United States Court of Appeals 

For the First Circuit 

No. 14-1616 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Appellee, 

v. 

SAMUEL STALIN LEBREAULT-FELIZ, 

Defendant, Appellant. 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS 

[Hon. Denise J. Casper, U.S. District Judge] 

Before 

Howard, Chief Judge, 

Torruella and Barron, Circuit Judges. 

Larry J. Ritchie was on brief for appellant. 

Mark T. Quinlivan, Assistant United States Attorney, with 

whom Carmen M. Ortiz, United States Attorney, was on brief for 

appellee. 

November 25, 2015 
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BARRON, Circuit Judge. Samuel Stalin Lebreault Feliz 

("Lebreault") appeals his convictions on two counts of passport 

fraud, one count of false representation to the Social Security 

Administration, and one count of theft of public money. He 

contends that the District Court erred in barring him from 

presenting the defenses of duress and necessity as to the first 

count of passport fraud, and that this error also prejudiced his 

ability to defend against the other counts against him. In 

addition, Lebreault contends that the District Court erred in 

denying his motion for acquittal as to the second count of passport 

fraud. We affirm the convictions. 

I. 

On October 15, 2014, Lebreault was convicted of two 

counts of passport fraud pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1542, one count 

of false representation to the Social Security Administration 

pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 408(a)(6), and one count of theft of public 

money pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 641. On May 29, 2014, Lebreault was 

sentenced to serve thirty-three months in prison with three years 

of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay restitution for 

theft of public funds. 

The passport fraud convictions arise from Lebreault's 

efforts to secure a passport first for himself and then, years 

later, for his daughter. These convictions relate to his use of 

false identities in his applications for each passport. The other 
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convictions arise from Lebreault's use of a false identity in 

connection with his efforts to work in the United States and to 

secure government benefits for himself and his children. 

With respect to the first count of passport fraud, on 

November 18, 2003, Lebreault submitted a passport application to 

officials at the United States embassy in Caracas, Venezuela using 

a false identity, "Juan Antonio Castro Pizarro" ("Castro 

identity"). On the basis of this application, Lebreault was issued 

a temporary, limited passport to return to the United States. Upon 

arrival in Miami, Lebreault admitted to United States immigration 

officials in a sworn statement that he had used a false identity 

to obtain the passport and that he was actually "Antonio Jose 

Rodríguez Rodríguez" ("Rodríguez identity") from Venezuela (which, 

it turned out, was also a false identity). 

With respect to the second count of passport fraud, on 

June 14, 2007, Lebreault applied from the United States for a 

passport for his then-seven-year-old daughter Adriana Lebreault, 

a United States citizen. Federal regulations require parents of 

a minor to execute the passport application on the minor's behalf 

and to provide certain evidence of parentage, which includes 

identifying information. See 22 C.F.R. § 51.28(a)(2). Lebreault 

used the false Rodríguez identity when executing Adriana's 

passport application. 
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With respect to the other convictions, on June 1, 2011, 

Lebreault submitted an application for a replacement social 

security card using the false Rodríguez identity.1 In addition, 

Lebreault used the false Rodríguez identity in signing a number of 

forms under penalty of perjury between 2006 and 2012 to establish 

and maintain eligibility for the Department of Housing and Urban 

Development Section 8 program, which provides housing and utility 

subsidies. Lebreault received $121,077 worth of benefits under 

this program between 2007 and 2013 for himself and his children. 

At trial, Lebreault sought to raise duress and necessity 

defenses on the first count of passport fraud. His proffer in 

support of those defenses describes a purported incident that he 

contends occurred in the Dominican Republic well before he first 

applied for a passport in Venezuela so that he could travel from 

Venezuela to the United States. The District Court, assuming the 

truth of the proffer, found that the proffered facts did not 

suffice to support the requested defenses given the absence of 

imminent harm and the availability of reasonable alternatives to 

violating the law. For those reasons, the District Court barred 

Lebreault from presenting the duress and necessity defenses and 

denied the jury instruction that Lebreault requested regarding 

 1 On September 17, 2010, Lebreault obtained special 

immigration status as an abused spouse of a United States citizen. 

That status provided him with a basis to work legally in the United 

States and to receive public benefits. 
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those defenses. Lebreault then asked for reconsideration on the 

basis of a supplemented proffer, but the District Court affirmed 

its prior ruling for substantially the same reasons it had given 

the first time. 

Lebreault moved for acquittal on the second count of 

passport fraud. He argued that he could not be found guilty of 

making false statements "contrary to the laws [and rules] 

regulating the issuance of passports" -- as the relevant statute 

requires, see 18 U.S.C. § 1542 -- because he was applying for a 

passport for a United States citizen, his minor daughter, who was 

entitled to a passport. The District Court denied Lebreault's 

motion for judgment of acquittal on this count. 

