United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 19-1689

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

JEAN LEONARD TEGANYA,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. F. Dennis Saylor, IV, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Lynch, Kayatta, and Barron,

Circuit Judges.

Christine DeMaso, Assistant Federal Public Defender, for 

appellant.

Alexia R. De Vincentis, Assistant United States Attorney, 

with whom Andrew E. Lelling, United States Attorney, was on brief, 

for appellee.

May 17, 2021
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BARRON, Circuit Judge. Jean Leonard Teganya ("Teganya") 

appeals his convictions and sentence for three counts of perjury 

in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1621 and two counts of fraud and misuse 

of visas, permits, and other documents in violation of 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1546(a). The convictions are based on his alleged failure to 

disclose his role in the Rwandan genocide to immigration 

authorities. We affirm.

I.

The following facts are not in dispute. Teganya was 

born in Rwanda in 1971 to a Tutsi mother and Hutu father. Because 

his father was Hutu, Teganya is considered Hutu as well.

In July 1994, while a third-year medical student, 

Teganya left his home country during the Rwandan genocide, which 

targeted the country's Tutsi population, for Congo. From Congo, 

Teganya traveled to Kenya and India before obtaining a fake 

Zimbabwean passport and flying to Canada in 1999.

Once in Canada, Teganya applied for asylum in that 

country, but Canadian authorities denied his application, first in 

2002 and then, after a series of appeals, finally in 2012. The 

ground for the denial was that Teganya "would not have survived" 

in Rwanda in 1994 "if he was not perceived as sharing the common 

intention to kill Tutsi and moderate Hutu."

On August 3, 2014, Teganya, who had remained in Canada 

despite having been denied asylum there, crossed the U.S.-Canadian 
- 3 -

border in Houlton, Maine. He was apprehended by a U.S. Border 

Patrol agent while he was walking down a road within a few miles 

of the international border. Teganya told the agent that he had 

crossed the border illegally and that he was a refugee. He then 

applied for asylum in the United States.

To apply for asylum, Teganya was required to complete a 

Form I-589. One of the questions on the form asks:

Have you or your family members ever belonged to or 

been associated with any organizations or groups in 

your home country, such as, but not limited to, a 

political party, student group, labor union, 

religious organization, military or paramilitary 

group, civil patrol, guerilla organization, ethnic 

group, human rights group, or the press or media?

Teganya answered that question "[y]es." The form then 

asks for a description of the "level of participation, any 

leadership or other positions held and the length of time you or

your family members were involved in each organization or 

activity." In response, Teganya wrote:

My father was the local President (formerly 

Kibilira District) of [the Mouvement Républicain 

National pour la Démocratie et le Développement

("MRND")] from 1991 to 1994. As a student, I 

belonged to the Red Cross Youth Section from 1986 

to 1991. I was president of the Red Cross Youth 

Section from 1989 to 1990. I will submit a detailed 

declaration prior to my asylum hearing.
- 4 -

Teganya did not divulge any political connection with 

the MRND1 party of his own.

Form I-589 also asks:

Have you, your spouse or your child(ren) ever 

ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise 

participated in causing harm or suffering to any 

person because of his or her race, religion, 

nationality, membership in a particular social 

group or belief in a particular political opinion?

That question is relevant to what is known as "the 

persecutor bar," which prohibits the grant of asylum to an 

individual who has engaged in persecution against another on 

account of a statutorily protected ground. See 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1158(b)(2)(A)(i) (providing that a noncitizen who has "ordered, 

incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of 

any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership 

in a particular social group, or political opinion" is ineligible 

to apply for asylum).

Teganya answered the question "[n]o." He also verbally 

stated, while under oath in the bond hearing in connection with 

his asylum application on September 16, 2014, that his father had 

belonged to the MRND party but that he had not. He further 

testified at the proceeding that while he was in Rwanda during the 

genocide he had not witnessed civilians being turned over to the 

1 The MRND party is the Hutu-dominated political party that 

controlled the Rwandan government when the genocide broke out.
- 5 -

military to be killed and that he had not personally seen any 

violence being carried out by government authorities or others at 

the National University Hospital, in which he had worked as a 

medical student, because the atrocities that were committed there 

were carried out at night.

