Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-06-03183/USCOURTS-caDC-06-03183-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Gregory Hurt
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 5, 2008 Decided June 13, 2008 

No. 06-3183 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

v. 

GREGORY HURT, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 05cr00418-01) 

Hesham M. Sharawy, appointed by the court, argued the 

cause for appellant. With him on the briefs was Douglas J. 

Behr, appointed by the court. 

Amanda J. Williams, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Jeffrey A. 

Taylor, U.S. Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese III, Elizabeth 

Trosman, and Michael Atkinson, Assistant U.S. Attorneys. 

Before: TATEL, GARLAND, and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH. 

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GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: A jury found Gregory Hurt 

guilty of theft of government property under 18 U.S.C. § 641. 

On appeal, Hurt challenges the jury instructions and his trial 

counsel’s performance in shaping them. Seeing no reversible 

error, we affirm the judgment of conviction. 

I. 

Hurt developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after 

serving in the Vietnam War. On December 19, 2002, the 

Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) determined that Hurt 

was entitled to a benefits award of $243,500.10, dating back 

to the first manifestation of his disability in 1983. Because 

Hurt had already received $9,140.00 in benefits, the VA owed 

him $234,360.10. Hurt took his lump-sum award in a series of 

checks. The first check, dated January 3, 2003, was for 

$99,999.10; the second check, dated February 6, 2003, was 

for $99,999.00; the third check, dated February 12, 2003, was 

for $34,362.00. Upon receipt, Hurt negotiated each of the 

checks and deposited the funds in his account at Andrews 

Federal Credit Union (“AFCU”). 

Between April and July of 2003, Hurt went to the VA on 

several occasions to lodge a pair of grievances about the 

amount of benefits he had received: one having to do with 

benefits for his wife, the other with a supposedly missing 

check. During these visits, he met with a benefits counselor 

named Diana Hannah. Hurt complained that the VA’s 

calculation of his benefits award had not included his wife as 

a dependent. Hannah explained that Hurt had provided 

insufficient marriage documentation, an error Hurt was 

invited to fix by submitting additional information. Hurt also 

complained he had not received the $99,999.10 check. When 

Hannah informed Hurt that he would have to fill out certain 

forms before the VA could send a replacement check, he 

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demanded to speak with supervisor James Wear. Using the 

VA’s computerized records, Wear was able to determine that 

all three checks had been sent to Hurt, but he could not tell 

whether Hurt had received and negotiated them. Hurt insisted 

that he had not gotten the $99,999.10 check and Wear, 

sympathetic to what he thought was a veteran in need, 

relented. Forgoing the usual paperwork, Wear directed a VA 

finance clerk named Bruce Britton to send a replacement 

check to Hurt for $99,999.10, which he did on July 28, 2003. 

On July 31, 2003, Hurt negotiated this fourth check and 

deposited the full amount into his AFCU account. 

The fourth check was more than Hurt was owed because 

he had not actually missed any checks. The VA soon realized 

its slip-up. After running a tracer on the four checks, Britton 

learned that Hurt had negotiated the supposedly missing first 

check just a few days after its issuance. On August 5, 2003, 

Britton sent Hurt a letter demanding the return of the VA’s 

mistakenly issued $99,999.10 replacement check. Hurt did not 

return any money. Instead, on August 14, 2003, Hurt moved 

$160,000 from his AFCU account to a new account at 

SunTrust Bank. On August 21, 2003, Britton sent Hurt 

another letter explaining that he must either return the funds 

or have his future VA benefits garnished. Hurt still did not 

return the $99,999.10 the VA had overpaid. 

