Source: http://www.kentuckylawjournal.org/index.php/2016/04/14/meriting-consolidation-why-criminal-pattern-jury-instructions-should-consolidate-federal-bribery-statutes/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 12:04:36+00:00

Document:
Bribery in the federal system is notorious for its incoherence.2 Multiple bribery statutes exist with very similar elements, and a defendant can be prosecuted under any and all of these statutes.3 Because of this, the federal crime of bribery continues to confuse and perplex even the most seasoned attorneys.4 While confusion among attorneys helps illustrate the problem with federal bribery, attorneys are not the main focus of pattern jury instructions. Pattern jury instructions serve to educate lay jurors during federal trials, instructing them as to both the law and its application in a given case. It is imperative that these instructions are as clear and concise as possible, and currently, pattern instructions do not meet this standard. Therefore, federal bribery law and its corresponding pattern instructions need to be clarified.
While there is a bribery statute specifically prescribed for prosecuting federal officials,34 the prosecution of state and local officials is, at best, a patchwork approach.35 Several similar bribery statutes exist that could apply to a given public corruption case, and a public official can be charged under more than one of these statutes.36 This hodgepodge approach to bribery is the source of its surrounding confusion and is why it must be remedied via pattern jury instructions.
It is unlikely that Congress will remedy the situation by amending or consolidating its existing bribery statutes. Therefore the task is left to the drafting committees of pattern jury instructions to paint a clearer picture of bribery law.
Jury instructions serve as each circuit’s attempted consolidation and explanation of the law to be used by juries in federal criminal trials, and they are essential in properly instructing lay-juries on complex legal issues.37 By eliminating legal jargon and simplifying the law, pattern instructions can also serve as a helpful guide for practitioners. Pattern instructions provide jurors with this knowledge by explaining the crime and its elements in terms that a layperson can understand,38 bridging the gap between the law and the layperson.39 By putting difficult legal concepts into more straightforward terms, pattern instructions can also serve as a useful tool for lawyers trying to decipher a particularly confusing area of the law, such as federal bribery.
Pattern jury instructions are generally composed of an explanation of the statute or section’s elements, Use Notes, and/or Committee Commentary.40 Use Notes are interchangeable and are employed by the court to tailor the instructions to a given case. Committee Commentary, on the other hand, provides authority and a more in-depth explanation of the circuits’ applicable law for the statute, and essentially functions as a mini-treatise.41 This structure makes pattern jury instructions the ideal tool not only for practitioners looking to learn an area of the law, but as a way of definitively stating just what the law is. If federal bribery law is a jigsaw puzzle, pattern jury instructions can serve as the means to finally put the pieces together.
Most circuits’ pattern jury instructions currently use one instruction for each and every bribery statute and offense, as illustrated by the Fifth Circuit. This circuit has drafted an instruction for receiving a bribe by a public official under § 201, as well as an instruction for extortion under color of official right and for honest services fraud, which all encompass bribery.42 Although each instruction has slightly different elements, their core elements are essentially the same, which will be further illustrated below. While the Sixth Circuit does not yet have any bribery offense instructions,43 Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right and honest services fraud instructions are currently being drafted.
The bribery offenses discussed within this note are all found within § 2C1.1 of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual: Offering, Giving, Soliciting, or Receiving a Bribe (§ 201); Extortion Under Color of Official Right (Hobbs Act); Fraud Involving the Deprivation of the Intangible Right to Honest Services of Public Officials (§ 1346).44 The Commission consolidated its sentencing guidelines by acknowledging the similarities among bribery statutes and placed honest services fraud (§ 201) and extortion under color of official right within the same base offense level and section.45 In doing so, the United States Sentencing Guidelines have implicitly recognized that the statute-by-statute approach is, in fact, not the most logical method. If consolidation can be achieved within a scheme as complex as the sentencing guidelines, it can—and should—be done within each circuit’s pattern jury instructions.
The elements for receiving a bribe by a public official under 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(2) according to most criminal pattern jury instructions are: (1) a public official demanded, sought, or received a (2) thing of value (3) corruptly (4) in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act (the quid pro quo element).55 The “corruptly” element should be eliminated, however, because it adds nothing to the statute and is more confusing than helpful. The Supreme Court has concluded that the word “corruptly” is “normally associated with wrongful, immoral, depraved, or evil.”56 This wrongfulness is captured by the quid pro quo, making the corruptly element obsolete. While some argue that the corruptly element differentiates lawful influence of an official act and an unlawful influence;57 the quid pro quo captures this distinction.