On September 27, 2017, Teganya was charged in a fivecount indictment in the District of Massachusetts for two counts 

of fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents in 

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1546(a); two counts of perjury in 

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1621(2); and one count of perjury in 

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1621(1). The counts under 18 U.S.C.

§ 1546(a) and 18 U.S.C. § 1621(2) alleged that he had failed to 

disclose in his asylum application that he was personally a member 

of the MRND party and the Interahamwe, a youth militia wing of the 

MRND party; and that he had falsely stated in that application 

that he had never personally ordered, incited, assisted, or 

otherwise participated in causing harm or suffering to another 

because of that individual's membership in a particular social 

group. The count under 18 U.S.C. § 1621(1) alleged that he falsely 

stated at his immigration proceeding, while under oath, that he 

had never belonged to a political party in Rwanda and that he had 

not observed atrocities at the National University Hospital while 

he was in that country during the genocide.
- 6 -

Teganya pleaded not guilty to each count, and his case 

proceeded to trial, which lasted eighteen days. He testified in 

his own defense at the trial, which focused on the extent of his 

involvement with the genocide in Rwanda. The jury nevertheless 

convicted Teganya on all five counts on April 5, 2019.

At sentencing, the District Court imposed a prison term 

of 97 months, which was at the high end of the sentencing range 

that it had calculated for him under the U.S. Sentencing 

Guidelines. The District Court based that range in part on a twolevel enhancement to his base offense level under the Guidelines 

that the District Court determined applied for obstruction of 

justice. See U.S. Sent'g Guidelines Manual § 3C1.1 (U.S. Sent'g 

Comm'n 2018) (imposing the enhancement where a defendant 

"willfully obstructed or impeded, or attempted to obstruct or 

impede, the administration of justice with respect to the 

investigation, prosecution, or sentencing of the instant offense 

of conviction" and where the "obstructive conduct" was related to 

either the "offense of conviction and any relevant conduct" or "a 

closely related offense"). In explaining why that enhancement 

applied, the District Court pointed to the discrepancies between 

Teganya's testimony on his own behalf at trial and "the testimony 

taken as a whole," which it stated that it "believe[d]" and which

included "testimony that [Teganya] participated in multiple 
- 7 -

murders and rapes" and committed atrocities against Tutsis, and 

that Teganya was an MRND member.

The District Court entered judgment on July 2, 2019. 

Teganya filed a timely notice of appeal on July 8, 2019. See Fed. 

R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A)(i). We have jurisdiction over his appeal 

from his convictions under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and over his appeal 

from his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 3742(a).

II.

We begin with the challenges that Teganya brings to his 

convictions in which he argues that they must be vacated due to 

certain statements that were made at trial by Dr. Phil Clark

("Clark"), who testified for the government as an expert witness 

regarding the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath. Teganya does 

not question Clark's qualifications to testify as an expert on 

those matters. He instead contends that certain discrete 

statements that Clark made during his testimony concern matters

that are not the proper subject of expert testimony under Federal 
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Rules of Evidence 7022 and 704(b),3 are inadmissible under Rule 

403,4 or both.5

Teganya contends first that the District Court erred in 

permitting Clark at certain points in his testimony at trial to 

comment on the credibility of Teganya's own testimony, because 

such commentary was not the proper subject of expert testimony 

under Rules 702 and 704(b). Teganya points specifically to Clark's 

testimony that it was "quite a common phenomenon during the 

genocide that many Hutu perpetrators would also at some stage 

during the genocide have harbored or protected Tutsi friends, Tutsi 

neighbors, Tutsi family members"; that "it was a common defense of 

2 Federal Rule of Evidence 702 provides: "A witness who is 

qualified as an expert . . . may testify in the form of an opinion 

or otherwise if: (a) the expert's scientific, technical, or other 

specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand

the evidence or to determine a fact in issue; (b) the testimony is 

based on sufficient facts or data; (c) the testimony is the product 

of reliable principles and methods; and (d) the expert has reliably 

applied the principles and methods to the facts of the case."

