Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03073/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03073-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Ronald A. Dobek
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-3073

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

RONALD A. DOBEK,

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 2:13-cr-00231-RTR-1 — Rudolph T. Randa, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED APRIL 2, 2015 — DECIDED MAY 19, 2015

____________________

Before BAUER, POSNER, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Ronald Dobek, the defendant and 

appellant, was indicted for exporting munitions illegally, in 

violation of 22 U.S.C. §§ 2778(b)(2) and (c) and 22 C.F.R. 

§§ 121.1, 123.1, and 127.1, and for conspiring to do this in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. Convicted by a jury of all the

counts against him, Dobek was sentenced to 84 months (7 

years) in prison. His appeal challenges the admissibility of 

an alleged co-conspirator’s emails, the sufficiency of the eviCase: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10
2 No. 14-3073

dence to convict him, and the validity of the jury instruction 

on willfulness.

Dobek was an engineer employed by a Milwaukee firm 

named Derco Aerospace, Inc., which makes parts for military airplanes. In 2005 and 2006 he was in charge of providing parts for F-16 fighter planes owned by the Venezuelan 

Air Force. In August 2006, however, the U.S. State Department announced that munitions, including parts for military 

aircraft, could no longer lawfully be exported to Venezuela

without an export license issued by the State Department, 

and it revoked all existing licenses. Dobek’s reaction to this 

embargo was to create two engineering firms of his own to 

carry on business with the Venezuelan Air Force. A member 

of that air force told Dobek that it needed canopy seals for 

the air force’s F-16s. (Canopy seals are devices for sealing the 

cockpit’s transparent acrylic canopy, which gives the pilot 

all-round vision, to the canopy’s frame.)

Suspecting that Dobek was selling canopy seals to the 

Venezuelan Air Force, FBI agents obtained and executed a 

warrant to search Dobek’s home, where they found a $79,000 

purchase order for the seals, though with no purchaser 

named. To buy the seals in order to be able to fill the purchase order, Dobek had certified to the seller that he understood that the “products ... to be provided are controlled by 

the ... International Traffic in Arms Regulations (22 CFR 

120–130)” and that he would “obtain any licenses or prior 

approvals required by the U.S. government.” He told a 

friend that he was looking for a box in which to ship “cockpit seals” (which is what his Venezuelan Air Force contact 

called the canopy seals) to Venezuela. FedEx shipping recCase: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10
No. 14-3073 3

ords revealed that Dobek had indeed shipped a box, labeled 

as containing “base molding,” to his contact in Venezuela 

shortly after the discussion with his friend. This pattern of 

purchase and shipment was repeated a year later; this time 

the box shipped to Venezuela was signed by Dobek’s Venezuelan Air Force contact. A month later Dobek received an 

electronic funds transfer of $87,500. Copies of letters from 

Dobek to Venezuelan military authorities, found in his 

apartment, suggest that he was indeed shipping munitions 

to the Venezuelan Air Force and, doubtless realizing the illegality of his behavior, urging concealment of, and explaining 

ways of concealing, his activity.

The proof that Dobek and the Venezuelan Air Force officer with whom he dealt had conspired to violate the embargo on the sale of munitions to the Venezuelan military 

was overwhelming and made the officer’s emails admissible 

as statements of a co-conspirator in the course and furtherance of the conspiracy. Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(E). The evidence sketched above was likewise more than sufficient to 

allow a reasonable jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt

that Dobek had willfully violated as well as conspired to violate the embargo, in violation of the Arms Export Control 

Act, 22 U.S.C. § 2778.

The only ground for the appeal that has any possible 

merit involves the jury instruction on willfulness. Both the 

government and the defense had proposed wordy instructions in legalese, wholly unsuitable for a jury; jurors are not 

lawyers and jury instructions should steer clear of legal jargon. Not only were the instructions proposed by the opposing lawyers unsuitable for a jury, but it is unclear what the 

Case: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10
4 No. 14-3073

lawyers thought the word “willfully” in the Arms Export 

Control Act (it is not defined) means. In the civil context, 

“willfulness” usually is synonymous with recklessness, 

which is to say a failure to respond (provided a response 

would be feasible and effective) to a known serious risk of 

harm. See, e.g., Nightingale Home Healthcare, Inc. v. Anodyne 

Therapy, LLC, 626 F.3d 958 (7th Cir. 2010); Wassell v. Adams, 

865 F.2d 849, 853–54 (7th Cir. 1989). But in criminal law it often requires also knowing that one is violating the law, Cheek 

v. United States, 498 U.S. 192, 201–02 (1991); United States v. 

