction as to any recognized 

defense for which there exists evidence sufficient for a 

reasonable jury to find in his favor.” Mathews v. United 

States, 485 U.S. 58, 63 (1988). To obtain a duress instruction, 

a defendant “need not produce strong evidence.” United 

States v. Jenrette, 744 F.2d 817, 821 (D.C. Cir. 1984); see 

also United States v. Riffe, 28 F.3d 565, 570 (6th Cir. 1994)

(“so long as there is even weak supporting evidence, refusal 

to give the instruction is reversible error” (internal quotation 

marks omitted)), abrogated on other grounds by Dixon v. 

United States, 548 U.S. 1 (2006). Because “in a criminal case 

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3

the law assigns [the fact-finding function] solely to the jury,” 

Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 523 (1979)—and

indeed because criminal defendants like Nwoye enjoy a 

constitutional right to trial by jury—a district court may not

refuse a duress instruction unless “the evidence is insufficient 

as a matter of law to support a finding of duress.” Jenrette, 

744 F.2d at 821. 

Given our obligation to take Nwoye’s testimony as true

and to view all evidence in the light most favorable to her, the 

record contains more than enough evidence to have warranted

a duress instruction. Nwoye testified that Osuagwu repeatedly 

beat her and threatened to kill and bury her in her own house

unless she followed through with the extortion. This threat is 

hardly vague or speculative. By any definition, it qualifies as 

“act[ing] under the threat of immediate death or serious 

bodily injury.” Gaviria, 116 F.3d at 1531. This case is thus 

nothing like Jenrette where the defendant presented no 

specific reason to fear bodily harm except that he heard the 

bribe-giver was “a tough guy.” 744 F.2d at 821 & n.5.

The only question, then, is whether Nwoye had a 

reasonable legal alternative to committing the crime. The 

government presents a sensible legal alternative: call the 

police! And the court agrees, as do I, that calling the police 

would have been a wise choice. But Nwoye has a response.

Because she believed that Osuagwu worked for the FBI, she 

feared not only that anything she reported to the police would 

get back to him and that he would kill her, but also that—and 

again because she thought he was part of the FBI—the police 

would neither protect her nor investigate him. “This,” she 

testified, “is an FBI guy. He would find out.” “Who are you 

going to tell?” 

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4

To the American-born, highly educated, legally 

sophisticated judges of this court, Nwoye’s fears are 

unreasonable. They fault her for “provid[ing] no evidence of 

corruption beyond her conclusory assertion that police and 

FBI ‘all work together for the government’ and that anything 

she told the authorities would find its way to Osuagwu.” Maj. 

Op. at 9. But to obtain a duress instruction, she needed no 

evidence that police were actually corrupt or that they 

actually worked together or that they would actually tell 

Osuagwu that she reported him. She needed only a reasonable 

belief that the police would refuse to protect her, and

reasonableness is quintessentially a question for the jury.

United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 512 (1995) 

(“[D]elicate assessments of the inferences a reasonable 

decisionmaker would draw from a given set of facts and the 

significance of those inferences to him is peculiarly one for 

the trier of fact.” (alterations, omission, and internal quotation

marks omitted)); see also United States v. Duncan, 850 F.2d 

1104, 1117 (6th Cir. 1988) (The test for sufficiency to reach a 

jury “[c]ertainly . . . cannot be one of reasonableness. It is not 

for the judge, but rather for the jury, to appraise the 

reasonableness or the unreasonableness of the evidence . . . . 

To hold otherwise would be tantamount to a grant of partial 

summary judgment to the Government in a criminal case.”

(internal quotation marks omitted)). And a jury of Nwoye’s 

peers, reflecting “the commonsense judgment of a group of 

laymen,” Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 100 (1970), might 

well view the record very differently than do the judges of 

this court. The jury, observing the testimony of an abused 

woman and recent immigrant subject to the brutal control of a 

man she believed was part of American law enforcement and 

forced by him to participate in an unlawful conspiracy, might

well believe her and conclude that she actually thought—and 

given her situation, reasonably thought—that any attempt to 

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5

call the authorities would end in her ruin. See McCleskey v. 

Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 311 (1987) (“[J]urors bring to their 

deliberations qualities of human nature and varieties of human 

experience, the range of which is unknown and perhaps 

unknowable.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Taylor v. 

Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 532 n.12 (1975) (the jury’s 

“perspective on human events . . . may have unsuspected 

importance” to a defendant); see also Oral History: Judge 

William B. Bryant (1911–2005) at 146, available at

http://www.dcchs.org/WilliamBBryant/WilliamBBryant_com

plete.pdf (“I’ve known judges who would be completely 

horrified and think you were out of your mind if you indicated 

that you thought from time to time a policeman wasn’t telling 

the truth. And they couldn’t understand why anybody would 

disbelieve a policeman. A lot of jurors know better. They 

have been around, and they have seen what happens in the 

streets and some of them have been exposed to some

things . . . .”). 

None of the cases the court cites support taking the 

question of reasonableness from the jury. In Jenrette, the 

defendant testified that he was under duress to accept a bribe 

because the two bribe-givers “deliberately portrayed 

themselves as mobsters” and that “because he suffers from 

paranoia induced by alcoholism, this ‘gangster image’ 

induced a reasonable fear of imminent danger.” 744 F.2d at 

821. Instead of dismissing this belief—as this court dismisses 

Nwoye’s—we assumed its reasonableness. See id. 

(“Assuming that Jenrette reasonably believed Weinberg and 

Amoroso were gangsters and that this belief produced a 

reasonable fear . . . .”). Even so, we rejected the duress 

instruction because the defendant—unlike Nwoye—“ha[d]

offered no explanation for his failure to take alternative 

action, such as notifying law enforcement officials.” Id. In 

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6

Gaviria, we rejected a duress instruction because although the 

defendant claimed that prison officials were corrupt, he

offered no explanation for failing to go to others despite 

“ample opportunities” to do so in unmonitored meetings or 

conversations. 116 F.3d at 1531. In sharp contrast, Nwoye 

offered a specific explanation for why she thought contacting 

authorities herself or having an acquaintance do so would be 

of no help. The record, moreover, provides no support for the 

claim that there were “relatives, classmates, and teachers with 

whom she could seek refuge.” Maj. Op. at 10. 

Nor do the two out-of-circuit cases the court cites support 

its position. Both lack the evidence lying at the very heart of 

this case: testimony that contacting the authorities would

provoke, rather than prevent, the threatened act. See United 

States v. Alicea, 837 F.2d 103, 105–06, 107 (2d Cir. 1988) 

(explaining that, unlike the defendant in a Ninth Circuit case 

who believed authorities worked with the threateners, these 

defendants “presented no such special circumstances,” and 

detailing defendants’ opportunities to safely contact various 

authorities); R.I. Recreation Ctr., Inc. v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. 

Co., 177 F.2d 603, 604–06 (1st Cir. 1949) (denying defense 

of coercion in a civil insurance suit where plaintiff contended 

its manager acted under gangsters’ threats, but never stated

that contacting the police would be dangerous or ineffective,

and manager had “ample” opportunities to call the police 

while “walking over a mile to his rendezvous with the 

bandits”). This also explains why a jury, if given a chance to 

consider the question, could conclude that Nwoye’s “fail[ure] 

to take any advantage of Osuagwu’s” trip to California was, 

under the circumstances, perfectly understandable. Maj. Op. 

at 7. True, Nwoye had time to call the police in Osuagwu’s 

absence. But because she feared that the police would not

protect her and that Osuagwu would learn of any contact with 

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7

the authorities, the beatings—and perhaps even her murder—

were inevitable if she did call the police. 

Finally, our sister circuits have required duress 

instructions in circumstances similar to Nwoye’s. In United 

States v. Contento-Pachon, the Ninth Circuit held that the

defendant, who testified that he believed police in Colombia 

served as paid informants for drug traffickers, was entitled to 

a duress instruction because although he had time to contact 

these authorities or to flee with his wife and three-year-old 

child, “[a] juror might find that this was not a reasonable 

avenue of escape.” 723 F.2d 691, 694 (9th Cir. 1984). In 

United States v. Riffe, the defendant, a prisoner threatened by 

a prison gang, feared going to prison officials because they 

might not keep his statements secret and protective custody 

might fail to keep the gang at bay. 28 F.3d at 568. The Sixth 

Circuit held that the defendant was entitled to a duress 

instruction because a jury, not the court, should assess 

whether he “had nowhere to turn in the prison for safe haven.” 

Id. at 570.

***

Nwoye’s claim is simple and fundamental to the criminal 

process. She asks that her defense of duress be heard by a jury 

of her peers. To be sure, had the district court given a duress 

instruction, the jury might have disbelieved her or found her 

fears to be unreasonable. But it is the jury’s job to make that 

decision, not this court’s to decide how it would vote in a 

juror’s place. I dissent.

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