3 Federal Rule of Evidence 704(b) provides: "In a criminal 

case, an expert witness must not state an opinion about whether 

the defendant did or did not have a mental state or condition that 

constitutes an element of the crime charged or of a defense. Those 

matters are for the trier of fact alone."

4 Federal Rule of Evidence 403 provides: "The court may 

exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially 

outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following: unfair 

prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, 

wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence."

5 Teganya does not distinguish between his arguments under 

Rule 702 and Rule 704(b) and so we treat them as a single contention 

that the challenged statements by Clark are not the proper subject 

of expert testimony.
- 9 -

many accused to say I could not have committed these genocide 

crimes of which I am accused because I was known to be protecting 

these Tutsi"; and, in response to the question whether he was 

"familiar with the theory that individuals could not [have engaged 

in genocidal acts] if they came from mixed ethnicities," that this 

"was a very common line of defense for genocide suspects."

Because Teganya objected to these portions of Clark's 

testimony below, our review of the District Court's decision to 

admit that testimony is for "a manifest abuse of discretion." See

United States v. Gordon, 954 F.3d 315, 327 (1st Cir. 2020) (quoting 

United States v. Montas, 41 F.3d 775, 783 (1st Cir. 1994)). We 

find none.

"An expert's opinion that another witness is lying or 

telling the truth is ordinarily inadmissible . . . because the 

opinion exceeds the scope of the expert's specialized knowledge 

and therefore merely informs the jury that it should reach a 

particular conclusion." United States v. Gonzalez-Maldonado, 115 

F.3d 9, 16 (1st Cir. 1997) (quoting United States v. Shay, 57 F.3d 

126, 131 (1st Cir. 1995)). Clark did not purport to be testifying, 

however, about Teganya specifically in providing any of this 

testimony, and we conclude that the District Court acted within 

its discretion in treating the testimony as merely providing 

context that might prove counter-intuitive to a layperson. See

Shay, 57 F.3d at 132 (explaining that the "fundamental question" 
- 10 -

that a district court faces in evaluating whether "a proposed 

expert's testimony will assist the trier of fact is 'whether the 

untrained layman would be qualified to determine intelligently and 

to the best degree, the particular issue without enlightenment 

from those having a specialized understanding of the subject matter 

involved'" (alteration omitted) (quoting Montas, 41 F.3d at 783)); 

see also United States v. Tetioukhine, 725 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir. 

2013) ("[T]he relevance of expert testimony regarding cultural 

matters is context-dependent and must be assessed on a case-bycase basis.").

Moreover, to the extent that there was any risk that 

these aspects of Clark's testimony might be understood to have 

been addressing Teganya's own testimony, we note that the District 

Court specifically instructed the jury that Clark's testimony that 

it was a common defense for genocide perpetrators to argue that 

they had defended or protected certain Tutsis was "background 

information" and did not "say anything about what the defendant 

did or did not do." In addition, when Clark further testified 

that it was not uncommon for those who had participated in the 

genocide to be of mixed ethnic descent, the District Court 

"remind[ed] the jury" that his testimony was being permitted to 

provide "context and background" as "a broad-spread set of 

generalizations to help you understand things" but that it did not 
- 11 -

"answer how a specific person acted or felt or what that person's 

motives were."

Thus, at least given these admonitions to the jury, we 

cannot conclude that it was an abuse of discretion for the District 

Court to admit the statements by Clark described above over 

Teganya's objections. See United States v. Henry, 848 F.3d 1, 12 

(1st Cir. 2017) ("[A]ny danger posed by the [expert] testimony was 

substantially mitigated by cross-examination and the district 

court's limiting instruction."). Accordingly, we reject this 

ground for overturning Teganya's convictions.

Teganya separately argues that the District Court erred 

in permitting Clark's testimony that, in his research, he did not 

come across reports of the Rwandan government in the wake of the 

genocide attempting to coerce witnesses to testify against those 

suspected of participating in the genocide. Because the 

government's witnesses testified that they had not been so 

pressured, Teganya contends, Clark's testimony on that score was 

not the proper subject of expert testimony under Rules 702 and 

704(b) because it improperly bolstered the testimony of witnesses 

for the government at trial who stated that they had not themselves 

been so coerced.