A grand jury returned an indictment against Hurt on the 

charge of theft of government property, 18 U.S.C. § 641, as 

well as related theft charges under local law that were later 

dismissed. Hurt was tried before a jury in the United States 

District Court for the District of Columbia. The government 

put on several witnesses and argued that Hurt had committed 

theft either through stealing the fourth check by falsely 

claiming he had not received the first check, or else through 

knowingly converting the fourth check by acting to deprive 

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the government of the mistakenly disbursed funds. The 

defense, which did not call Hurt or any other witness to the 

stand, argued that Hurt had a good faith belief that the fourth 

check amounted to spousal benefits and therefore belonged to 

him. 

Counsel clashed over the instructions the jury would 

receive. The district court ultimately instructed the jury it 

could only convict Hurt of theft of government property if the 

government had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the 

money had a value of more than $1,000; that the money 

belonged to the United States; and that Hurt took the money 

knowing it was not his and with the intent to deprive the 

owner of the use or benefit of the money. The district court 

further explained that the government could prove theft of 

government property by stealing or by knowing conversion. 

The unanimous jury found Hurt guilty of theft of 

government property. Hurt moved for a new trial, arguing that 

the jury instructions were flawed. The district court denied the 

motion and sentenced Hurt to imprisonment for time served 

plus twelve days; supervised release for a period of three 

years; a special assessment of $100.00; and restitution in the 

amount of $99,999.10. Hurt appeals. We have jurisdiction 

under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. 

II. 

Hurt’s first argument concerns the district court’s refusal 

to deliver a requested theory-of-defense instruction. Theft of 

government property under 18 U.S.C. § 641 is a specific 

intent crime. See Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 

270–76 (1952); United States v. Rhone, 864 F.2d 832, 836 

(D.C. Cir. 1989); United States v. Baker, 693 F.2d 183, 186 

(D.C. Cir. 1982). As such, a thief under § 641 is one who 

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takes property knowing it belongs to another with an intent 

permanently to deprive the owner of possession. A person 

who harbors a good faith but mistaken belief that property 

belongs to him lacks the necessary mens rea for theft. See 3 

WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SUBSTANTIVE CRIMINAL LAW § 19.5(a) 

(2d ed. 2003); cf. Richardson v. United States, 403 F.2d 574, 

575–76 (D.C. Cir. 1968) (holding that a defendant cannot be 

convicted of robbery, a specific intent crime, if he believed 

himself entitled to the money taken). Hurt asked the district 

court to deliver a theory-of-defense jury instruction 

explaining that he could not be convicted if he had a good 

faith but mistaken belief that the fourth check belonged to 

him. The district court refused this request, explaining that 

there was no evidence to support such an instruction because 

Hurt had not testified as to his state of mind. We review de 

novo this failure to provide a requested jury instruction. 

United States v. Perkins, 161 F.3d 66, 69 (D.C. Cir. 1998). 

The district court asked too much of Hurt in rejecting his 

request. A theory-of-defense instruction is in order if there is 

“ ‘sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could 

find’ ” for the defendant on his theory. United States v. 

Glover, 153 F.3d 749, 754 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (quoting Mathews 

v. United States, 485 U.S. 58, 63 (1988)). There was sufficient 

evidence presented at trial from which a reasonable jury could 

have found that Hurt had a good faith belief that the fourth 

check was his. Hannah, the VA benefits clerk, testified that 

Hurt had attempted to secure benefits for his wife and 

subsequently received a check. Hannah’s testimony is not 

direct evidence of Hurt’s state of mind, but courts often infer 

state of mind on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Indeed, 

it was on the basis of such inference that Hurt was convicted 

of theft, a specific intent crime, without taking the stand. See 

United States v. Schaffer, 183 F.3d 833, 843 (D.C. Cir. 1999) 

(“[A]s with most cases in which the defendant’s state of mind 

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is at issue, it may be near impossible to establish the requisite 

mens rea through direct evidence. In the absence of any 

specific statement or other contemporaneous documentation 

of the defendant’s subjective motivation, the trier of fact can 

do no more than ascribe an intent on the basis of the 

circumstances surrounding the defendant’s actions.”). The 

inference from the Hannah testimony is straightforward. Hurt 

complained to Hannah that he deserved compensation for his 

wife, submitted the VA’s required documentation, and shortly 

thereafter received a check from the government that bore no 

mention of its purpose. One could reasonably infer that Hurt 

had a good faith belief that the fourth check belonged to him 

as a benefits award to cover his wife. Sufficient evidence 

supported the rejected instruction. 

