Source: http://openjurist.org/135/f3d/104/united-states-v-v-andrade
Timestamp: 2016-04-29 10:36:59
Document Index: 76037607

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 371', '§ 922', '§ 924', '§ 5313', '§ 5324', '§ 6', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 922', '§ 922']

135 F3d 104 United States v. V Andrade | OpenJurist
135 F. 3d 104 - United States v. V Andrade HomeFederal Reporter, Third Series135 F.3d
135 F3d 104 United States v. V Andrade 135 F.3d 104
UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,v.Jose V. ANDRADE, Jr., Defendant, Appellant.
No. 96-2309.
Heard Nov. 4, 1997.Decided Feb. 3, 1998.Rehearing Denied March 9, 1998.
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.
On May 8, 1996, the district court issued a decision refusing to suppress statements that Andrade had made to the authorities on December 16 and December 19 and refusing to suppress the results of the searches of December 16. United States v. Andrade, 925 F.Supp. 71, 81 (D.Mass.1996). Andrade was tried before a jury in May 1996, the trial lasting about two weeks. The most damaging testimony was given by Todd and Smith.
Andrade's first claim of error is that the district court admitted statements that Andrade had made during his December 16 interrogation at the police station. After his arrest, Andrade was taken to an office in a Roxbury police substation and handcuffed to a chair. There, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent Daniel Campbell read Andrade the Miranda warnings, see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 478-79, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1630, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and asked him if he understood his rights; Andrade said that he did. A state police officer, Francis Matthews, was also present.
In this court, Andrade does not claim that the statements he made were involuntary. Instead, he says that by repeated questioning police failed to honor his right to remain silent under the Miranda doctrine, see Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 104, 96 S.Ct. 321, 326-27, 46 L.Ed.2d 313 (1975), and that when Campbell resumed questioning after completing the apartment searches, there was no adequate waiver when Andrade made the statements in the second interrogation. The district court held otherwise, and we agree.
Miranda requires that the police warn a suspect in custody of his right to counsel and his right to remain silent. If the police have failed to give the warnings and obtain a waiver of rights, the statements are excluded, even if otherwise voluntary. Where the suspect asserts that he wants to consult with counsel, questioning must cease until counsel is provided. See Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 484-85, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 1885, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981). But when a defendant invokes his right to remain silent, Mosley makes clear that the police are not automatically forbidden from later resuming interrogation.
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."
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 p 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.
Our view accords with the purpose of Congress in adopting the willfulness requirement in the Firearms Owners' Protection Act of 1986, Pub.L. 99-308, 100 Stat. 449. Congress's concern was that, because of the nature of the conduct and technicality of the statute, some offenses might be committed by individuals who were unaware that their conduct had been made criminal.2 Nothing indicates that Congress was concerned with protecting individuals who knew that their conduct was unlawful but might not be able to cite chapter and verse as to which precise provision made it so.
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, --- U.S. ----, 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
Admittedly, two other circuits say that conviction requires proof that the defendant was aware of the licensing requirement itself, but we do not find these cases persuasive. See United States v. Rodriguez, 132 F.3d 208, 212 (5th Cir.1997); United States v. Sanchez-Corcino, 85 F.3d 549, 553-54 (11th Cir.1996). Even decisions like Rodriguez, purporting to require specific awareness of the statute, dilute the requirement by inferring specific knowledge from circumstantial evidence. See Rodriguez, 132 F.3d at 212
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, --- U.S. ----, ---- 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 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).
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)
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)