Source: http://www.fcpablog.com/blog/tag/jury-instructions
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 13:12:58+00:00

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Privately-held Lindsey Manufacturing is the only corporation to ever face a full jury trial for alleged FCPA offenses.
Companies often face extortionate demands from foreign police, bureaucrats, and regulators, who threaten to hold, expel, or even harm employees if ransoms aren't paid. And there have always been questions whether those involuntary payments can violate the FCPA.
Paul Cosgrove and David Edmonds want a jury instruction about 'customary practices' in some of the countries where their employer, CCI, did business.
Jury selection in John O'Shea's trial is scheduled to start on January 11.
On his Conflict of Interest Blog, Jeff Kaplan talked this week about conflicts arising from people from one company serving on other company boards.
Over on the White Collar Crime Prof Blog, Solomon L. Wisenberg posted links to FCPA-related jury instructions from some recent prosecutions.
Does a defendant need to know a bribe taker is a 'foreign official' to be guilty of an FCPA offense?
Bruce Alpert of the Times-Picayune dissects the jury's deliberations in last summer's trial of former congressman William Jefferson. Alpert's story confirms for the first time that the jury believed Jefferson was guilty of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Jefferson, 63, was found guilty on 11 of 16 corruption charges, including one count of conspiracy. He was acquitted of the single substantive FCPA charge he faced. He was sentenced in November to 13 years in prison and is free pending appeal.
Jefferson was the first and only U.S. public official to be charged under the FCPA since it was enacted in 1977. His case will always be remembered for the $90,000 in cash found in his freezer. The money was part of $100,000 given to him by government informant Lori Mody. Prosecutors said Jefferson planned to use it to bribe Nigeria's then vice president, Atiku Abubakar.
But two jurors told the Times Picayune's Alpert there were doubts Jefferson actually intended to use the $100,000 to bribe Abubakar, despite what he told informant Mody.
"I think there was some thought he intended to keep the money himself, and that's not the crime he was accused of," said one juror who added that the remaining 10 jurors eventually went along with the sentiments of their two colleagues.
As the FCPA Blog said before the trial began, "The money so spectacularly found in the freezer -- it was in the freezer; it was not in the bank account of a foreign official."
Alpert's report, however, confirmed that jurors convicted Jefferson of conspiracy to violate the FCPA. They decided that Jefferson's discussions with Mody about "wanting to keep Abubakar happy was enough to support a charge of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.﻿" Presumably the jury believed Jefferson planned to promise or give Abubakar something other than the cash in his freezer.
Alpert's report is the first confirmation from the jury itself that it convicted Jefferson on an FCPA-related count. Their verdict form alleged three separate illegal conspiracies -- to solicit bribes, deprive citizens of honest services, and violate the FCPA. But the form didn't require the jury to specify which of the three illegal conspiracies it believed Jefferson engaged in.
Judge T.S. Ellis III, who presided over the trial, later said he regretted not making the jury's verdict form more specific.
Lawyers are trained to quibble and criminal defense lawyers do it best. After all, their job is to create reasonable doubt. So it's no surprise that when talking about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, they say it's complicated, technically challenging and obscure, poorly drafted and badly organized. But don't believe it. There's no evidence in the record that judges or juries have any trouble understanding the FCPA. Just the opposite.
Seeing Judge Wu's complete FCPA instructions should help dispel the idea that the law is shrouded in mystery. It's not. That's one reason why there hasn't been an acquittal in an FCPA trial since 1991. Juries get it. Which means anyone who's completed a typical compliance training program has no excuse for not understanding the FCPA.
One of the alleged objects of the conspiracy charged in Count One of the Indictment is a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (henceforth "FCPA"). In addition, Counts Two through Ten charge both Defendants with nine separate FCPA violations. See paragraph 26 of the Indictment for a description of each of the FCPA counts.
in order to assist such domestic concern in obtaining or retaining business for or with, or directing business to, any person . . .
15 U.S.C. § 78dd-2(g) (2)(A) makes it a crime for a person to "willfully violate" Section 78dd-2.
Seventh, the Defendant acted willfully.
A "domestic concern" means any individual who is a citizen or resident of the United States and / or any corporation, partnership or business entity which is organized under the laws of a State of the United States or which has its principal place of business in the United States.