Courts are beginning to read “corruptly” out of § 201, defining the element in terms of the quid pro quo.58 The Model Penal Code also disfavors the use of “corruptly.” Its commentary states that the element “provides virtually no guidance as to the intended scope of the law,”59 and that in its place, “the issues with which it deals should be addressed more particularly.”60 The corruptly element was not included within later bribery statutes, undoubtedly because the quid pro quo defines the issue of bribery more particularly than corruptly. “Corruptly” should, therefore, be eliminated within the proposed bribery instruction.
As the remainder of this note will show, the foundational elements of § 201 are largely shared across various federal bribery crimes. Section 201 laid the groundwork for federal bribery law, therefore these elements served as a template for the bribery statutes and instructions that followed.
The Hobbs Act was not originally designed to target public officials, but criminal organizations.63 Federal prosecutors began to use the statute to target public officials during the anti-corruption era of the 1970s, and first successfully used the statute in 1972 in United States v. Kenny.64 In Kenny, defendants involved with Jersey City, New Jersey’s “Democratic political-machine” were charged with color of official right extortion under the Hobbs Act, the first time the statute had been used to prosecute public corruption.65 Beginning with Kenny, the Hobbs Act and § 201 began to merge together.66 Although extortion under color of official right is used to prosecute state and local officials, it also covers bribery, and its elements are similar to those found in instructions that cover § 201.
After Evans, the elements of bribery of a federal public official under § 201 and Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right are basically the same. According to Professor Lindgren, the “traditional ‘color of office’ language links the two offenses” of bribery and extortion under color of official right,72 because the focus is on the person’s status as a public official. Some argue that the two crimes should be distinguished due to official right extortion’s one-sided nature.73 However, these arguments are outside the scope of this note, which is focused solely on the conduct of the public official.
Comparing these instructions to those written for § 201,83 both the instructions for bribery of a federal public official and Hobbs Act color of official right extortion include common elements of (1) a public official, (2) a thing of value, and (3) a quid pro quo. While the “corruptly” element found among § 201 instructions is missing from the Hobbs Act—and likewise the Hobbs Act’s necessary jurisdictional element of an effect on interstate commerce is missing from § 201—these instructions are, at their core, the same. A simple Use Note could modify one “Bribery” instruction to easily reflect these elements when necessary.
Interestingly, the sentencing guidelines recognized the similarities between honest services fraud under § 1356, the Hobbs Act, and § 201 even before the Supreme Court’s decision in Skilling. Six years before the Court decided Skilling, the separate sentencing guideline dealing with honest services fraud was deleted and consolidated with § 2C1.1, which includes receiving a bribe under § 201 and extortion under color of official right.99 Originally several guidelines covered bribery and extortion offenses, but they were consolidated as of November 2004.100 Now, each of these offenses are found together, which is the approach that drafting committees of pattern jury instructions should adopt.
Comparing § 201, the Hobbs Act, and honest services fraud, common elements exist among the three statutes. The elements for honest services fraud found within pattern jury instructions are: (1) a public official (2) in a scheme or plan to defraud (3) accepts a bribe or kickback (thing of value) (4) in exchange for official action (the quid pro quo) and (5) violated his duty of honest services to the public by using the United States Postal Service or an interstate carrier in order to carry out the scheme.101 Again, the three common core bribery elements—a public official, thing of value, and the quid pro quo—are all present. In order to define bribery, pattern instructions for honest services fraud generally refer the reader to its instructions for § 201.102 If these instructions are already referring the reader to § 201, it seems that it would be much simpler to merge the instructions, and have all pertinent information readily accessible within one instruction. It also reflects the similarity between the crimes; one of the purposes of § 1356 is to punish the type of bribery already covered under § 201. “While they do not explicitly contain the word ‘corruptly,’ the Hobbs Act [and] honest services fraud . . . have swallowed 201 . . . .”103 If the statutes are already merging into one another, so too should their pattern instructions.
The proposed Bribery instruction would include the following elements: (1) A public official accepted, received, or agreed to accept or receive a (2) thing of value (3) in exchange for official action (the quid pro quo). Although multiple forms of bribery exist via different statutes such as the Hobbs Act, § 201, and § 1346, each statute essentially punishes the same conduct. Through Use Notes, the instructions could be modified for each crime, adding an element when necessary. Committee Commentary would also explain the controlling law, each relevant statute, and the statutes’ intersection with one another. This unified Bribery instruction would not only be easier to understand, but would render federal bribery more coherent. A consolidated Bribery instruction would serve as a backdoor method to achieve the goal of the failed Revised Federal Criminal Code, which intended to remedy federal criminal law’s piecemeal approach. Thus, pattern jury instructions could serve as the glue to piece the puzzle that is federal bribery law back together.
