Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-13-02166/USCOURTS-ca7-13-02166-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Roberto Macias
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 13-2166

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

ROBERTO MACIAS,

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 09 CR 546–7 — Elaine E. Bucklo, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED MAY 19, 2015 — DECIDED MAY 26, 2015

____________________

Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The defendant was convicted of 

conspiring to distribute at least five kilograms of cocaine, in 

violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 and 18 U.S.C. § 2, and of conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation 

of 18 U.S.C. § 1960. He was sentenced to 300 months (25 

years) for the conspiracy offense and 60 months (5 years), to 

run concurrently with the conspiracy sentence, for the monCase: 13-2166 Document: 73 Filed: 05/26/2015 Pages: 9
2 No. 13-2166

ey-transmitting offense. His appeal is limited to the first 

conviction, and complains primarily (and is his only complaint with sufficient merit to warrant discussion) about the

judge’s giving a “deliberate indifference” instruction to the 

jury (colloquially, an “ostrich” instruction). The instruction

the judge gave (which is almost word for word Instruction 

4.10 in Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions of the Seventh Circuit, 

p. 50 (2012), which superseded an earlier version criticized in 

United States v. Ramsey, 785 F.2d 184, 188–91 (7th Cir. 1986); 

cf. United States v. Josefik, 753 F.2d 585, 589 (7th Cir. 1985))

states: “You may find that the defendant acted knowingly if 

you find beyond a reasonable doubt that he had a strong 

suspicion that the money transported in this case was the 

proceeds of narcotics trafficking and that he deliberately 

avoided the truth. You may not find that the defendant acted 

knowingly if he was merely mistaken or careless in not discovering the truth, or if he failed to make an effort to discover the 

truth.” The first clause that we’ve italicized is the one that 

the defendant particularly challenges, and the second is the 

one that he claims exonerates him of deliberate indifference.

Macias had once been a member of a conspiracy to 

smuggle illegal immigrants across the United States-Mexico 

border. Among his specific duties had been transporting the 

immigrants to this country. After being convicted for that 

offense he had left the smuggling business, moved back to 

Mexico, and created a bus company to transport legal Mexican immigrants to the United States. In 2007 he was approached by a member of the La Familia Michoacana drug 

cartel (it’s unclear whether Macias knew the person was representing the cartel) and was asked to assist, for generous 

pay, in moving money from the United States to Mexico. He 

testified that he didn’t know that the money he was to move 

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No. 13-2166 3

consisted of proceeds from the sale of illegal drugs; he said 

he assumed and indeed was told by the person who recruited him into the conspiracy that the money came from smuggling Mexicans into the United States. He never asked what 

was being smuggled, and so (if his testimony is believed) 

never was disabused of his assumption that it was people, 

not drugs, that were being smuggled.

If as he claims he was an unwitting member of a drug 

conspiracy, he was not guilty of membership in the conspiracy. For suppose a stranger asks you to help him carry a box 

to a house across the street, and you oblige. Unbeknownst to 

you the house is a stash house and the box contains cocaine. 

You are not guilty of conspiring to distribute illegal drugs, 

even though you have assisted in that distribution. A total 

dupe is not a conspirator.

A federal agent who specializes in investigating the 

smuggling of immigrants into the United States testified as 

an expert witness that the sums of money that Macias handled for the drug conspiracy greatly exceeded the sums involved in human smuggling. The jury could have inferred 

from this that Macias knew he was working for drug smugglers, as no one other than Macias has suggested that any 

other type of smuggling from Mexico is equally lucrative. 

But obviously the government lacked confidence that it 

could “sell” such an inference to the jury. Despite his past 

involvement in human smuggling Macias may not have 

known what the federal agent knew about the financial limits of human smuggling. And he may have thought that

since his experience in smuggling was limited to human 

smuggling, this was the only kind of smuggling he would be 

hired to assist in.

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So the government pressed for the ostrich instruction. 