A "foreign official" means any officer or employee of a foreign government or any department, agency or instrumentality of the foreign government; or any person acting in an official capacity or on behalf of any such foreign government, department or agency.
The term "interstate commerce" means trade, commerce, transportation or communications among the several States of this country, or between any foreign country and any State, or between any State and any location outside of that State. The term also includes the use of a telephone or other interstate means of communication or any other interstate instrumentality, such as fax transmissions, e-mail correspondence and wire transfers of funds between persons in different States or countries.
An act is "corruptly" done if done voluntarily and intentionally, and with a bad purpose or evil motive of accomplishing either an unlawful end or result, or a lawful end or result but by some unlawful method or means. The term "corruptly" in FCPA is intended to connote that the offer, payment, or promise was intended to induce the recipient to misuse his or her official position.
A violation of the FCPA is "willful" if: 1) the Defendant's actions are intentional and not the result of an accident or mistake, and 2) the Defendant knows that his or her actions are in some way unlawful. As to the second point, the Defendant does not have to be aware of the existence of the FCPA itself, but the Defendant must have proceeded with the knowledge that he or she was doing a "bad" act under the general rules of law, doing an act with a bad purpose, or taken the action without any ground to believe that it was lawful.
Download a copy of the specific jury instructions in U.S. v. Green here.
Download a copy of the March 11, 2009 second superseding indictment in U.S. v. Green here.
View prior posts about the Greens here.
More on the Greens. In February 2008 we said: "We're not privy to the Greens' defense, of course, but they appear to have a tough legal battle ahead of them." As their trial was about to begin this week, it was postponed. According to the AP, the Justice Department blamed the one-week delay on "the availability of a prosecution witness." Trial delays aren't unusual. But could the Greens be trying to work out a plea?
As we've said, Perry Mason's clients never ended up behind bars. But real-life FCPA defendants aren't so lucky. Most accused individuals have plea-bargained to reduce or avoid jail time -- FCPA convictions carry a prison term of up to five years. And consider this: Since 1991, not a single FCPA trial has ended with an acquittal.
The Greens -- husband-and-wife Hollywood movie-producers Gerald and Patricia -- are also charged with conspiracy, money laundering, obstruction, and filing false tax returns. He's 76, she's 54, and if convicted on some or all counts they could spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Jury selection in U.S. v. Green is scheduled to start on August 25.
I'm not sure the Professor's criticism of the Bourke instructions on jurisdiction are well-founded. Although the statutory charging language in the conspiracy count does allege that the conspiracy continued to in or about 1999, only two of the overt acts took place after the 1998 amendments were signed into law. One was a trip to Azerbaijan in January 1999 by Farrell and the other a trip in February 1999 by Bourke. Both of these trips are described as being for the purpose of meeting with Azeri officials concerning the privatization investment, but the government did not set out any particular acts in furtherance of the bribery scheme. Moreover, in the original indictment, none of the substantive FCPA counts involved transactions after November 10, 1998. Thus, it is likely that the government chose to play it safe and had the court instruct on the pre-amendment jurisdictional element.
But the pre-1998 jurisdictional instruction wouldn't be needed in U.S. v. Green, where the alleged offending behavior took place from 2002 to 2007.
The government's proposed jury instructions in United States v. Green (United States District Court for the Central District of California, Case #: 08-59(B) - GW) can be downloaded here. The proposed "interstate commerce" instruction is number 28.
The jury instructions from United States v. Bourke, S1 05 Cr. 418 (SAS) (S. D. N. Y.) can be downloaded here.
Turks and Caicos-shire. Last Friday, Britain suspended the territory's political institutions and imposed direct rule. A U.K. report (available here) alleged systematic corruption among Turks and Caicos' leading politicians and their friends. A U.K.-appointed governor is now in charge.
In an AP report, former premier Galmo Williams said, "Our country is being invaded and re-colonized by the United Kingdom, dismantling a duly elected government and legislature and replacing it with a one-man dictatorship."
Turks and Caicos is a British Overseas Territory about 500 miles southeast of Florida. Its 25,000 residents have U.K. passports. Its beaches attract around 300,000 tourists a year.