This consolidation would be similar to the United States Sentencing Commission’s Federal Sentencing Guidelines’ approach of placing similar bribery crimes within the same section.104 The Commission has acknowledged federal bribery statutes’ similarities, as should drafters of pattern jury instructions. The Guidelines’ approach demonstrates the feasibility of consolidation, and should be repeated within each United States Circuit Courts of Appeals’ Criminal Pattern Jury Instructions.
Bribery is currently a deeply confusing area with unnecessary overlap between statutes, which is why drafting committees of pattern jury instructions should lead the charge to effectively consolidate these statutes through pattern jury instructions. Not only will a consolidated, more streamlined instruction help to avoid jury confusion, but it will aid both practitioners in understanding and applying federal bribery law to the facts of a given case, and judges in conducting the trial. Because the elements for the aforementioned statutes are largely the same, there is simply no rationale for separate pattern jury instructions. Instead, bribery crimes should be consolidated into one cohesive “Bribery” instruction.
2 See Charles N. Whitaker, Federal Prosecution of State and Local Bribery: Inappropriate Tools and the Need for a Structured Approach, 78 Va. L. Rev. 1617, 1619-21 (1992) (discussing the variation in interpretation of federal bribery laws and lack of consensus on the definition of bribery).
3Peter J. Henning & Lee J. Radek, The Prosecution and Defense of Public Corruption: The Law and Legal Strategies 3 (2011).
4 See Vince Ventimiglia, et. al., Report of the Public Corruption Working Group 20-21 (1993), http://www.src-project.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ussc_report_publiccorruption_19930908.pdf.
5 U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 2C1.1 (U.S. Sentencing Comm’n 2015).
6 See 18 U.S.C. § 201 (2011); 18 U.S.C. § 1951 (2010); 18 U.S.C. § 1346 (2010).
7 See, e.g., District Judges Association, Fifth Circuit Pattern Jury Instructions (Criminal Cases) (2015) (hereinafter Fifth Circuit) (referring the reader to 18 U.S.C. § 201(b) in order to define bribery within the context of honest services fraud).
8 The decision not to include 18 U.S.C. § 666 (theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds) was due to its unique jurisdictional bases, but the proposed general bribery statute could apply to § 666 as well.
9 Daniel Hays Lowenstein, Political Bribery and the Intermediate Theory of Politics, 32 UCLA L. Rev. 784, 785-87 (1985).
10 Peter J. Henning, Federalism and the Federal Prosecution of State and Local Corruption, 92 Ky. L.J. 75, 94 (2003).
11 See, e.g., Fifth Circuit, supra note 7, §§ 2.09B, 2.56, 2.57, 2.73B.
12 Henning & Radek, supra note 3, at 15.
13 United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of Cal., 526 U.S. 398, 404-05 (1999).
14 See Evans v. United States, 504 U.S. 255, 256 (1992); see also Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358, 412-13 (2010).
15 Evans, 504 U.S. at 268.
16 Lowenstein, supra note 9, at 786.
17 U.S. Const. art. II, § 4 (describing only two crimes as specific bases for impeachment, one of which is bribery).
18 Henning & Radek, supra note 3.
19 State ex rel. Brady v. Bates, 102 Minn. 104, 110 (1907) (Start, C.J., concurring).
20 Adam H. Kurland, The Guarantee Clause as a Basis for Federal Prosecutions of State and Local Officials, 62 S. Cal. L. Rev. 367, 377 (1989).
21 James Lindgren, The Theory, History, and Practice of the Bribery-Extortion Distinction, 141 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1695, 1705 (1993).
22 Kurland, supra note 20, at 376-77.
23 Geraldine Szott Moohr, Mail Fraud and the Intangible Rights Doctrine: Someone to Watch over Us, 31 Harv. J. on Legis. 153, 164 n.40 (1993).
25 Kurland, supra note 20, at n.26.
26 Reid Weingarten, Volcano of Change, 51 Hastings L.J. 693, 693-94 (2000).
27 Kurland, supra note 20, at n.26.
29 Moohr, supra note 23.
30 U. S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 2C1.1(b)(3) (U.S. Sentencing Comm’n 2015).
31 18 U.S.C. § 201(b) (4) (2011).
32 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1951(a) (2010).
33 18 U.S.C. § 1341 (2010), 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (2011).
34 18 U.S.C. § 201 (2011).
35 John S. Gawey, The Hobbs Leviathan: The Dangerous Breadth of the Hobbs Act and Other Corruption Statutes, 87 Notre Dame L. Rev. 383, 418 (2011).
36 Henning & Radek, supra note 3.
37 See Luther C. Hames, Jr., Pattern Jury Instructions, 27 Mercer L. Rev. 291, 291-92 (1975).
38 See generally Fifth Circuit, supra note 7 (providing examples of jury instructions).
39 See Bethany K. Dumas, Jury Trials: Lay Jurors, Pattern Jury Instructions, and Comprehension Issues, 67 Tenn. L. Rev. 701, 708 (2000).
