PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v. No. 95-5987

SHIRLEY MACKEY,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Alexandria.

James C. Cacheris, Chief District Judge.

(CR-95-301-A)

Argued: March 7, 1997

Decided: May 28, 1997

Before MURNAGHAN and LUTTIG, Circuit Judges, and

BLACK, Senior United States District Judge for the

District of Maryland, sitting by designation.

_________________________________________________________________

Affirmed by published opinion. Senior Judge Black wrote the opinion, in which Judge Murnaghan and Judge Luttig joined.

_________________________________________________________________

COUNSEL

ARGUED: Joseph N. Bowman, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellant.

Kathleen Marie Kahoe, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF

THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Alexandria, Virginia, for

Appellee. ON BRIEF: Helen F. Fahey, United States Attorney,

OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellee.
OPINION

BLACK, Senior District Judge:

Following a jury trial, Shirley Mackey was convicted of sixty-two

counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C.§§ 1343 & 2, and one

count of conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. Mackey appeals

these convictions, arguing that she was denied a fair trial when the

district court allowed two jurors to remain after jury deliberations

were suspended for the evening to perform research on the evidence

in order to summarize it for all of the jurors. Mackey also contends

that the district court clearly erred when it found that she occupied a

position of trust as provided for in the Sentencing Guidelines. Finding

no merit in her arguments, we affirm.

I.

On May 30, 1995, the director of security operations for Woodward and Lothrop Department Stores discovered that fraudulent

return of merchandise credits totaling approximately $40,000 had

been issued to credit cards during the period from December 1994

through May 1995. His investigation led him to believe that the perpetrators of the fraud were Shirley Mackey and Paula Williams, two

employees from the Sales Audit Department of Woodward and

Lothrop's corporate headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Mackey's

computer authorization code had been used on all but one of the

fraudulent transactions.

On June 1, 1995, Mackey was interviewed by two Secret Service

agents, at which time she admitted that, during her employment as a

group leader in the Sales Audit Department, she had entered unauthorized credits for non-existent returns of merchandise into the Woodward and Lothrop computer on at least five occasions for her

daughter, and for Williams's mother and brother. Mackey also admitted to giving her computer authorization number to Williams so that

Williams could execute fraudulent credits on her own computer.

Williams pled guilty in August 1995, and subsequently testified at

Mackey's trial that Mackey had offered to enter credits for Williams

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and her friends and relatives; that Mackey did enter such credits; and

that Mackey later gave Williams the confidential computer access

code that Williams used to effect other fraudulent credits. Thirteen

other witnesses who had benefitted from the scheme testified at the

trial to the fraudulent returned merchandise credits they had received

from Mackey. In addition, hundreds of pages of documentation,

including records of over 130 credit card charge transactions and of

the subsequent reversals of those charges, were admitted into evidence.

In his final instructions to the jury, the trial judge stated:

 Your verdict must represent the collective judgment of

each juror. In order to return a verdict, it is necessary that

each juror agree to it. Your verdict, in other words, must be

unanimous. ... Each of you must decide the case for himself

and herself, but do so only after an impartial consideration

of the evidence in the case with your fellow jurors.... Your

verdict must be based solely upon the evidence received in

this case. Nothing you may have seen or heard or read outside the court may be considered.

Just prior to excusing the jury to deliberate, the trial judge informed

the jury that they could take a lunch break, but cautioned: "I just ask

that when you go on your lunch break, if two or three of you go off

together, that you not discuss the case; you wait until all twelve of

you are back in the jury room, so that everyone receives the benefit

of your views." The jury was excused to deliberate at approximately

11:50 a.m. on September 28, 1995.

At about 6:30 p.m., the jury sent a note to the trial judge asking the

following question: "Can some jurors, but not all, stay and perform

research activities on the evidence so as to present summary data to

all jurors tomorrow?" Over defense counsel's objection, the trial

judge decided to allow some jurors to stay. He stated to counsel that

he would "let them do the research, as long as they understand it has

to be a unanimous decision and they will have [to] satisfy themselves

the research is accurate." The trial judge then instructed the jury as

follows: "Several of you want to stay and do some research; is that

right? It's okay, as long as your decision is unanimous and all of you

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are satisfied the research is accurate, the people doing the research

can furnish back-up data."

The jury was then excused for the evening. The next day, the jury

began deliberating at 9:00 a.m. Approximately two hours later, they

returned a verdict of guilty on sixty-three counts, and of not guilty on

the remaining sixty-three counts.

At sentencing, the district court imposed a two-point enhancement

for abuse of a position of trust pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3B1.3, and sentenced Mackey to a term of imprisonment of 30 months and to three

years of supervised release.

II.

Mackey contends that district court erred in allowing some jurors

to remain to perform research on the evidence after jury deliberations

ended for the evening. We shall assume for purposes of discussion

that this contention is correct. Mackey further asserts that this error

constituted a structural error that requires automatic reversal of her

conviction. We disagree with Mackey's claim of structural error, and

find that the actions of the trial court are subject to harmless error

analysis.