Relatedly, Teganya also challenges as improper 

bolstering under Rules 702 and 704(b) the District Court's 

admission of Clark's testimony that, when he interviewed genocide 
- 12 -

victims in Rwanda (none of whom was a witness in this trial), many 

had "fuzzy recollections of the past" or "reasons to not 

necessarily tell the truth." Teganya points out that at trial he 

had sought to impeach testimony from two witnesses who stated that 

Teganya had raped them during the genocide by establishing that 

they had not mentioned him in earlier testimony they had given in 

distinct proceedings about the genocide.

Because Teganya failed to object to these aspects of 

Clark's testimony below, however, our review is for plain error 

only. See United States v. Diaz, 300 F.3d 66, 76 (1st Cir. 2002). 

He thus "must show '(1) an error, (2) that is clear or obvious, 

(3) which affects his substantial rights, and which (4) seriously 

impugns the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of the 

proceeding.'" United States v. Patrone, 985 F.3d 81, 84-85 (1st 

Cir. 2021) (alteration omitted) (quoting United States v. CorreaOsorio, 784 F.3d 11, 18 (1st Cir. 2015)). He has not done so.

In United States v. Rosales, 19 F.3d 763 (1st Cir. 1994), 

we rejected a claim of plain error based on the prosecutor's 

introduction of expert testimony about how minor victims discuss 

incidents of sexual abuse. Id. at 766. We concluded that the 

expert testimony was not "so prejudicial . . . 'as to undermine 

the fundamental fairness of the trial and contribute to a 

miscarriage of justice,'" id. (quoting United States v. Geer, 923 

F.2d 892, 897 (1st Cir. 1991)), because the defense presented 
- 13 -

directly contradictory expert testimony and because the district 

court "expressly instructed the jurors that they were free to 

reject the opinions offered by the experts," id.

The same is true here. Like in Rosales, Teganya 

presented his own expert witness, who testified that the Rwandan 

government was generally considered to have coerced witnesses to 

testify against suspected perpetrators of the genocide. And, like 

in Rosales, the District Court instructed the jurors that it was 

ultimately for them to decide whether to credit the expert 

testimony and whether to believe individual witnesses. Moreover, 

in Rosales, the expert testified not only that minor witnesses who 

had been the victims of such abuse generally "tend to be reluctant, 

they tend to be embarrassed, uncomfortable, ashamed of what 

happened," and are "very uncomfortable giving details," but also 

that, with respect to the particular minor witnesses in that case,

the expert "saw that in these children." Id. at 765 (emphasis 

added). Given that Clark made no similar comment with respect to 

Teganya himself or his witnesses, we cannot say in light of Rosales

that Teganya has established plain error with respect to the 

admission of the expert testimony that he argues constitutes 

bolstering of the government witnesses' testimony.6

6 Although Teganya appears to bring challenges to the 

purported instances of commenting on witness credibility just 

described under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 in addition to Rules
- 14 -

Teganya objects as well to Clark's description of the 

phenomenon of genocide denial, which Clark explained at trial is 

"the idea that an individual or a group would claim that a genocide 

that is historically known to have occurred did not occur." 

Teganya contends that the admission of that testimony violated 

Federal Rule of Evidence 403, which provides for the exclusion of 

testimony if its probative value is substantially outweighed by 

the risk of unfair prejudice, as he contends that the testimony

"implied that the defense was ignoring, or at least minimizing, a 

serious and well-documented tragedy." But, Teganya did not object 

to the testimony at issue below, and so again our review is for 

plain error only, see Diaz, 300 F.3d at 76, and again he fails to 

meet his burden to establish error of that kind.