Pulungan, 569 F.3d 326, 329–31 (7th Cir. 2009); United States v. 

Muthana, 60 F.3d 1217, 1222 (7th Cir. 1995), and that is the 

sense in which the instructions submitted by the lawyers in 

this case attempted to define the term.

Ordinarily a person is conclusively presumed to know 

the law, which is to say that ignorance of the law that one 

has violated is not a defense to conviction for the violation.

But this principle, sensible when a person is bound to know 

that what he is doing is wrong, breaks down when a person 

who does not know of the law prohibiting what he does has 

no reason to think that he’s acting wrongfully. Especially 

when the law is a regulation rather than a statute. He may 

not be aware of a regulation imposing an embargo on the 

export of a product to a particular country when it is a 

product that is commonly exported. The United States is the 

world’s largest exporter of munitions.

So we interpret “willfully” in 22 U.S.C. § 2778 to require 

knowledge by the defendant in this case that he needed a 

license to export the munitions that he exported. Cf. United 

States v. Pulungan, supra, 569 F.3d at 329. The judge gave the 

Case: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10
No. 14-3073 5

government’s proposed instruction on willfulness, which

defined “willfully” as

the voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal 

duty. A defendant acts “willfully” if he voluntarily and 

intentionally violates a known legal duty. An innocent 

mistake or merely negligent act will not constitute willfulness. A defendant who is aware of a legal duty not 

to export defense articles on the munitions list but who 

intentionally exported or attempted to export defense 

articles has acted willfully.

The “munitions list” is simply a list of all U.S. “defense articles.” Because the embargo of sales to Venezuela covered all 

defense articles, it was illegal to export any item on the munitions list to that country without a license from the State 

Department.

The instruction should have been shortened to: “the defendant acted willfully if he exported military aircraft parts 

to Venezuela knowing that the law forbade exporting those

parts to that country.” The last sentence of the instruction 

the judge gave at the government’s urging required the jury, 

in order to return a verdict of guilty, only to determine that 

Dobek had known that it was illegal to export defense articles to Venezuela; it did not require the jury to determine 

that Dobek knew that the airplane canopies he exported 

were classified as defense articles. Read literally, the last sentence of the instruction (“A defendant who is aware of a legal duty not to export defense articles on the munitions list 

but who intentionally exported or attempted to export defense articles has acted willfully”) would make Dobek guilty 

of a willful violation of the statute even if he didn’t know 

Case: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10
6 No. 14-3073

that the articles that he exported to Venezuela were on the 

munitions list. One might know there was such a list and 

that nothing on it could lawfully be exported, yet not that a 

particular item was on the list.

So the government is wrong to argue that its proposed 

instruction, which the judge gave, “was an accurate recitation of the law.” But the error was harmless. No reasonable 

jury would have acquitted the defendant. The evidence reviewed above showed that Dobek exported to Venezuela 

items, namely canopy seals for F-16s, that he knew to be embargoed.

The government, with misplaced confidence in the accuracy of its instruction, does not argue harmless error. But an 

appellate court can invoke the concept on its own initiative

when it is clear that an error committed by the district court 

would not have affected the decision of a reasonable jury. 

See Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 19–20 (1999); United 

States v. Ford, 683 F.3d 761, 768–69 (7th Cir. 2012); United 

States v. Giovannetti, 928 F.2d 225, 226–27 (7th Cir. 1991) (per 

curiam). To reverse and remand in such a case would create 

needless repetition, for the result of the trial on remand 

would be foreordained unless the new jury was unreasonable.

We admit to some misgivings about invoking harmless 

error with regard to a jury instruction. For where does one 

stop? Suppose a judge forgot to give any jury instructions in 

a criminal case, or deliberately decided not to do so because 

he thought the case open and shut and that the closing arguments to the jury would be an adequate substitute for instructions. The next step would be for a judge to convict the 

Case: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10
No. 14-3073 7

defendant without bothering with a trial, on the ground that 

the trial could have only one outcome—the conviction of the 

defendant. The final step would be to convict him at his arraignment. But these examples merely show that the doctrine of harmless error should not be used to obliterate a 

criminal defendant’s fundamental rights even if it is clear 

that the assertion of those rights will not gain him an acquittal by a reasonable jury. As we said many years ago, “The 

Constitution requires (unless the defendant waives his 

rights) a certain modicum of adversary procedure even if the 

outcome is a foregone conclusion because the evidence of 

guilt is overwhelming.” Walberg v. Israel, 766 F.2d 1071, 1074 

(7th Cir. 1985).