Hurt’s victory is fleeting, however, because the district 

court’s mistaken refusal of the requested instruction does not 

require reversal. “As a general rule, the refusal to give an 

instruction requested by a defendant is reversible error only if 

the instruction . . . was not substantially covered in the charge 

actually delivered to the jury . . . .” United States v. Taylor, 

997 F.2d 1551, 1558 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (citation and quotation 

marks omitted). Taking the instructions as a whole, Estelle v. 

McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 72 (1991); United States v. Whoie, 925 

F.2d 1481, 1485 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (Thomas, J.), our task is to 

determine whether the trial court adequately conveyed the 

substance of the requested instruction to the jury. 

We conclude that the district court did so. The court 

stressed to the jury that theft of government property is a 

specific intent crime, explaining that the government must 

prove beyond a reasonable doubt “that the defendant stole the 

money knowing that it was not his, and with the intent to 

deprive the owner of the use or benefit of the money,” and 

that “if you believe that Mr. Hurt was unsure about the true 

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ownership of the money . . . then you must acquit him of the 

crime of theft of government property.” These instructions 

substantially covered the same ground that Hurt requested in 

his proposed instruction. The district court made abundantly 

clear that the jury must acquit Hurt if they believed that he 

had a good faith but mistaken belief that the money was his. 

A new trial is unwarranted. See United States v. Gambler, 662 

F.2d 834, 837 (D.C. Cir. 1981) (“A review of the instructions 

. . . reveals that the trial court took care to emphasize the 

Government’s burden of proving the element of specific 

intent beyond a reasonable doubt. We believe that these 

instructions sufficiently covered the particular point raised by 

appellant’s requested ‘good faith’ instruction.”) (citations 

omitted); United States v. Butler, 822 F.2d 1191, 1197–98 

(D.C. Cir. 1987) (“[T]he jury instructions here, which stressed 

that the government was required to prove that defendants 

acted with specific intent to defraud others, were adequate 

without an additional instruction on the good faith defense.”). 

III. 

There are two ways Hurt could have committed theft of 

government property: he could have stolen the VA’s check, or 

he could have knowingly converted the funds. See 18 U.S.C. 

§ 641 (listing “[w]hoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or 

knowingly converts to his use or the use of another . . . any 

record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States 

or of any department or agency thereof”). Hurt’s second 

argument targets the district court’s omission of a special 

unanimity instruction requiring that all twelve jurors agree 

how the theft took place. On this view, conviction under 

§ 641 would be improper if, say, six jurors believed that Hurt 

stole the money by lying to the VA about the missing check 

and six jurors believed that he knowingly converted the funds 

by moving them to prevent their retrieval. Hurt leans heavily 

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on our dicta in United States v. Mangieri, 694 F.2d 1270 

(D.C. Cir. 1982), and asserts a Sixth Amendment right to a 

special unanimity instruction. 

Mangieri, however, actually harms Hurt’s cause. It is true 

that in dicta in that case, we “urge[d]” trial courts to follow 

the “sensible and appropriate” rule of Hack v. United States, 

445 A.2d 634 (D.C. 1982), by which a court, sua sponte, will 

give a special unanimity instruction “ ‘when one charge 

encompasses two separate incidents.’ ” Mangieri, 694 F.2d at 

1281 (quoting Hack, 445 A.2d at 641). But in Mangieri itself, 

as here, trial counsel failed to object to the lack of a special 

unanimity instruction, so our review was only for plain error. 

And we ultimately concluded that the trial court’s failure to 

give a special unanimity instruction sua sponte was not plain 

error. Id. at 1280–81. We reach the same result here. 