A.

"[T]he Constitution entitles a criminal defendant to a fair trial, not

a perfect one." Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 681 (1986).

"[G]iven the myriad safeguards provided to assure a fair trial, and taking into account the reality of the human fallibility of the participants,

there can be no such thing as an error-free, perfect trial, and . . . the

Constitution does not guarantee such a trial." United States v.

Hasting, 461 U.S. 499, 508-09 (1983).

The Supreme Court has recognized that most errors can be harmless, Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 306 (1991), and has enumerated a wide range of constitutional errors subject to harmless error

analysis, including, inter alia, improper admission of an involuntary

confession, failure to instruct the jury on the presumption of inno-

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cence, and improper denial of counsel at a preliminary hearing. 499

U.S. at 306-07. The Supreme Court has also recognized, however,

that certain errors are so severe as to render a trial inherently unfair.

499 U.S. at 309-10. Examples of such "structural" errors include the

total deprivation of the right to counsel at trial and the presence of a

judge who is not impartial. 499 U.S. at 309-10. Structural errors cannot be harmless, since they affect "[t]he entire conduct of the trial

from beginning to end," 499 U.S. at 309-10, and involve basic protections without which "`a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence, and no

criminal punishment may be regarded as fundamentally fair.'" 499

U.S. at 310 (quoting Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 577-78 (1986)).

The Supreme Court has emphasized, however, that most errors are not

structural. Indeed, "if the defendant had counsel and was tried by an

impartial adjudicator, there is a strong presumption that any other

errors that may have occurred are subject to harmless-error analysis."

Rose, 478 U.S. at 578-79.

In Sherman v. Smith, 89 F.3d 1134 (4th Cir. 1996) (en banc), cert.

denied, 117 S. Ct. 765 (1997), we observed that

[c]orrectly applied, harmless error and structural error analyses produce identical results: unfair convictions are reversed

while fair convictions are affirmed. Expanding the list of

structural errors, however, is not mere legal abstraction. It

can also be a dangerous endeavor. There is always the risk

that a sometimes-harmless error will be classified as structural, thus resulting in the reversal of criminal convictions

obtained pursuant to a fair trial. Given this risk, judges

should be wary of prescribing new errors requiring automatic reversal. Indeed, before a court adds a new error to the

list of structural errors (and thereby requires the reversal of

every criminal conviction in which the error occurs), the

court must be certain that the error's presence would render

every such trial unfair.

89 F.3d at 1138 (emphasis in original). Applying this standard, we

held that a juror's unsupervised visit to the crime scene did not constitute structural error. Id. at 1137-40. We reasoned that an unsupervised

juror site visit cannot be compared to the sorts of errors that require

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automatic reversal of an otherwise valid conviction:"Unlike the complete denial of counsel and other structural errors, which affect the

`entire conduct of the trial from beginning to end,' juror site visits can

be discrete moments in the course of an otherwise fair trial." Id. at

1138 (quoting Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 309-10). In addition, we determined that because the Supreme Court had applied harmless error

analyses to similar claims of juror misconduct and juror bias, unauthorized juror site visits do not "defy" harmless error analysis. 89 F.3d

at 1138-40.

Like the error at issue in Sherman, the error at issue in the present

case -- allowing some jurors to stay to perform research on the evidence in order to summarize it for all of the other jurors who had gone

home for the evening -- obviously can occur in a discrete moment

of an otherwise fair trial. Moreover, this error appears to be less

severe than other instructional errors that the Supreme Court has subjected to harmless error analysis. For example, in Rose v. Clark, 478

U.S. 570, 582 (1986), the Court held that harmless error analysis

applied to an erroneous malice instruction that all homicides are presumed to be malicious in the absence of evidence that would rebut

this implied presumption. Further, in at least one respect, the error at

issue in this case is significantly less severe than the one we found to

be harmless in Sherman; while the error in Sherman created a possibility that the defendant's conviction was based partially on external

evidence not presented during the trial, no such possibility exists here.

For all of the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the issue here is

"amenable to the traditional tools of harmless error analysis."

Sherman, 89 F.3d at 1140.

B.

In Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24 (1967), the Supreme

Court established a standard for determining whether a federal constitutional error is harmless: "[B]efore a federal constitutional error can

be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was

harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." Since Chapman, the Court "has

repeatedly reaffirmed the principle that an otherwise valid conviction

should not be set aside if the reviewing court may confidently say, on

the whole record, that the constitutional error was harmless beyond

a reasonable doubt." Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 681. In other words, the

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reviewing court must ask whether, in light of the error identified by

the court, it is "clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would

have returned a verdict of guilty." Hasting , 461 U.S. at 510-11.

Applying these principles to the present case, we find that the trial

court's error was harmless. First, we note that the evidence summarized by the jurors who stayed was properly admitted during the trial.

Thus, this case is not one involving consideration of extraneous evidence.

