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UNITED STATES v. ANDRADE | FindLaw
UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Jose V. ANDRADE, Jr., Defendant, Appellant.
No. 96-2309.
Decided: February 03, 1998
Before BOUDIN, Circuit Judge, COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge, and DOWD, *Senior District Judge. Miriam Conrad, Federal Defender Office, for appellant. James F. Lang, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Donald K. Stern, United States Attorney, was on brief for the United States.
Jose V. Andrade, Jr., appeals from his conviction for conspiracy to engage without a license in the business of dealing in firearms, 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 922(a)(1)(A) (1994), and for transporting firearms without a license into his state of residence, id. § 922(a)(3). The facts pertaining to the issues raised on appeal are largely undisputed. As the sufficiency of the evidence is not an issue, we abbreviate the facts.
Andrade, a native of Boston, attended Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, during 1993 and 1994. At the time, the authorities suspected Andrade of moving guns illegally from Mississippi to Massachusetts. On December 16, 1994, Andrade-then in Boston for Christmas vacation-was arrested and questioned in circumstances described below. His family apartment and two others occupied by cousins were searched on the same day based on search warrants or consent. Andrade was released the same day, questioned at home on December 19, and rearrested in March 1995.
We see nothing wrong with Campbell's decision to resume questioning of Andrade after the searches. A reasonable interval separated the two periods of questioning, see Mosley, 423 U.S. at 106, 96 S.Ct. at 327-28, and there was no repeated attempt to reverse a refusal to talk through undue pressure. The circumstances were quite different in United States v. Barone, 968 F.2d 1378 (1st Cir.1992), where the defendant resisted questioning, was held for over 24 hours, was interrogated four times before he began to discuss the crime, and was twice intimidated by suggestions that he “would be in substantial [physical] danger if he returned to Boston without cooperating.” Id. at 1385; see also id. at 1386.
Whether Andrade's later statements reflected a waiver of his right to remain silent is a closer issue. The problem is that the Supreme Court has said, almost in the same breath, that “mere silence is not enough” for a waiver, but that this “does not mean that the defendant's silence, coupled with an understanding of his rights and a course of conduct indicating waiver, may never support a conclusion that the defendant has waived his rights.” North Carolina v. Butler, 441 U.S. 369, 373, 99 S.Ct. 1755, 1757, 60 L.Ed.2d 286 (1979). The waiver issue, it appears, must be decided on the facts. See id. at 374-75, 99 S.Ct. at 1758.
Andrade's next claim is that the trial court's instructions on the first count-conspiracy to deal in firearms without a license-set too low a scienter requirement. 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(1)(D) provides that a number of weapons offenses, including the offense of dealing without a license, require that the proscribed conduct be willfully undertaken. Andrade's counsel asked the court to instruct the jury that this in turn required proof beyond a reasonable doubt that “the defendant knew that Section 922(a)(1)(A) requires one who engages in the business of dealing in firearms to obtain a dealer's license from the Secretary of the Treasury.”
The district court refused to give this instruction. Instead, it told the jury that one acts willfully when he intentionally commits acts proscribed by law “with knowledge that his conduct is unlawful.” The court said that knowledge of illegality had to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. But it also instructed that the government did not have to prove that the defendant knew of the specific statute that he was charged with violating or that he intended to violate that particular statute.
If case law from other circuits is put to one side, the issue appears easy. The term “willful” is used in various ways, but the standard definitions normally emphasize that a defendant acted “with knowledge that [his] conduct is unlawful,” 1 L. Sand, J. Siffert, W. Loughlin & S. Reiss, Modern Federal Jury Instructions ¶ 3A.01, at 3A-18 (1997). Willfulness is often required where a statute outlaws conduct commonly thought to be lawful. In some measure, the willfulness requirement reverses the usual rubric that ignorance of the law is no defense. Just how much ignorance may be needed is a different matter.
The proponents of the willfulness requirement, to the extent that we can discover their comments, said nothing to suggest that the term was intended to go beyond its ordinary meaning, that is, awareness that one's conduct is unlawful. The only suggestions that the statute might require knowledge of the “details” of the law came from opponents of the amendment; given the incentive to exaggerate, such remarks normally get little weight. NLRB v. Fruit & Vegetable Packers & Warehousemen, Local 760, 377 U.S. 58, 66, 84 S.Ct. 1063, 1068, 12 L.Ed.2d 129 (1964).3
The Second Circuit has squarely ruled that the government need only prove that the defendant knew that his conduct was illegal. United States v. Collins, 957 F.2d 72, 76-77, cert. denied, 504 U.S. 944, 112 S.Ct. 2285, 119 L.Ed.2d 210 (1992). Accord United States v. Allah, 130 F.3d 33, 38-41 (2d Cir.1997); United States v. Bryan, 122 F.3d 90, 91 (2d Cir.), cert. granted, 522 U.S. 1024, 118 S.Ct. 622, 139 L.Ed.2d 507 (1997). The Seventh Circuit's decision in United States v. Obiechie, 38 F.3d 309 (1994), largely points toward a standard of general knowledge of illegality, although one sentence suggests that knowledge of the licensing requirement may be required. See id. at 316.