Hurt misreads the Sixth Amendment, as Schad v. 

Arizona, 501 U.S. 624 (1991), makes clear. In Schad, a 

defendant had been convicted under a first-degree murder 

statute that defined mens rea as either premeditated killing or 

felony murder. The defendant argued that the trial court was 

obliged by the Sixth Amendment to give a special unanimity 

instruction, such that he could not be convicted of first-degree 

murder based on some jurors voting premeditated killing and 

others voting felony murder. The Supreme Court affirmed the 

conviction. Justice Souter, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist 

and Justices O’Connor and Kennedy, rejected the idea that the 

Sixth Amendment requires jury unanimity as to the means by 

which a crime was committed. Id. at 631 (plurality opinion) 

(“We have never suggested that in returning general verdicts 

in such cases the jurors should be required to agree upon a 

single means of commission . . . .”). In his separate opinion, 

Justice Scalia agreed that unanimity as to means is 

unnecessary. Id. at 649–50 (Scalia, J., concurring in the 

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judgment) (“As the plurality observes, it has long been the 

general rule that when a single crime can be committed in 

various ways, jurors need not agree upon the mode of 

commission. . . . When a woman’s charred body has been 

found in a burned house, and there is ample evidence that the 

defendant set out to kill her, it would be absurd to set him free 

because six jurors believe he strangled her to death (and 

caused the fire accidentally in his hasty escape), while six 

others believe he left her unconscious and set the fire to kill 

her.”) (citations omitted). Five Justices agreed in Schad that 

jurors need not reach unanimity as to the means of 

committing a crime, and where the Court has gone, we have 

followed. See United States v. Kayode, 254 F.3d 204, 214 

(D.C. Cir. 2001) (holding that where statute required 

possession of five false documents, jury need not agree on 

which five documents were false, citing Schad); United States 

v. Harris, 959 F.2d 246, 255 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (holding that 

where statute required five members of criminal enterprise, 

jury need not agree on which five people were members, 

citing Schad). 

But even as Schad rejected a Sixth Amendment argument 

for a special unanimity instruction, it recognized a related 

right under the Due Process Clause. The five Justices who 

agreed means-unanimity is not required also acknowledged a 

limit to what jury findings can be combined to support a 

verdict. Schad, 501 U.S. at 632–33 (plurality opinion) (“That 

is not to say, however, that the Due Process Clause places no 

limits on a State’s capacity to define different courses of 

conduct, or states of mind, as merely alternative means of 

committing a single offense, thereby permitting a defendant’s 

conviction without jury agreement as to which course or state 

actually occurred. . . . [N]othing in our history suggests that 

the Due Process Clause would permit a State to convict 

anyone under a charge of ‘Crime’ so generic that any 

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combination of jury findings of embezzlement, reckless 

driving, murder, burglary, tax evasion, or littering, for 

example, would suffice for conviction.”); id. at 650 (Scalia, J., 

concurring in the judgment) (“[O]ne can conceive of novel 

‘umbrella’ crimes (a felony consisting of either robbery or 

failure to file a tax return) where permitting a 6-to-6 verdict 

would seem contrary to due process.”). In sum, the Due 

Process Clause recognizes a point at which distinct incidents 

go from being different means of committing the same crime, 

to being different crimes. 

Were we faced with the question whether a conviction 

under 18 U.S.C. § 641 without a special unanimity instruction 

violates the Due Process Clause by creating a mishmash of 

stealing and knowing conversion, our burden in this appeal 

would be more substantial than it is. But trial counsel’s failure 

to object to the lack of a special unanimity instruction relieves 

us of that burden, and we review only for plain error. See 

United States v. Martinez, 476 F.3d 961, 970 (D.C. Cir. 2007) 

(citing FED. R. CRIM. P. 52(b)); United States v. Klat, 156 

F.3d 1258, 1266–67 (D.C. Cir. 1998); Mangieri, 694 F.2d at 

1280. Attempting to stave off plain error review, Hurt points 

to two exchanges from the trial that he claims were objections 

that properly raised the issue for the district court’s 

consideration. The first is as follows: 

[DEFENSE]: Judge, the only one that I can see 

objecting to in the general instructions is the 

unanimity instruction on 28. 

