United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

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No. 11-2328

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United States of America, *

*

Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the District

* of North Dakota.

Robin L. Iron Shield, *

* [UNPUBLISHED]

Appellant. *

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 Submitted: February 13, 2012

 Filed: March 27, 2012 (Corrected March 27, 2012)

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Before WOLLMAN, ARNOLD, and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

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PER CURIAM.

Robin Iron Shield appeals his conviction for sexual abuse of a minor, see

18 U.S.C. § 2243(a), asserting that the district court1

 erred in refusing to sever his trial

from that of his co-defendant, Bruce Kills in Water, and that the evidence was

insufficient to support his conviction. We affirm.

1

The Honorable Daniel L. Hovland, United States District Judge for the District

of North Dakota.
I.

A single indictment charged Iron Shield with having sexual intercourse with a

thirteen-year-old girl, S.O.R., and Kills in Water with having sexual intercourse with

another thirteen-year-old girl, O.M. Although the two events occurred in the same

apartment at approximately the same time, Iron Shield maintains that the defendants

were improperly joined in the indictment because they did not participate "in the same

act or transaction, or in the same series of acts or transactions, constituting an offense

or offenses." See Fed. R. Crim. P. 8(b). He maintains that the two offenses were

separate and distinct. But since Iron Shield did not raise this issue in the trial court,

we may review it only for plain error, and cannot give relief unless the misjoinder, if

it was one, had a substantial injurious effort on the verdict. See United States v.

Robertson, 606 F.3d 943, 951-52 (8th Cir. 2010). 

The record here will not support that finding. This was a simple case: There

were only two defendants, the trial lasted only a day and a half, and only four

witnesses testified. The district court very carefully told the jury, both in its

preliminary instructions and its final instructions, that the charges against the

defendants were separate and distinct and that the jurors were required to judge each

defendant individually. During the trial, moreover, the district court cautioned that

incriminating statements by each of the defendants were to be considered only to the

extent that they bore on the case of that defendant. These instructions, in the

circumstances, cured any possibility of prejudice, much less a substantial injurious

effect, arising from the joinder. See Zafiro v. United States, 506 U.S. 534, 540-41

(1993).

In a related argument, Iron Shield asserts that the district court abused its

discretion by denying his motion to sever his trial from Kills in Water's, see Fed. R.

Crim. P. 14(a), because their defenses were irreconcilable or antagonistic. It is true

that Iron Shield denied engaging in sexual intercourse with S.O.R., while Kills in

Water admitted that he had had intercourse with O.M. but denied knowing that she

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was under sixteen years old. This makes the defendants' defenses different, but it does

not make them antagonistic or irreconcilable for the very reason that Iron Shield

argued that he had been misjoined with his co-defendant: The acts with which the

defendants were charged were completely distinct and separate, and the jury could

easily have believed one defense without rejecting the other. Each defense stood on

its own. See United States v. Lewis, 557 F.3d 601, 609-10 (8th Cir. 2009). Any

possible prejudice that the different defenses might have created was in any event

cured by the district court's careful instructions, already alluded to, to the jury to

compartmentalize the evidence.

II.

Iron Shield contends that the evidence was insufficient to convict him because

his admission that he had engaged in sexual intercourse with S.O.R. was not

corroborated and was the only evidence of intercourse, as opposed to other sexual

activity, introduced at trial. It is true that S.O.R. testified that she did not remember

if she and Iron Shield had had sex and did "not believe" that they did, and there were

no witnesses to the actual sexual act charged. But the corroboration that the law

requires must only bolster the reliability of a defendant's admission to render a case

submissible; it need not independently establish all or any of the elements of the crime

charged. The defendant's admission, if other evidence tends to show its reliability, is

sufficient to do that. United States v. Kirk, 528 F.3d 1102, 1111 (8th Cir. 2008). 

Here, there was evidence that Iron Shield was lying on the floor in the apartment with

S.O.R. on the night in question, that they were embracing and kissing, that he

removed her bra, and that they were lying under blankets together when they awoke

the next morning. Clothes that belonged to both of them were found in the apartment

and S.O.R.'s bra was wrapped in blankets found there. There was other corroborating

testimony, but the recited evidence is more than sufficient to show the reliability of

Iron Shield's statements that he had intercourse with S.O.R. The case against him was

therefore sufficient to go to the jury.

Affirmed.

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