The two clauses in it that we italicized earlier are in tension 

with one another. The jury was told both that it could convict Macias of participation (which would, as we said, have 

to be knowing in order to be actionable) in the drug conspiracy if he deliberately avoided the truth, and that it could not 

convict him if he failed to make an effort to discover the 

truth. The second clause makes clear that he had no duty of 

inquiry. But what does the first clause mean? One possibility 

is that it means taking some active measure to avoid confirming one’s suspicions. A person who suspected that he 

had rented his house to a drug gang might take a wide detour to avoid driving by the house lest he notice someone 

carrying what appeared to be illegal drugs out of or into the 

house. Nothing like that is claimed to have happened in this 

case.

The other possible meaning of the first clause—the meaning pressed by the government—is what the government

calls “psychological avoidance” (as distinct from physical 

avoidance, as in the example of changing one’s route of travel to avoid seeing confirmation of one’s suspicions). You 

suspect that your house is being used as a stash house, or 

that you’re assisting in the smuggling of drugs into the United States, but you shut down your mind to block yourself 

from receiving confirmation of your suspicion. It’s what’s 

called being “in denial,” or alternatively “refusing to face the 

facts.” But its application to this case is obscure. Either 

Macias inferred from the difference between the amount of 

money he was handling for the new cartel and the amount 

he had handled in his human-smuggling operation that he 

was now working for a drug cartel, or he thought he was 

working for a much larger human-smuggling gang than he 

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No. 13-2166 5

had worked for previously. In the first case he was guilty, 

regardless of the ostrich instruction, and in the second case 

he was innocent because the instruction denies that there is 

any duty “to make an effort to discover the truth.” There is 

no evidence that suspecting he might be working for a drug 

cartel Macias took active steps to avoid having his suspicions confirmed. Suppose one of the cartel members had 

said to him “let me tell you what we smuggle,” and he had 

replied: “I don’t want to know.” That would be ostrich behavior (mythical ostrich behavior—ostriches do not bury 

their heads in the sand when frightened; if they did, they 

would asphyxiate themselves). It seems more likely that the 

cartel would not have told him what it was smuggling. For 

he had no need to know—and sophisticated gang members, 

like naval officers, know that “loose lips sink ships.” Remember that he testified that the person who had recruited 

him into the conspiracy had told him that it was illegal immigrants who were being smuggled into the country; if this 

conversation in fact took place, Macias might have believed 

that he was assisting in immigrant smuggling rather than 

drug smuggling.

An ostrich instruction should not be given unless there is 

evidence that the defendant engaged in behavior that could 

reasonably be interpreted as having been intended to shield 

him from confirmation of his suspicion that he was involved

in criminal activity. As the Supreme Court put it in GlobalTech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., 131 S. Ct. 2060, 2070 (2011), 

the defendant must not only “believe that there is a high 

probability that a fact exists” but also “must take deliberate 

actions to avoid learning of that fact” (emphasis added). In 

United States v. Salinas, 763 F.3d 869, 880–81 (7th Cir. 2014), 

we noted that although Global-Tech was a civil case, several 

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courts of appeal have deemed its definition of willful blindness applicable to criminal cases. It is quite similar to our 

analysis of ostrich instructing in United States v. Giovannetti, 

919 F.2d 1223, 1228 (7th Cir. 1990):

the ostrich instruction is designed for cases in which 

there is evidence that the defendant, knowing or 

strongly suspecting that he is involved in shady dealings, takes steps to make sure that he does not acquire 

full or exact knowledge of the nature and extent of 

those dealings. ... A good example of a case in which 

the ostrich instruction was properly given is United 

States v. Diaz, 864 F.2d 544, 550 (7th Cir. 1988). The defendant, a drug trafficker, sought “to insulate himself 

from the actual drug transaction so that he could deny 

knowledge of it,” which he did sometimes by absenting himself from the scene of the actual delivery and 

sometimes by pretending to be fussing under the hood 

of his car. The government points out that the rented 

house [where the illegal activity in Giovannetti was taking place] ... was a short way down a side street from 

the thoroughfare on which Janis [Giovannetti’s codefendant] commuted to work daily. It would have been 

easy for him to drive by the house from time to time to 

see what was doing, and if he had done so he might 

have discovered its use as a wireroom. He did not do 

so. But this is not the active avoidance with which the 

ostrich doctrine is concerned. It would be if the house 

had been on the thoroughfare, and Janis, fearful of 

what he would see if he drove past it, altered his commuting route to avoid it. Janis failed to display curiosity, but he did nothing to prevent the truth from being 

communicated to him. He did not act to avoid learning 

the truth.