The government noted in its closing argument that "both 

sides agree" that, although the genocide did not reach the city in 

Rwanda in which Teganya lived until after it had reached other 

parts of the country, "when it did, it was fierce." Teganya's 

defense counsel also made clear that Teganya was not disputing 

that the Rwandan genocide occurred, stating in opening arguments 

702 and 704(b), in his opening brief he merely asserts that the 

testimony was more prejudicial than probative. In contending that 

he was prejudiced by the testimony's admission, he develops no 

argument that the testimony lacked probative value and does not 

explain why the prejudice it caused to his defense was unfair. 

See Fed. R. Evid. 403. Thus, we do not consider this argument. 

See United States v. Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990).
- 15 -

that "no one is denying that the genocide took place." Thus, even 

if the evidence that Teganya challenges under Rule 403 had only 

limited probative value, we cannot conclude that Teganya has met 

his burden to show that any error here burdened his substantial 

rights as he must do to establish plain error. See Patrone, 985 

F.3d at 84-85.

Finally, Teganya argues that even if he cannot meet his 

burden with respect to any of the individual errors addressed 

above, they cumulatively require reversal. It is true that 

"[i]ndividual errors, insufficient in themselves to necessitate a 

new trial, may in the aggregate have a more debilitating effect." 

United States v. Peña-Santo, 809 F.3d 686, 702 (1st Cir. 2015) 

(alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Sepúlveda, 15 

F.3d 1161, 1195-96 (1st Cir. 1993)). But, we have already 

concluded with respect to Teganya's preserved claims that the 

District Court did not err. And, with respect to his unpreserved 

claims, even if the District Court did err, they implicate only a 

handful of statements by one witness in the course of an eighteenday trial involving thirty-four witnesses in which the defense had 

ample opportunity to cross-examine the government's expert and 

presented an expert of its own. Moreover, the District Court 

"issued 'final instructions to the jury [that] were strong and 

clear' on their duty to . . . properly weigh the credibility of 

witnesses." United States v. Cormier, 468 F.3d 63, 74 (1st Cir. 
- 16 -

2006) (first alteration in original) (quoting United States v. 

Rodríguez-Estrada, 877 F.2d 153, 159 (1st Cir. 1989)). We thus 

see no basis for finding cumulative error here. See id.

III.

We turn now to Teganya's challenges to his sentence, in 

which he contends that the District Court erred in calculating his 

sentencing range under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines by applying 

the two-level, obstruction-of-justice enhancement. See U.S. 

Sent'g Guidelines Manual § 3C1.1 (U.S. Sent'g Comm'n 2018). He 

does so on a number of grounds, none of which provides a basis for 

overturning his sentence.

First, Teganya contends that the application of the 

obstruction-of-justice enhancement in his case impinges on his 

federal constitutional right to testify on his own behalf. But,

he concedes that he failed to raise any such argument below, and

he makes no argument that plain-error review should not apply. He 

also concedes that he cannot show plain error. We thus must reject 

this contention. See United States v. Jiménez, 946 F.3d 8, 16 

(1st Cir. 2019).

Teganya next contends that the District Court's 

application of the obstruction-of-justice enhancement was 

inconsistent with the Guidelines and that his sentence must be 

vacated in consequence. He points out that where the underlying 

crime is perjury, the obstruction-of-justice enhancement may only 
- 17 -

be applied if "a significant further obstruction occurred during 

the investigation, prosecution, or sentencing of the obstruction 

offense itself (e.g., if the defendant threatened a witness during 

the course of the prosecution for the obstruction offense)." U.S. 

Sent'g Guidelines Manual § 3C1.1 cmt. n.7 (U.S. Sent'g Comm'n 

2018).7 Teganya argues that the District Court erroneously applied 

the enhancement without finding a "significant further 

obstruction," because he argues that it did not find that he "did 

anything other than repeat the charged falsehoods," which Teganya 

contends cannot themselves qualify as a "significant further 

obstruction" for the purposes of the Guidelines in this instance.

We may assume that Teganya preserved this challenge 

because even on de novo review it fails. See United States v. 

Tirado-Nieves, 982 F.3d 1, 11 (1st Cir. 2020) ("Because the claim 

fails regardless of the standard applied, we assume, favorably to 

[the defendant], that the claim was preserved."); United States v. 