40 There is some variation among the judicial circuits, but each circuit has at least Use Notes or Committee Commentary, and some include both.
41 See, e.g., The Sixth Circuit Committee on Criminal Pattern Jury Instructions, Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions § 10.01 Committee Comment. (2015) [hereinafter Sixth Circuit].
42 Fifth Circuit, supra note 7, §§ 2.09B, 2.56, 2.57, 2.73B.
43 See Sixth Circuit, supra note 41, at Table of Contents.
44 U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 2C1.1 (U.S. Sentencing Comm’n 2015).
46 Henning, supra note 10, at 95-96.
47 18 U.S.C. § 201 (2011).
49 Dixson v. United States, 465 U.S. 482, 499-500 (1984).
50 526 U.S. 398 (1999).
55 See, e.g., Fifth Circuit, supra note 7, § 2.09B.
56 Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696, 705 (2005).
57 Eric J. Tamashasky, The Lewis Carroll Offense: The Ever-Changing Meaning of “Corruptly” within the Federal Criminal Law, 31 J. Legis. 129, 136 n.55 (2004).
58 See, e.g., United States v. Alfisi, 308 F.3d 144 (2d. Cir. 2002) (finding that evidence of a quid pro quo satisfied the corruptly element).
59 Model Penal Code § 240.1 cmt. 2 (Am. Law Inst., Official Draft and Revised Comments 1980).
60 Id. § 240.1 cmt. 1.
61 Henning, supra note 10, at 136-37.
63 Henning & Radek, supra note 3, at 107.
64 Id. at 108; United States v. Kenny, 462 F.2d 1205 (3d Cir. 1972).
65 See Gawey, supra note 35, at 397-99.
67 See Evans v. United States, 504 U.S. 255, 268 (1992) (“We hold today that the Government need only show that a public official has obtained a payment to which he was not entitled, knowing that the payment was made in return for official acts.”). But see Steven J. Mulroy, Official Explanation: Defining Official Capacity and Related Color of Office Phrases in Bribery and Extortion Law, 38 U. Mem. L. Rev. 587, 598 (2008) (arguing that bribery and extortion remain distinct crimes).
68 Evans, 504 U.S. at 257.
70 Id.; Judicial Committee On Model Jury Instructions for the Eighth Circuit, Eighth Circuit Model Jury Instructions (2014) § 6.18.1951 cmt. (2014) (“Because threats or coercion are not required, the facts of some cases will be fairly similar to the facts of a bribery case . . . .”).
71 Evans, 504 U.S. at 268.
72 Lindgren, supra note 21, at 1728.
73 Gawey, supra note 35, at 394-95 (“The difference between bribery of a public official and official right extortion is that bribery covers both sides of a reciprocity. Whereas official right extortion reaches only the public official who receives a bribe, bribery reaches both the public official and the briber.”).
74 U. S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 2C1.1 app. C, vol. I (U.S. Sentencing Comm’n 2015).
76 Ventimiglia, et. al., supra note 4, at v.
78 Id. at 11, 13.
79 See id. at 2.
80 See Frank O. Bowman, III, Beyond Band-Aids: A Proposal for Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, 2005 Chi. Legal F. 149, 156 (2005).
81 Ventimiglia, et. al., supra note 4, at 2.
82 See, e.g., Fifth Circuit, supra note 7, § 2.73B.
84 18 U.S.C. § 1346 (2010).
85 Henning & Radek, supra note 3, at 155-56.
86 See 18 U.S.C. § 1341 (2010); 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (2011); 18 U.S.C § 1346. Mail fraud involves fraudulently obtaining money or property through use of the Postal Service or any private or commercial interstate carrier; wire fraud involves the same conduct, but instead utilizes wire, radio, or television communication.
87 Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358, 409 (2010).
91 See id. at 402.
92 Id. at 405, 407.
98 See Sarah Kelly & Megan Jeans, Honest Services Fraud: The Trial Courts’ Turn, 46 New Eng. L. Rev. on Remand 79, 83 (2012).
99 U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual app. C, vol. 111, amend. 666 (U.S. Sentencing Comm’n 2015); id. § 2C1.1.
100 Id. at app. C, vol. 111, amend. 666.
101 See, e.g., Fifth Circuit, supra note 7, §§ 2.56, 2.57.
102 See, e.g., id. § 257 (referring the reader to 18 U.S.C. § 201(b) in order to define bribery within the context of honest services fraud).
103 Gawey, supra note 35, at 419.
104 See U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 2C1.1 (U.S. Sentencing Comm’n 2015).

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