II. 

Duress is an affirmative defense that requires proof 

that "the defendant committed a crime as a result of (1) an 

immediate threat of serious bodily injury or death (2) that the 

defendant reasonably believed was true, (3) without a reasonable 

opportunity to escape or frustrate the threat." United States v. 

Diaz-Castro, 752 F.3d 101, 108 (1st Cir. 2014). The closely 

related affirmative defense of necessity requires proof that the 

defendant "(1) was faced with a choice of evils and chose the 

lesser evil, (2) acted to prevent imminent harm, (3) reasonably 

anticipated a direct causal relationship between his acts and the 

harm to be averted, and (4) had no legal alternative but to violate 
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the law." United States v. Maxwell, 254 F.3d 21, 27 (1st Cir. 

2001). 

Lebreault argues that he was wrongly barred from 

presenting evidence of duress and necessity to the jury in 

defending against the first count of passport fraud. "But 

precisely because a defendant is entitled to have [his evidence 

be] . . . judged by the jury, it is essential that the testimony 

given or proffered meet a minimum standard as to each element of 

the defense so that, if a jury finds it to be true, it would 

support an affirmative defense . . . ." United States v. Bailey, 

444 U.S. 394, 415 (1980). As a result, "when the proffer in 

support of an anticipated affirmative defense is insufficient as 

a matter of law to create a triable issue, a district court may 

preclude the presentation of that defense entirely." Maxwell, 254 

F.3d at 26. And when a district court does so, we review the 

decision de novo. See id. 

Lebreault proffered the following facts in support of 

his right to present these defenses. He asserted that on May 8, 

2003, he and a friend, Cesar, were involved in an altercation in 

the Dominican Republic with robbers that culminated in Cesar's 

death. On the advice of a state senator, the proffer continued, 

Lebreault spoke with a district attorney in the country, who 

confirmed Cesar's death and told Lebreault that Cesar's family 

believed he was responsible for the murder. Lebreault further 
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proffered that Cesar's uncle was a general in the Dominican 

Republic police. 

 Lebreault contended in his proffer that he then went 

into hiding in another town in the Dominican Republic for three 

months and was told by the district attorney with whom he had 

previously spoken about the incident that it was not safe for him 

to return to his hometown in that country. Lebreault further 

proffered that he subsequently fled to Venezuela and that, while 

he was in that country, his father was charged with Cesar's murder 

and tortured while in custody and that his brother died under 

suspicious circumstances. Lebreault also proffered that all the 

people involved in the incident that led to Cesar's death were 

arrested and died in jail. 

On the basis of these events, Lebreault contends that he 

eventually decided to use the false Castro identity to obtain a 

passport so that he could travel from Venezuela to the United 

States. And thus he argues that duress and necessity are available 

as affirmative defenses. 

Even accepting these proffered facts, however, we do not 

see how they show that the District Court erred in barring 

Lebreault from presenting duress and necessity defenses. By 

Lebreault's own account, there was a six-month lapse in time 

between the incident in the Dominican Republic and his application 

for a United States passport, which occurred while Lebreault was 
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in an entirely different country and after he had been in that 

country for a full three months. Lebreault has thus failed to 

come close to demonstrating that the District Court erred in 

finding that he made an insufficient showing of imminent harm or 

lack of reasonable alternatives to violating the law. See, e.g., 

United States v. Bello, 194 F.3d 18, 26-27 (1st Cir. 1999) (finding 

no imminence where there was a cooling-off period of eighteen hours 

after threat of harm); United States v. Arthurs, 73 F.3d 444, 448-

49 (1st Cir. 1996) (finding that defendant could have discarded 

drugs or sought help in the minutes between being threatened in a 

cruise ship bathroom and then exiting that ship with contraband). 

Even the out-of-circuit precedent on which Lebreault 

principally relies, United States v. Contento-Pachon, 723 F.2d 691 

(9th Cir. 1984), is of no help to him. That case involves readily 

distinguishable facts regarding the requirement of imminence, see 

id. at 693-94 (finding that threat of harm was still imminent where 

lapse of time between initial threat and crime was a matter of 

days and where defendant was told he would be under constant 

surveillance), and that case explains that the lack-of-reasonablealternatives requirement generally cannot be satisfied once the 

"defendant has reached a position where he can safely turn himself 

in to [or call on] the authorities", see id. at 695. 