Several other circuits-including the Third and Eighth-say generally that the defendant must have “knowledge of the law,” e.g., United States v. Hayden, 64 F.3d 126, 130 (3d Cir.1995) (“the defendant must have acted with knowledge that his conduct was unlawful”); United States v. Hern, 926 F.2d 764, 767 (8th Cir.1991) (“ ‘willful’ means an intentional violation of a know legal duty”). But this language could be read either to support Andrade or the Second Circuit. And the matter is further confused because, in purporting to disagree with the Second Circuit, several such decisions misunderstand its position.4
Such evidence is likely to be good proof that the defendant knew that his conduct was unlawful but very thin evidence that the defendant knew what statute made it so. See Rodriguez, 132 F.3d at 213 (“counter-surveillance operations,” “unease about the sale,” and “experience at ‘The Bunker’ and with firearms” gave defendant a “background from which she should have been familiar with the firearms laws”). See also Obiechie, 38 F.3d at 316 (“An inference of knowledge could be drawn from the fact that [defendant] had listed ‘gift’ as his reason for purchasing the [guns] ․ after having indicated that the first two purchases were for retail sale.”). Since juries are being allowed to convict on the basis of such evidence, nothing is gained by instructing the jury with language suggesting that the standard is higher than it actually is.
Nor is Andrade's position supported, as he claims, by Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135, 114 S.Ct. 655, 126 L.Ed.2d 615 (1994). Ratzlaf held that a currency structuring violation required “knowledge of illegality [as] an element” to show willfulness, Bates v. United States, 522 U.S. 23, ---- n. 6, 118 S.Ct. 285, 290 n. 6, 139 L.Ed.2d 215 (1997), which is just what the district court told the jury here. In Ratzlaf, knowledge of a specific statute (or something close to it) was also required-not because of the willfulness requirement but because the statute itself required a “purpose of evading the reporting requirements” of 31 U.S.C. § 5313(a). See 31 U.S.C. § 5324. This additional wrinkle is not part of the present case.
The jury requests a description of clarification of the term “transport” as it is used in Page 22 of the Jury instructions, i.e.: Does defendant have to personally transport or deliver guns? Is (sic) acceptance of said guns in Massachusetts constitute transportation, especially in the phrase “to transport into” or “receive”?
After consulting with the parties, the district court told the jury that, given the government's theory of the case, it would not be enough for the jury to conclude that the defendant “merely received or accepted guns in Massachusetts.” 5 However, the court said that Andrade would be guilty if he had caused “an agent, employee or other associate” to bring the guns into Massachusetts. Andrade's counsel, in turn, objected to this further supplemental instruction.
The supplemental charge was legally correct. At common law one is liable as a principal if one deliberately causes or procuring another to perform a criminal act, 2 W.R. LaFave & A.W. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law § 6.6(a), at 126 (1986), and the principle has been carried forward by 18 U.S.C. § 2(b). Unlike aiding and abetting liability, id. § 2(a), there is no requirement that the intermediary be shown to be criminally liable. Section 2(b) is not a separate offense but a general principle of liability that applies without any need for reference in the indictment. United States v. Sabatino, 943 F.2d 94, 99-100 (1st Cir.1991).
Andrade says that delivering the instruction after closing arguments violated Fed.R.Crim.P. 30, which requires that the court rule on requested instructions “prior to their arguments to the jury.” By its terms and, as a matter of necessity, Rule 30 refers only to rulings on instructions requested by counsel “[a]t the close of the evidence or at such earlier time” as the court directs. Fed.R.Crim.P. 30. The rule simply does not prescribe the procedure for supplemental instructions after the jury has retired. See United States v. Fontenot, 14 F.3d 1364, 1368 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 966, 115 S.Ct. 431, 130 L.Ed.2d 343 (1994).
The defense now says that at least it should have been allowed to address the jury on this “new theory,” pointing out to it that there was no specific evidence that anyone had transported the guns at Andrade's direction. We agree that a refusal to permit further argument made necessary by a supplemental instruction could amount to error. But here it is enough to say that no such request to make further closing argument after the supplemental instruction was made in this case.
Further, the notion of prejudice is fanciful. Defense counsel pointed out to the jury in her original closing that there was no direct evidence showing Andrade's transportation of the guns to Massachusetts. It had to be equally clear to the jury that there was no direct evidence that Andrade had asked an “agent, employee or other associate” to transport the guns for him. To spell out the obvious would have added nothing.
1. Compare United States v. Christian, 571 F.2d 64, 66, 69 (1st Cir.1978) (no waiver where a defendant's signature on an FBI waiver form showed that he had admitted being advised of his rights, but conspicuously omitted his signature on the line provided for a waiver of those rights).
2. The willfulness requirement applies to some gun crimes and not others, and the dividing line is crudely drawn between actions that anyone might expect to be unlawful, see, e.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(v), 924(a)(1)(B) (semiautomatic assault weapon crimes), and actions that might not always appear unlawful, see, e.g., id. §§ 922(e), 924(a)(1)(D) (shipping a firearm in interstate commerce without written notice to the common carrier).
3. Compare 132 Cong. Rec. 6876 (1986) (statement of Rep. Hughes) (opponent's comments that the new statute would require the defendant to know “what the law is, every detail of the law․ [I]t would be a prosecutor's nightmare”), with id. at 6861 (statement of Rep. Boehlert) (supporter's comment that the statute rejected mere knowledge of conduct in favor of “some sort of criminal intent”). The scattered and extensive legislative history is recounted in D. Hardy, The Firearms Owners' Protection Act: A Historical and Legal Perspective, 17 Cumb. L.Rev. 585, 604-07, 645-53 (1987).
4. The Third Circuit, for example, ascribes to the Second Circuit the view that the government need prove only that the defendant knew what he was doing. Hayden, 64 F.3d at 130 n. 6. The Second Circuit has, to our knowledge, never expressed this view. See Collins, 957 F.2d at 77 (the evidence “demonstrate[d] that Collins understood that his firearms sales violated the law”).
5. In his original instructions, the trial judge had already told the jury-consistent with the indictment-that the charge against Andrade had as a necessary element that he had transported the guns into Massachusetts. However, earlier the judge had quoted the statute in full, and the statute makes transportation or receipt criminal, if other conditions are met-which may explain the jury's question.