[THE COURT]: You object to my giving the 

unanimity instruction? 

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[DEFENSE]: Well, the way they have it here is “Theft 

by false pretenses,” or “Theft after notice from 

Government of error” – 

[THE COURT]: I’m just going to give the standard 

unanimity instruction. 

[DEFENSE]: Okay, all right. 

This is the opposite of an objection. The district court rejected 

the government’s proposed special unanimity instruction in 

favor of “the standard unanimity instruction,” and defense 

counsel agreed with this choice. 

The second supposed objection is as follows: 

[GOVERNMENT]: Do you think that on the 

unanimity instruction that there ought to be a dual 

instruction to make sure that the jurors understand that 

they have to all agree on one theory? 

[THE COURT]: Oh, oh, oh. On one theory? 

[GOVERNMENT]: Not one theory; but either he stole 

it or he converted it. I mean, six can’t say, we think he 

stole it, and six say, he converted it and therefore 

there’s a conviction. 

[THE COURT]: Do you want me to instruct it that 

way? 

[GOVERNMENT]: I just pose it for your – 

[THE COURT]: I think [defense counsel] would be 

delighted with that one. 

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[DEFENSE]: I’m sorry, if you could just repeat 

exactly – 

[THE COURT]: That’s like the conspiracy charge that 

says you-all have to agree on an overt act. 

[GOVERNMENT]: I just don’t want the jury to be 

confused, judge. If you don’t think they’ll be 

confused, then I’m happy with the instructions. 

[DEFENSE]: I’m fine with the government’s change, 

Your Honor. 

[THE COURT]: All right. Well, we’ll have to – 

[GOVERNMENT]: Your Honor – 

[THE COURT]: Yeah? 

[GOVERNMENT]: Judge, you know, if you want to 

— I will withdraw my request. The unanimity 

instruction – 

[THE COURT]: You’ve rethought it, have you? 

[GOVERNMENT]: Well, you know, you have more 

experience than I do, judge. If you don’t think they’re 

going to be confused, then I’ll defer to the Court. 

[DEFENSE]: Your Honor, there are two other 

instructions – 

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[THE COURT]: We may very well get a question 

from the jury on that, and we’ll cross that bridge when 

we come to it. 

Hurt claims that the prosecutor requested a special unanimity 

instruction and withdrew the request, and that defense counsel 

joined the request but not the withdrawal. We do not derive as 

much from counsel’s silence. Hurt’s lawyer did not take 

ownership of the government’s request. He merely said he 

was “fine” with it, then said nothing when it was withdrawn. 

Defense counsel’s actions did not put the district court on 

notice of his supposed concern. We are not persuaded that 

counsel objected in the trial court to the lack of a special 

unanimity instruction. See United States v. Johnson, 561 F.2d 

832, 854 (D.C. Cir. 1977) (“[T]he issue in determining the 

applicability of the plain error rule . . . is whether the issue 

was raised by the defense team with sufficient clarity to put 

the government and the trial court on notice that the issue had 

been raised.”); see also United States v. Schalk, 515 F.3d 768, 

776 (7th Cir. 2008) (“If no objection was made that would put 

the district court (and the other party) on notice of the 

objecting party’s concern, then the standard of review is for 

plain error.”). Hurt’s argument that the district court erred by 

not giving a special unanimity instruction was not properly 

preserved at trial. 

Accordingly, we review for plain error. This standard of 

review calls for reversal if “(1) there is an error (2) that is 

plain and (3) that affects substantial rights, and (4) we find 

that the error ‘seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public 

reputation of judicial proceedings.’ ” United States v. 