And so in this case as well, as far as the evidence shows.

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The government states in its brief that if the ostrich instruction should not have been given, giving it nevertheless 

was a harmless error. Just the other day we had a case in 

which we held that the giving of a confusing jury instruction 

was a harmless error. United States v. Dobek, 2015 WL 

2374768, at *3 (7th Cir. May 19, 2015). But this was because 

the evidence of the defendant’s guilt was overwhelming. No 

reasonable jury would have acquitted him even if the confusing instruction had not been given; a retrial would therefore have been a waste of time. The evidence against Macias 

was sufficient but not overwhelming. He may have been unaware that he was working for a drug cartel. Given the ostrich instruction, the jury conceivably could have convicted 

Macias because he wasn’t curious enough to discover the 

source of the illegal funds. Furthermore, the government’s 

entire discussion of harmless error consists of the following 

clause in its brief: “given the substantial evidence of Macias’ 

actual knowledge, any instructional error clearly was harmless.” That is not argument, but pure, unsubstantiated conclusion, entitled to zero weight.

The instruction in the Dobek case was necessary to define 

for the jury “willfully,” an essential element of the crime that 

the defendant was charged with having committed; it just 

was poorly worded. The instruction challenged in this case, 

the ostrich instruction, was gratuitous. It had no basis in evidence suggestive of an effort by the defendant to avoid confirming his suspicions. We don’t know whether he suspected 

he was working for a drug cartel or if he did that he took 

measures to avoid confirming those suspicions, like telling 

his boss, “whatever you do, don’t tell me what you’re smuggling because if it’s illegal drugs I will if caught be subject to 

a very long prison sentence.”

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The government further muddies the waters by offering,

as an equivalent to “deliberate indifference,” “psychological 

efforts” consisting of “cutting off ... one’s normal curiosity 

by an effort of will.” That sounds like judge playing psychologist; no matter, for there indeed are circumstances in 

which a failure to ask questions is unnatural—a ducking of 

responsibility, a violation of duty, and perhaps therefore the 

equivalent of taking evasive action to avoid confirming one’s 

suspicions. See United States v. Black, 530 F.3d 596, 604 (7th 

Cir. 2008), vacated on other grounds under the name Black v. 

United States, 561 U.S 465 (2010). United States v. Craig, 178 

F.3d 891, 896–99 (7th Cir. 1999), one of the cases in which the 

court used the “cutting off” phrase, was such a case. (It is a

dispensable phrase, however, not only because of its air of 

folk psychology but also because American law is complicated enough without adding epicycles to every doctrinal 

formula. The author of this opinion pleads guilty to having 

used the phrase in United States v. Giovannetti, supra, 919 F.2d 

at 1229.)

There is no evidence that the defendant in the present 

case was remiss in failing to ask what was being smuggled.

His responsibilities to the drug cartel, which had only to do 

with facilitating the transmission of money from the United 

States to Mexico, did not require him to know how the money had been obtained. Having no need or duty to know, he 

was not acting unnaturally in failing to inquire.

A major puzzle is the government’s failure to charge the

defendant with money laundering—as to which the government’s case would have been a slam dunk and the defendant subject to a 20-year maximum sentence, 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1956(a). That would be a severe punishment although less 

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No. 13-2166 9

severe than the 25-year sentence that he received for his alleged knowing participation in the drug conspiracy.

The conviction and sentence for participating in the conspiracy are reversed and the case remanded for a new trial 

on that charge. The conviction for conducting an unlicensed 

money-transmitting business, not having been appealed, 

stands. At oral argument, however, the defendant’s lawyer 

pointed out that the guidelines range for that offense was 

higher than it would have been had his client not also been 

convicted of participating in a drug conspiracy. We therefore 

order the money-transmitting sentence vacated pending any 

further proceedings in the district court. 

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