Corbett, 870 F.3d 21, 31 (1st Cir. 2017) ("We review the district 

court's interpretation of the meaning and scope of a sentencing 

guideline de novo . . . ."). As the D.C. Circuit persuasively 

explained in United States v. McCoy, 316 F.3d 287 (D.C. Cir. 2003), 

"[l]ying under oath to protect oneself from punishment for lying 

7 The government concedes that, due to the way in which 

Teganya's convictions were grouped for sentencing purposes, 

application of the enhancement is appropriate only if such a 

"significant further obstruction" occurred.
- 18 -

under oath seems . . . to be precisely the sort of 'significant 

further obstruction'" to which the Guidelines refer, id. at 289, 

and thus we do not see how the Guidelines may be read to exclude 

such conduct from triggering the enhancement's application.

Indeed, Teganya's only rejoinder to McCoy is that,

there, the D.C. Circuit "did not discuss the constitutional 

dimensions of this issue or cite authority other than" United 

States v. Dunnigan, 507 U.S. 87 (1993). But, we do not see how 

that assertion provides a reason for us to reject the reading of 

the Guidelines adopted in McCoy, given that McCoy did rely in part 

on Dunnigan, see McCoy, 316 F.3d at 289, and that in Dunnigan the 

Supreme Court explained that the defendant there could not 

successfully contend "that increasing her sentence because of her 

perjury interferes with her [federal constitutional] right to 

testify" for, as the Court "ha[s] held on a number of 

occasions[,] . . . a defendant's right to testify does not include 

a right to commit perjury," Dunnigan, 507 U.S. at 96. Teganya 

also has waived any challenge to the application of the 

obstruction-of-justice enhancement based on a contention that it 

must be construed not to be triggered by perjurious statements 

that repeated those for which he has been convicted, because any 

other construction would violate his federal constitutional right 

to testify in his own defense.
- 19 -

Teganya also argues that "[j]ust as pleading not guilty, 

going to trial, presenting a defense of truthfulness, and 

introducing evidence and witnesses to support that defense" cannot 

give rise to the application of the enhancement, neither can 

"making the choice to testify consistent with that defense." We 

again may assume that the challenge, which we understand to concern 

the meaning of the obstruction-of-justice enhancement itself 

rather than its constitutionality, is properly preserved, as it 

fails even if we review it de novo. See Tirado-Nieves, 982 F.3d 

at 11; Corbett, 870 F.3d at 31.

In so concluding, we note that the first three examples 

that Teganya invokes to support his position do not do so. The 

application notes to § 3C1.1 expressly provide that none of these 

examples constitutes a "significant further obstruction," see U.S. 

Sent'g Guidelines Manual § 3C1.1 cmt. n.2 (U.S. Sent'g Comm'n 2018) 

