Source: http://openjurist.org/119/f3d/115/united-states-v-walsh
Timestamp: 2016-02-10 10:49:07
Document Index: 760496677

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 3']

119 F. 3d 115 - United States v. Walsh HomeFederal Reporter, Third Series119 F.3d
And in United States v. Cleary, 565 F.2d 43, 46 (2d Cir.1977) we held that a requested instruction requiring that the jury find materiality "misstates the law." But the Cleary position was not shared by most other circuits (see United States v. Wells, --- U.S. ----, ---- n. 3, 117 S.Ct. 921, 925 n. 3, 137 L.Ed.2d 107 (1997)), and at the time of Walsh's trial the Supreme Court had granted certiorari in Wells to resolve the conflict. In light of that pending case, the United States asked that Walsh's jury instructions include materiality among the elements that the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt--a request that it characterizes as "an excess of caution to avoid a possible reversal and retrial should the Supreme Court hold that materiality was an element of Section 1014."
Four months after Walsh's conviction the Supreme Court resolved the issue in Wells, --- U.S. at ---- - ----, 117 S.Ct. at 926-31, holding that materiality is not an element under Section 1014. Walsh urges that Wells does not control here because the doctrines of "the law of the case" and "invited error" prohibit the government from asserting now that materiality is not an element of Section 1014. We need not address those arguments, however, because of the clear evidence demonstrating materiality.
On that score Walsh claims that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's materiality finding.3 For that purpose a fact is material "if it 'has a natural tendency to influence, or was capable of influencing, the decision of' the decisionmaking body to which it was addressed" (Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759, 770, 108 S.Ct. 1537, 1546, 99 L.Ed.2d 839 (1988), quoting Weinstock v. United States, 231 F.2d 699, 701-02 (D.C.Cir.1956); Kungys was requoted with internal quotation marks omitted in Wells, --- U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 926). And as taught in United States v. Jones, 30 F.3d 276, 281 (2d Cir.1994), quoting Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 318, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2788-89, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979)(other citations omitted):
In like vein, Walsh's claim that his indictment would be impermissibly amended by the inclusion of a non-required element of materiality is also moot. Even if the evidence of materiality had not been more than ample to support a guilty verdict (as it was), Walsh has not shown any adverse impact from the inclusion of an unnecessary element in the indictment. As we made clear in United States v. Roshko, 969 F.2d 1, 5 (2d Cir.1992) (citations omitted):
1. More than Minimal Planning
Walsh challenges his sentence on the ground that the district court erred in applying a 2-level increase for "more than minimal planning" under Guideline § 2F1.1(b)(2)(A). "More than minimal planning" is defined in Guideline § 1B1.1 Application Note 1(f), which states in part:
In our consideration of a more-than-minimal-planning adjustment, "[w]e review a district court's findings of fact for clear error, and accord due deference to the court's application of the facts to the law" (United States v. Cropper, 42 F.3d 755, 758 (2d Cir.1994)). And unless we find an abuse of discretion, "[w]e will not overturn a district court's application of the Guidelines to the facts of the case" (id.).
What was involved in creating and submitting that phony lease could alone qualify as "more than minimal planning" for Guideline purposes. In addition, the district judge pointed for the same purpose to Walsh's other false loan applications "leading up to" the Roosevelt application. In that respect it has been definitively established that Walsh's jury acquittals on those other charges do not preclude the sentencing judge's consideration of the same conduct for Guideline purposes, in part because of the difference in the applicable standards of proof: preponderance of the evidence for sentencing purposes as against proof beyond a reasonable doubt for purposes of conviction (United States v. Watts, --- U.S. ----, ---- & n. 2, 117 S.Ct. 633, 637 & n. 2, 136 L.Ed.2d 554 (1997)(per curiam)). And that being so, the sentencing judge may fairly consider the conduct that was the subject of a jury acquittal as part of the "more than minimal planning" analysis, as the district judge did here.
In this instance Walsh could fairly be (and plainly was) perceived by the sentencing judge as satisfying the description of "more than minimal planning" under Guideline § 1B1.1 Application Note 1(f): "any case involving repeated acts over a period of time, unless it is clear that each instance was purely opportune." Though Walsh's other loan applications--which the sentencing judge also permissibly found to have contained a pattern of "false statements" and "misleading statements"--were not directly related to the Roosevelt loan, they were properly viewable by the judge as "relevant conduct" (see Guideline § 1B1.3(a)) in determining the existence of "repeated acts." That is, they met the test of "common scheme or plan" (id. § 1B1.3(a)(2); Watts, --- U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 636) because they were "substantially connected to each other by at least one common factor, such as common victims, common accomplices, common purpose, or similar modus operandi " (Guideline § 1B1.3 commentary n. 9(A)). Here not just one but two such common factors were present--the common accomplice D'Iorio, and the common modus operandi of false financial statements and false documentation.
Included in the list of examples of such obstruction of justice in Application Note 3 to Guideline § 3C1.1 is "committing, suborning, or attempting to suborn perjury." For that purpose the sentencing court must make an independent finding that the defendant gave "false testimony concerning a material matter with the willful intent to provide false testimony, rather than as a result of confusion, mistake, or faulty memory" (United States v. Dunnigan, 507 U.S. 87, 94, 113 S.Ct. 1111, 1116, 122 L.Ed.2d 445 (1993)).
Although that evaluation is to be made under what sounds "indistinguishable from a clear-and-convincing standard" (see United States v. Ruggiero, 100 F.3d 284, 294 (2d Cir.1996) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted) and cases cited there), the sentencing judge's determination here fills the bill. In finding that Walsh had committed perjury, the district judge outlined Walsh's testimony at trial that the judge considered false and then said:
We do not require that district courts recite any magic words to assure that they have applied the appropriate standard. Even though the district judge did not explicitly identify the standard of proof by which he found Walsh had committed perjury, because the evidence clearly supports that finding and because the tenor of the judge's ruling reflects his firm convictions on that score, we have no doubt that the judge's finding passed the clear-and-convincing standard. In that respect, see the like determination in United States v. Sobin, 56 F.3d 1423, 1429 (D.C.Cir.1995)("Under the circumstances, we believe the court's emphatic language reflects its finding by clear and convincing evidence" that defendant perjured himself).
That together with the earlier-quoted finding that Walsh's false statements were both material and willful plainly meets the specificity requirement set out in Dunnigan, 507 U.S. at 95, 113 S.Ct. at 1117:
Even if it were necessary under the circumstances to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the falsehoods in Walsh's loan application to Roosevelt (a number of which Walsh himself acknowledged) were material--an issue that we need not decide--the evidence at trial was clearly sufficient to support a rational jury's conviction of Walsh under Section 1014. In addition, we find that the district court properly increased the base offense level in each of the two respects challenged by Walsh: the 2 levels based on a finding of more than minimal planning under Guideline § 2F1.1(b)(2)(A), and the 2 levels for obstruction of justice under Guideline § 3C1.1. We AFFIRM Walsh's conviction and sentence.
Although Cleary, 565 F.2d at 46 had also said that "[i]n any event, any question of materiality would be for the court, not the jury," the district judge here properly included materiality as part of the jury charge in light of the later holding in United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, ---- - ----, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 2314-20, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995) that all elements of a crime, including materiality, must be submitted to the jury under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Thus we do not apply the de novo review reserved for questions of law, but instead operate under a sufficiency-of-the-evidence standard