 Accordingly, Lebreault's attempt to challenge this 

conviction on the ground that he was wrongly barred from presenting 
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duress and necessity defenses is without merit, and thus so, too, 

is his contention that the jury should have been instructed on 

those defenses. Lebreault has also waived any argument that his 

inability to present the requested defenses prejudiced his ability 

to defend against the other counts against him. He conceded below 

that he could not "in good faith" present the defenses with respect 

to those other counts. And he does not contend that he sought to 

introduce evidence pertaining to the facts in the proffer for any 

other purpose. Having waived this issue below, Lebreault may not 

resurrect it on appeal. See United States v. Gaffney-Kessell, 772 

F.3d 97, 100 (1st Cir. 2014). 

III. 

Lebreault next argues that the District Court erred in 

denying his motion for judgment of acquittal on the second count 

of passport fraud. We review the denial of a motion for judgment 

of acquittal de novo, construing the evidence in a "prosecutionfriendly light." United States v. George, 761 F.3d 42, 48 (1st 

Cir. 2014). And after performing that review, we reject 

Lebreault's challenge to his conviction under the first clause of 

18 U.S.C. § 1542.2

 2 The statute provides in relevant part: 

"Whoever willfully and knowingly makes any false statement in 

an application for passport with intent to induce or secure 

the issuance of a passport under the authority of the United 

States, either for his own use or the use of another, contrary 

to the laws regulating the issuance of passports or the rules 
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Lebreault contends that he cannot be convicted under the 

first clause of § 1542 because his daughter is a United States 

citizen and is therefore entitled to a passport. And Lebreault 

contends that this fact makes the issuance of a passport to her 

not "contrary to the laws [and rules] regulating the issuance of 

passports." 18 U.S.C. § 1542. Lebreault is less than clear, 

however, as to why his daughter's citizenship bars his conviction, 

and we conclude that it does not. 

Lebreault may mean to argue that he can only be found 

guilty under the first clause of § 1542 if his false statements 

were "contrary to the laws [and rules] regulating the issuance of 

passports," id., and would have materially influenced the decision 

of the agency charged with processing passport applications. We 

have previously stated, however, that the first clause of § 1542 

does not contain such a materiality requirement, see United States 

v. Salinas, 373 F.3d 161, 167 (1st Cir. 2004), and other Circuits 

have so held, see, e.g., United States v. Hart, 291 F.3d 1084, 

1085 (9th Cir. 2002) (per curiam) ("We . . . now explicitly hold 

that proof of materiality is not required for this [§ 1542] 

offense."); United States v. Hasan, 586 F.3d 161, 167 (2d Cir. 

2009) (joining other circuit courts in holding that the aspect of 

§ 1542 at issue does not contain a materiality requirement). 

 

prescribed pursuant to such laws . . . Shall be fined under 

this title, imprisoned . . . or both." 18 U.S.C. § 1542. 
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Moreover, even assuming the relevant provision contains 

a materiality requirement, Lebreault's challenge still fails. We 

do not see how the federal regulation requiring Lebreault to 

"provide documentary evidence of parentage" when applying for a 

passport on behalf of a minor, including "the names of the parent 

or parents," was not violated when Lebreault provided a false 

parental name. 22 C.F.R. § 51.28(a)(2). And a jury could 

reasonably find on this record that the false statements made 

"contrary to" the regulation materially influenced the decision of 

the agency charged with processing passport applications. In fact, 

the government offered testimony that the State Department would 

not have issued a passport to Adriana had it known that her 

passport application contained false information as to the 

identity of her father. Thus, we reject Lebreault's assertion -- 

to the extent he means to make it -- that because Adriana was 

legally entitled to a passport (by virtue of her status as a United 

States citizen), he cannot be convicted under the first clause of 

§ 1542 because the false information he supplied was not material. 

At oral argument, Lebreault's counsel separately 

indicated that there might be a distinct question as to whether 

Lebreault possessed the requisite intent to commit the second count 

of passport fraud. But we decline to decide here whether the first 

clause of 18 U.S.C. § 1542 sets forth a specific intent 

requirement, such that there may be liability only if the defendant 
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specifically "intends to induce or secure the issuance of a 

passport contrary to the laws [and rules] regulating the issuance 

of passports" (emphasis added). See United States v. Aifang Ye, 

792 F.3d 1164, 1168 (9th Cir. 2015) (joining other circuit courts 

in holding that the first clause of § 1542 does not embody a 

specific intent requirement). As the government correctly points 

out, Lebreault did not develop this argument in his briefs, and it 

is therefore waived. See United States v. Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 

(1st Cir. 1990) ("[I]ssues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, 

unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are 

deemed waived."). 

IV. 

For the reasons above, the judgment of the District Court 

is affirmed.