(providing that the "refusal to enter a plea of guilty is not a 

basis for application" of the enhancement, nor is a "defendant's 

denial of guilt (other than a denial of guilt under oath that 

constitutes perjury)"), without similarly providing as to the kind 

of perjurious statements that were relied on by the District Court 

in finding that he was subject to the enhancement. And Teganya 

fails to offer any basis for concluding that the fourth example he 

has proffered, "introducing evidence and witnesses to support 

[his] defense," can never give rise to the enhancement's 
- 20 -

application in a trial for perjury. Cf. U.S. Sent'g Guidelines 

Manual § 3C1.1 cmt. n.4(B) (U.S. Sent'g Comm'n 2018) (providing 

that, in the ordinary case, the enhancement can apply to 

"committing, suborning, or attempting to suborn perjury"). We 

thus are not persuaded by his contention that the text of the 

Guidelines does not contemplate application of the enhancement in 

a case such as his.8

Finally, Teganya separately challenges the adequacy of 

the District Court's findings that he committed perjury in 

testifying at trial. He neither argues that there was insufficient 

evidence from which the District Court could have concluded that 

he committed perjury nor contends that the District Court clearly 

erred in making a particular factual finding. He likewise does 

not argue that the District Court's findings fall short of what is

"necessary to permit effective appellate review." United 

States v. Mendez, 802 F.3d 93, 99 (1st Cir. 2015) (quoting United 

States v. Zehrung, 714 F.3d 628, 632 (1st Cir. 2013)). Instead, 

8 We are also not persuaded by the Eleventh Circuit's 

unpublished opinion in United States v. Thomas, 193 F. App'x 881 

(11th Cir. 2006), which holds that it was error for a district 

court to apply the enhancement where the defendant testified 

consistently with the grand jury testimony that gave rise to her 

perjury conviction. Id. at 889-91. While we agree that the "base 

offense level for perjury . . . adequately [takes] into account 

the obvious obstruction of justice in perjury," id. at 890, it 

does not follow, in our view, that doubling down on false 

statements in a later proceeding is not itself additional 

significant obstructive behavior.
- 21 -

he asserts only that, even if the obstruction-of-justice 

enhancement could have theoretically been applied to his sentence, 

the District Court's "pro forma" conclusions did not qualify as a 

finding that any of Teganya's statements at trial was false.9 We 

can again assume without deciding that this claim is properly 

preserved and thus review it for clear error, see United States v. 

García-Sierra, 994 F.3d 17, 39 (1st Cir. 2021) (considering the 

defendant's argument that the district court failed to make 

sufficiently specific findings and reviewing the determination 

that a sentencing enhancement applied for clear error); United 

States v. Rehal, 940 F.2d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 1991) (similar), because 

the challenge still fails under that standard, see Tirado-Nieves, 

982 F.3d at 11.

It is true that the District Court did not specify which 

of the statements Teganya made at trial it found were perjurious. 

9 In his reply brief, in addition to his arguments about 

falsity, Teganya asserts that the District Court failed to make 

findings as to the other elements of perjury in that it "d[id] not 

discuss willfulness or explain how lying about these additional 

matters was material." Even aside from the fact that this argument 

was first developed in his reply brief, see Brandt v. Wand 

Partners, 242 F.3d 6, 19 (1st Cir. 2001), Teganya's contention

overlooks the fact that the District Court concluded that he made 

false statements "as outlined by the government in its argument," 

and that, in its sentencing memorandum, the government contended 

that the statements in question were also both willful and 

material. And, while Teganya asserts that there are reasons to 

doubt whether the District Court adopted the government's position 

as a whole in connection with falsity, he makes no such claim as 

to willfulness or materiality.
- 22 -

Instead, it stated only that it found "by a preponderance of the 

evidence that the defendant made a variety of false statements

during his testimony, as outlined by the government in its 

argument, and that those statements were, taken as a whole, 

material." But, as we have previously noted, while it is "better 

practice" for a district court in applying the obstruction-ofjustice enhancement to "specifically identif[y] the segments of 

[the defendant's] testimony it found to be false," such an 

"omission does not preclude affirmance of its finding in an 

instance where . . . the record speaks eloquently for itself." 

United States v. Akitoye, 923 F.2d 221, 229 (1st Cir. 1991).

The record fills in the gaps here. Among the statements 

that the government highlighted to the District Court were comments 

where Teganya "denied being aware of the genocide while it 

happened" and "denied having belonged to the MRND." Indeed, he 

not only testified unequivocally that he was never a member of the 

MRND party and that he never saw atrocities being committed at the 

hospital, but he also elaborated on each point. The jury, in 

reaching the verdict that it did, necessarily concluded that his 

testimony in that regard was false beyond a reasonable doubt. 

Moreover, although Teganya makes much of the fact that the District 

Court in applying the enhancement was reluctant to make particular 

findings that Teganya committed specific atrocities, we do not see 

how any skepticism the District Court expressed with respect to 
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some of the acts that Teganya denied undercuts the fact that it 

did find other statements of Teganya's were false. Thus, the 

District Court did not clearly err when it held that Teganya "made 

a variety of false statements during his testimony," as this

"generalized finding of untruthfulness" by the District Court was 

"sufficiently supported by the record." Rehal, 940 F.2d at 6. We 

thus see no basis for disturbing that finding and affirm Teganya's 

sentence as well.

IV.

For all these reasons, we affirm Teganya's convictions 

and sentence.