But the garbling of one instruction, at least in a case as 

one-sided as this one—the evidence that the violation was 

willful was overwhelming—can we think be excused when 

it satisfies the criteria for harmless error. A supportive point 

is that the government in its closing argument told the jury 

that the defendant had known that what he was doing in arranging exports of the canopy seals to Venezuela after the 

embargo was imposed was illegal. The defendant’s defense 

was that he didn’t know that what he was doing was illegal; 

so the question of his knowledge was placed squarely before 

the jury.

AFFIRMED.

Case: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10
8 No. 14-3073

BAUER, Circuit Judge, concurring. The instruction given by

the district court looks like many of the willfulness instructions

given in this Circuit. This may be due in part to the approach

to willfulness that has been taken over the years by our Pattern

Criminal Jury Instruction Committee—a Committee which, in

the interest of full disclosure, I must confess to chairing since

its inception. More specifically, while the view of the Committee has evolved on this issue, the views of district courts may

not have.

While our pattern instructions include literally scores of

instructions addressed to specific criminal statutes, we have

not taken that approach with respect to willfulness instructions. Rather, at least since the 1999 revision of the pattern

criminal instructions, the Committee has declined to provide

a pattern willfulness instruction. Instead, we have recommended that district judges specifically consider the statute

charged in the case in deciding whether to define willfulness

in a separate instruction and, if so, how to do so. See Seventh

Circuit Federal Jury Instructions (Criminal) (West 1999) at

§ 4.09. As we concluded then, ?it is rarely desirable to give a

general definition of ‘willfully.’ If the statute uses the term and

it must be defined, it should be defined in a manner tailoring

it to the details of the particular offense charged.” Id. at 69. But

that discussion was part of a lengthy Committee Comment in

which we also quoted language from a number of cases and

pattern instructions, some of which is similar to what the

district court seems to have started with in this case. 

Ten or more years later, as we revised the pattern criminal

instructions, the feeling of the Committee was that the presence of our extensive comments and citations in 1999 had

Case: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10
No. 14-3073 9

turned out to be somewhat inconsistent with our final point,

which was that willfulness instructions must be ?tailor[ed] to

the details of the particular offense charged.” As a result, the

latest version, while it still offers no pattern instruction,

dispenses with the lengthy comment and citations. The

Committee instead continues to decline to offer ?a general

definition of willfulness because the term is statute-specific.”

See Seventh Circuit Pattern Federal Jury Instructions – Criminal at § 4.11 (Thompson Reuters 2012). As the instruction given

in this case suggests, though, not everyone has thrown out

their 1999 books. Language used in past cases, perhaps derived

from one or more of the sources cited in our 1999 Committee

Comment, has continued, as it were, to be passed down

through the ages, becoming, in a sense, something of an

unofficial pattern willfulness instruction even though the

Circuit's Committee has tried to encourage customization, and

to discourage pattern-like thinking, where willfulness is

concerned.

This problem seems to me to be reflected in this case, in

which the instruction at issue adopted the familiar—indeed,

the pattern-like—notion that acting willfully involves doing

something known to be forbidden by the law. That concept,

while important, seems to me to be the easy part. As our

Committee has suggested, though, in defining willfulness,

paramount attention must be paid to the statute itself. As the

majority points out here, had that been done in this case, the

precise legal duties addressed in the statute might have been

set forth more completely and more accurately. The majority's

suggested version of the instruction has that virtue, though it

Case: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10
10 No. 14-3073

may, in my view, not adequately account for other aspects of

the issue.

I write separately to encourage district judges not to rely

overmuch on general language that has been used in the past,

but to start with, and focus on, the language of the relevant

statute, and the way that statute defines the applicable legal

duties and knowledge or intent requirements it imposes,

before explaining, in that context, the consequence for the case

of a finding that some aspect of proof of that duty or knowledge is lacking. I encourage my colleagues on the district court

to heed our Committee's view that, while there may be

common notions in every willfulness instruction, there really

can be no ?pattern” instruction on that issue.

Further, under our normal way of preparing jury instructions in any given case, the burden is on the lawyers to

prepare, tender, and argue for any proposed instruction. The

judge listens to the arguments and selects, modifies, or rewrites

the instructions. So our first admonition to the practicing bar:

make sure the instructions you tender address the views this

court has enunciated.

Case: 14-3073 Document: 30 Filed: 05/19/2015 Pages: 10