Baugham, 449 F.3d 167, 183 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (quoting 

United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732 (1993) (interpreting 

FED. R. CRIM. P. 52(b))). We will move to the second point 

and dispose of Hurt’s argument by showing that the district 

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court’s alleged error was by no means “plain,” given the 

debate over special unanimity instructions. 

The difficult question under Schad is how does a court 

mark “the point at which differences between means become 

so important that they may not reasonably be viewed as 

alternatives to a common end, but must be treated as 

differentiating what the Constitution requires to be treated as 

separate offenses”? Schad, 501 U.S. at 633 (plurality 

opinion). The question is further complicated by the fact that 

Justices Souter and Scalia parted ways on this matter of 

establishing “definitional and verdict specificity.” Id. at 637. 

Speaking for a plurality of four, Justice Souter wrote, 

“appropriate specificity is a distillate of the concept of due 

process with its demands for fundamental fairness, and for the 

rationality that is an essential component of that fairness.” Id.

(citation omitted). In applying this approach to Schad’s firstdegree murder statute, Justice Souter looked to history and 

current practice among the States as nonbinding indicators of 

what “we as a people regard as fundamentally fair and 

rational ways of defining criminal offenses.” Id. at 640–43. 

Justice Souter ultimately approved the first-degree murder 

statute’s treatment of premeditation and felony murder as 

alternative means of committing a single crime, concluding 

that “the jury’s options in this case did not fall beyond the 

constitutional bounds of fundamental fairness and 

rationality.” Id. at 645. 

By contrast, Justice Scalia focused on the history of the 

crime at issue to determine what was due under the Due 

Process Clause. Id. at 650 (Scalia, J., concurring in the 

judgment). On this view, the common law tradition of 

grouping premeditated killing with felony murder 

indisputably established that such a grouping in a modern 

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statute was in keeping with fundamental fairness. See id. at 

648–49. History alone guided Justice Scalia’s analysis, and he 

was critical of the plurality’s reliance upon “fundamental 

fairness” in conducting its inquiry. “ ‘Fundamental fairness’ 

analysis may appropriately be applied to departures from 

traditional American conceptions of due process; but when 

judges test their individual notions of ‘fairness’ against an 

American tradition that is deep and broad and continuing, it is 

not the tradition that is on trial, but the judges.” Id. at 650. 

Returning to Hurt’s case, let us assume arguendo that the 

district court erred in failing to give a special unanimity 

instruction as to stealing and knowingly converting. The 

dispositive question is whether this error was “plain,” a term 

“synonymous with ‘clear’ or, equivalently, ‘obvious.’ ” 

Olano, 507 U.S. at 734 (citations omitted). “As its name 

suggests, ‘plain error’ exists only when the error is ‘obvious.’ 

Obviousness is assessed from the perspective of the trial 

court; the error must be so ‘plain’ the trial judge and 

prosecutor were derelict in countenancing it, even absent the 

defendant’s timely assistance in detecting it.” United States v. 

Saro, 24 F.3d 283, 286 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (citations and 

quotation marks omitted). Given the difficulty inherent in 

deciding what may fit under the umbrella of a single crime, 

and given the division among the Justices as to how to resolve 

that question, this error could not have been plain to the 

district court. Do fundamental fairness and rationality require 

that we treat stealing and knowingly converting as separate 

offenses? Even if the answer is “yes,” that result is not 

obvious but instead depends on a mix-and-match examination 

of practice among the States, common law history, and certain 

factors left undefined in Schad’s plurality opinion. Neither the 

Supreme Court nor this court has spoken to the issue, and we 

have no occasion to do so today, so Hurt cannot prevail. 