Second, the district court's instructions clearly directed the jury not

to deliberate unless all jurors were present. During its general instructions, the trial court informed the jury that each juror must decide the

case for himself or herself; it further instructed the jurors not to discuss the case in groups of two or three during their lunch break, but

rather to wait until all twelve jurors were together so that all jurors

would receive the benefit of each juror's views. In addition, after

receiving the jury note at issue here, the judge advised the jury that

its decision would have to be unanimous and that all jurors would

have to satisfy themselves that the summaries were accurate. Taken

together, these instructions provided adequate guidance for the two

remaining jurors to know that they should not deliberate on the merits

of the case. Indeed, there is no evidence that the remaining jurors

failed to comply with these instructions. We therefore have no valid

basis for concluding that defendant's right to a jury trial was

impaired.

Third, the state offered ample evidence at trial to support the jury's

conclusion that Mackey had committed conspiracy and multiple acts

of wire fraud. Mackey confessed during an interview conducted by

Secret Service agents that she entered unauthorized credits on at least

five occasions, and that she gave her computer authorization number

to Williams, her co-conspirator. Williams's testimony at trial -- that

Mackey entered credits for Williams and her friends and relatives,

and gave Williams the confidential computer access code -- was consistent with these admissions. At trial, Mackey further admitted that

she conducted fraudulent returned merchandise credits for her friend

Bonnie Stokely. These fraudulent credits were confirmed by Stokely,

who also testified at Mackey's trial. In all, the government produced

thirteen witnesses who testified that they received fraudulent returned

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merchandise credits from Mackey. This powerful testimonial evidence was buttressed by the admission of numerous documents that

chronicled the relevant credit card charges and the subsequent reversals of those charges.

In light of the whole record in this case, including the extensive

evidence presented at trial, we find that any error by the trial judge

was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

III.

Mackey also argues that she did not occupy a position of trust warranting a two-level enhancement under section 3B1.3 of the Sentencing Guidelines, "Abuse of Position of Trust or Use of Special Skill,"

which provides, in pertinent part, that "[i]f the defendant abused a

position of public or private trust, or used a special skill, in a manner

that significantly facilitated the commission or concealment of the

offense, increase by 2 levels." U.S.S.G. § 3B1.3.

While the Guidelines do not define "position of trust," the commentary to section 3B1.3 explains that

"[p]ublic or private trust" refers to a position of public or

private trust characterized by professional or managerial discretion.... For this enhancement to apply, the position of

trust must have contributed in some significant way to facilitating the commission or concealment of the offense.... This

adjustment, for example, would apply in the case of an

embezzlement of a client's funds by an attorney serving as

a guardian, a bank executive's fraudulent loan scheme, or

the criminal sexual abuse of a patient by a physician under

the guise of an examination. This adjustment would not

apply in the case of an embezzlement or theft by an ordinary

bank teller or hotel clerk....

U.S.S.G. § 3B1.3, comment note 1. We have enumerated several factors that must be considered in determining whether a defendant held

a position of trust:

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First, courts ask whether the defendant had special duties or

"special access to information not available to other employees." Second, the defendant's level of supervision or "degree

of managerial discretion" is relevant. Bank tellers who

embezzle from their employers provide an example of a situation where there is little trust to abuse because the

employees are closely supervised, and it is expected that

wrongs they commit will be readily detected. Third, the

analysis also entails an examination of "the acts committed

to determine whether this defendant is `more culpable' than

others" who hold similar positions and who may commit

crimes.

United States v. Gordon, 61 F.3d 263, 269 (4th Cir. 1995) (internal

citations omitted). "Whether a defendant held a position of trust must

be `approached from the perspective of the victim.'" United States v.

Glymph, 96 F.3d 722, 727 (4th Cir. 1996) (quoting Gordon, 61 F.3d

at 269).

The district court found that Mackey occupied a position of trust.

The court focused on Mackey's possession of the computer access

code, determining that this facilitated concealment of the fraudulent

conduct and endowed her with information that was unavailable to

others. Thus, the court concluded that Mackey did not fit within the

"bank teller" exception. The district court's ruling in this regard "is

a factual determination reviewable for clear error." Glymph, 96 F.3d

at 727 (citing United States v. Helton, 953 F.2d 867, 869 (4th Cir.

1992)).

Mackey relies on Helton, 953 F.2d 867, in arguing that her work

was functionally equivalent to that of an ordinary bank teller. This

reliance is misplaced. In Helton, the district court found that the

defendant, an imprest fund cashier, had no special access and that the

embezzled "funds could just as easily have been picked off by another

person." Id. at 870. We upheld this finding as not clearly erroneous.

Id.

Helton is easily distinguishable from the present case. Here,

Mackey had been a group leader in the Sales Audit Department of

Woodward and Lothrop for ten years. She was one of two group lead-

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ers in this department, and was responsible for supervising other auditors. In this capacity, she was authorized to possess and utilize a

computer authorization code, which gave her special access to the

company's data base, and enabled her to commit the fraud and conceal it from detection. The employees she supervised, including Williams, did not have access to this code. Under these circumstances,

the district court's determination that Mackey occupied a position of

trust was not clearly erroneous.

AFFIRMED

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