British Foreign Office Minister Chris Bryant said the suspension could last up to two years while governor Gordon Wetherell "puts the Islands' affairs back in good order," according to the AP. Elections for a new government will be held by July 2011, Bryant said.
Meanwhile, will the U.K.'s audit into the government's accounts reveal any FCPA compliance problems for investors in T & C during its former home-rule regime?
Husband-and-wife movie producers Gerald and Patricia Green are now on trial in LA for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Prosecutors allege they paid more than $1.8 million in bribes to Juthamas Siriwan, a former governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, in return for $14 million in contracts to stage the Bangkok Film Festival. They're also charged with conspiracy, money laundering, obstruction, and filing false tax returns. He's 76, she's 54, and they're now facing up to five years in prison for each FCPA charge, up to 10 years for each tax count, and up to 20 years for the money-laundering and obstruction charges.
Theirs is the third FCPA-related trial this year. In July, Frederick Bourke of the Dooney & Bourke handbag company was convicted by a jury in Manhattan of conspiracy to violate the FCPA. A month later, William Jefferson, the former nine-term congressman from Louisiana, was found guilty on a similar charge (among 10 others) in Alexandria, Virginia.
We don't know how many currently-serving U.S. Attorneys or Assistant U.S. Attorneys had seen an FCPA trial before this year. But the number could be zero or close to it. So going into the recent trials, prosecutors didn't have a lot of courtroom-tested resources to draw from. That might explain why the government's proposed jury instructions on the FCPA counts in the Greens' case are copied verbatim from Judge Shira Scheindlin's instructions in Frederic Bourke's trial. There's one problem though. Those instructions contained some errors.
The [Bourke] instructions say (on pg. 24) that a "domestic concern" (as Bourke is under FCPA-speak) "must have intended to make use of the mails or a means or instrumentality of interstate commerce" in order to violate the FCPA. This is the so-called "territorial" jurisdictional provision found at 78dd-2. However, the 1998 amendments to the FCPA expanded the jurisdictional reach of the FCPA, as applied to "domestic concerns," by adding an alternative "nationality" jurisdictional provision found at 78dd-2(i) which removes the interstate commerce / U.S. territorial nexus requirements. Thus, a "domestic concern" can be charged and found liable for a substantive FCPA violation even if the prohibited activity took place entirely outside of the U.S. The jury instruction that the "domestic concern" "must have intended to make use of the mails or a means or instrumentality of interstate commerce" is thus just plain wrong.
Another problem in the Bourke instructions and repeated by the government's requested instructions in U.S. v. Green concerns the definition of "foreign official." The instructions depart from the text of the FCPA by inserting a reference to "an instrumentality" where it shouldn't be. True, the word "instrumentality" pops up all over the FCPA, but not in the place in the statute's definition of a "foreign official" where the instructions put it. The government has gone one instrumentality too far.
How serious are the errors? Not very. In Bourke's trial, the anachronistic "interstate commerce" element probably hurt the government's case but not Bourke's defense. Prosecutors had to present evidence that wasn't really needed to prove his FCPA-related violation -- i.e., Bourke's use of an instrumentality (that word again) of interstate commerce while offering or making a corrupt payment to a foreign official. And the reference to "instrumentality" in the description of a foreign official is a bit confusing but not a big deal -- probably harmless error. Still, the government might want to have a quick huddle and check its notes.
The government's proposed jury instructions in United States v. Green (United States District Court for the Central District of California, Case #: 08-59(B) - GW) can be downloaded here.
Read all our posts about U.S. v. Green here.
"Courtesy payments," "gratuities" and "local bribes" totaling $237,386 were passed out on locations in Morocco to expedite filming. A $40,688 payment to stop a river improvement project and $23,250 for "Political/Mayoral support" . . .
Since that story appeared, lawyers and pundits have wondered when the FCPA hammer would fall on Hollywood's overseas "community relations" practices. Could the Greens' case be the first of many?
Douglas Murphy of American Rice, sentenced to 63 months after his FCPA conviction, is serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, a medium security facility. However, David Kay, who was tried with Murphy, is serving his 37 month sentence at Texarkana, a low security facility.

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