United States v. Whren, 111 F.3d 956, 960 (D.C. Cir. 1997) 

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(“If there is no clear legal rule — whether expressed in a prior 

decision or elsewhere — governing an issue, then the district 

court’s decision cannot be a plain error.”). The district court 

did not plainly err in failing to deliver a sua sponte special 

unanimity instruction. Mangieri, 694 F.2d at 1280–81. 

IV. 

Anticipating our conclusion that trial counsel did not 

object to the omission of a special unanimity instruction, Hurt 

argues in the alternative that his lawyer’s performance 

abridged his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of 

counsel as that right has been explained in Strickland v. 

Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). We may address such an 

argument on direct appeal, without remanding to the district 

court, if trial counsel’s effectiveness or incompetence can be 

established on the basis of the trial record. United States v. 

Henry, 472 F.3d 910, 914–15 (D.C. Cir. 2007). To establish a 

successful claim under Strickland’s “familiar two-step 

framework,” a defendant must prove that counsel’s 

performance fell below an objective standard of 

reasonableness under prevailing professional norms, and that 

this error caused prejudice. United States v. Hughes, 514 F.3d 

15, 17 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (citing Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687–

88, 694). As a general matter, the bar of objective 

reasonableness is set rather low. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 

687 (requiring “errors so serious that counsel was not 

functioning as the ‘counsel’ guaranteed the defendant by the 

Sixth Amendment”); Yarborough v. Gentry, 540 U.S. 1, 8 

(2003) (per curiam) (“The Sixth Amendment guarantees 

reasonable competence, not perfect advocacy judged with the 

benefit of hindsight.”). 

Hurt argues that trial counsel committed unreasonable 

error by failing to adopt the prosecutor’s proposed special 

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unanimity instruction. On Hurt’s reading of Strickland, an 

objectively reasonable attorney would have avoided plain 

error review by requesting such an instruction. We reject this 

argument. Appellate counsel has not convinced us that trial 

counsel overlooked a valid Schad claim for a special 

unanimity instruction. But even if there was such a mistake, it 

is not the sort of serious blunder that will singlehandedly 

support a Strickland claim. To lodge a bona fide objection on 

the special unanimity point, trial counsel would first have to 

satisfy himself that the law was on his side. The objective 

standard of reasonableness does not compel counsel to request 

a jury instruction to which his client is not entitled. See United 

States v. Trejo, 136 F.3d 826, 828 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (per 

curiam); United States v. Debango, 780 F.2d 81, 85 n.2 (D.C. 

Cir. 1986). A perfect lawyer with unlimited resources might 

have made a careful study of this difficult area of law, read 

the tea leaves, and lodged whatever objection his reading of 

the Schad opinions might fairly support. The Sixth 

Amendment, however, does not pledge perfection. 

Yarborough, 540 U.S. at 8; Arroyo v. United States, 195 F.3d 

54, 55 (1st Cir. 1999) (Boudin, J.) (“Under [Strickland], 

counsel is not incompetent merely because he may not be 

perfect. In real life, there is room not only for differences in 

judgment but even for mistakes, which are almost inevitable 

in a trial setting, so long as their quality or quantity do not 

mark out counsel as incompetent.”). Had trial counsel 

neglected a jury instruction to which his client was obviously 

entitled, our conclusion might be different. But there is little 

that is obvious about special unanimity instructions, as 

evidenced by our refusal to find plain error in the district 

court’s omission of such an instruction. It would be unduly 

harsh to brand the bar incompetent for failing to grasp that 

which eludes the bench. 

USCA Case #06-3183 Document #1121521 Filed: 06/13/2008 Page 17 of 18
18 

 “[T]he purpose of the effective assistance guarantee of 

the Sixth Amendment . . . is simply to ensure that criminal 

defendants receive a fair trial.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689. 

Hurt received a fair trial, his lawyer’s failure to object 

notwithstanding, so he cannot prevail on his Strickland claim. 

V. 

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of conviction is 

Affirmed. 

USCA Case #06-3183 Document #1121521 Filed: 06/13/2008 Page 18 of 18