Opinion ID: 605
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mahender Sabhnani's Jury Instruction Challenge

Text: The government charged both defendants under the aiding and abetting statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2, as well as under the specific substantive statutes at issue. Mahender Sabhnani asserts error in approximately forty words in Judge Spatt's 792-word instruction on aiding and abetting. In particular, he contends that the district court's instruction on willfulness permitted the jury to convict him for failing to act. [11] Because none of the statutes pursuant to which he was charged predicates liability on a failure to act, he argues, and because no common law duty to act is at issue in this case, or was part of the jury charge, this instruction was erroneous, requiring his convictions to be vacated. For the following reasons, we disagree. A defendant challenging a jury instruction as erroneous must show both error and ensuing prejudice, United States v. Quinones, 511 F.3d 289, 313-14 (2d Cir.2007), and we review the jury instructions de novo ... viewing the charge as a whole, United States v. Quattrone, 441 F.3d 153, 177 (2d Cir.2006) (quoting United States v. Aina-Marshall, 336 F.3d 167, 170 (2d Cir.2003)). De novo review leads us to [find] error if we conclude that a charge either fails to adequately inform the jury of the law, or misleads the jury as to the correct legal standard. Id. (quoting United States v. Doyle, 130 F.3d 523, 535 (2d Cir.1997)) (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). We emphatically do not review a jury charge on the basis of excerpts taken out of context, but in its entirety, see United States v. Mitchell, 328 F.3d 77, 82 (2d Cir.2003) (quoting United States v. Zvi, 168 F.3d 49, 58 (2d Cir.1999)) (internal quotation marks omitted), to determine whether considered as a whole, the instructions adequately communicated the essential ideas to the jury. United States v. Tran, 519 F.3d 98, 105 (2d Cir.2008) (quoting United States v. Schultz, 333 F.3d 393, 413-14 (2d Cir.2003) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted)); see also Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. 141, 146-47, 94 S.Ct. 396, 38 L.Ed.2d 368 (1973) ([A] single instruction to a jury may not be judged in artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context of the overall charge.). At the start, we find dubious the government's claims that aiding and abetting liability may generally be predicated upon a failure to act unconnected to any legal duty to do so, that the statutes at issue created an affirmative duty to act, or that Mahender Sabhnani was properly found by the jury to have violated a common law duty that required him to act. It is a long-established principle that criminal law generally regulates action, rather than omission, and that [f]or criminal liability to be based upon a failure to act it must first be found that there is a duty to act  a legal duty and not simply a moral duty. 1 Wayne R. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law § 6.2 (2d ed.2008). [12] This general principle, that omissions may serve as the basis of criminal liability only if there is an affirmative duty to act, is equally applicable when the crime charged is aiding and abetting. See United States v. Labat, 905 F.2d 18, 23 (2d Cir.1990) (To convict a defendant on a theory of aiding and abetting, the government must prove that the underlying crime was committed by a person other than the defendant and that the defendant acted, or failed to act in a way that the law required him to act, with the specific purpose of bringing about the underlying crime.). Here, none of the statutes pursuant to which Mahender was convicted expressly impose an affirmative duty to take action, lest a crime be committed. [13] And even assuming, arguendo, that Mahender Sabhnani owed a common law duty to the maids that was sufficiently well established in our legal tradition and practice that it constitutes part of the background common law against which these statutes should be interpreted, see, e.g., Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 250, 72 S.Ct. 240, 96 L.Ed. 288 (1952); United States v. Rybicki, 354 F.3d 124, 135-36 (2d Cir.2003) (en banc), the jury here was not charged on the nature of this duty nor instructed as to the factors it should consider in determining whether the duty was discharged. See Jones v. United States, 308 F.2d 307, 310-11 (D.C.Cir.1962) (reversing on plain error review where a jury was not instructed as to the nature of the common law duty that was the basis for omissions liability). We need not decide the question whether in the circumstances of this case Mahender Sabhnani could properly be convicted based upon an omission to act, however, because we reject his claim that the district court's instruction on willfulness, considered in the context of the aiding and abetting instruction as a whole, rendered the instructions so confusing as to permit the jury to convict him on this basis. To be clear, the jury was instructed that participation in a crime is willful if action is taken voluntarily and intentionally, or in the case of a failure to act, with specific intent to fail to do something the law requires. Drawn nearly verbatim from the model jury instruction in the leading treatise on the subject, see 1 Leonard Sand et al., Modern Federal Jury Instructions  Criminal, ¶ 11.01, at 11-4 (2008 ed.), this instruction was not inaccurate, however, but simply extraneous to this case  at least absent further instruction as to a legal theory that would support liability based on a failure to act. When a jury charge contains language that could potentially confuse the jury as to the applicable law, we look to see whether the charge as a whole adequately instructed the jury as to the applicable legal standard. Cupp, 414 U.S. at 146-47, 94 S.Ct. 396. Here, the jury was never told that either Mahender or Varsha Sabhnani could be convicted of aiding and abetting based upon a failure to act. Indeed, immediately before the instruction on willfulness, the jury was informed that [i]n order to aid or abet another to commit a crime, it is necessary that the defendant willfully and knowingly associate herself in some way with the crime and that she or he willfully and knowingly seek by some act to help make the crime succeed. Tr. 5035 (emphasis added). Immediately after the challenged language, the jury was instructed that the mere presence of a defendant where a crime is being committed, even coupled with knowledge by the defendant that a crime is being committed, or the mere acquiescence by a defendant in the criminal conduct of others, even with guilty knowledge, is not sufficient to establish aiding and abetting. Tr. 5036. Cf. United States v. Elfgeeh, 515 F.3d 100, 134-35 (2d Cir.2008) (finding it highly unlikely that jury relied on erroneous sentence that was immediately preceded and followed by correct statements of the charge). An aider and abettor, the district court said, must know that the crime is being committed and act in a way which is intended to bring about [its] success. (emphasis added). The repeated emphasis in the instructions on the proposition that an aider and abettor must seek by some act to make the crime succeed was further stressed in the judge's summary of the charge. The district court instructed the jury to ask itself three questions to determine whether a defendant aided or abetted the commission of a crime: Did the defendant participate in the crime charged as something she or he wished to bring about? Did the defendant associate herself or himself with the criminal venture knowingly and willfully? Did the defendant seek by her or his actions to make the criminal venture succeed? Tr. 5036 (emphasis added). If the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did these things, the district court instructed, then the defendant is an aider and abettor and therefore guilty of the offense. But if on the other hand your answers to any one of these series of questions ... is no, Judge Spatt continued, then the defendant is not an aider and abettor and you must find him or her not guilty as to aiding and abetting. Tr. 5036-37. We conclude that the charge's repeated emphasis on the necessity of acting in order to aid and abet, coupled with the crystal clear summary, was sufficient to ameliorate any possible confusion that might conceivably have arisen from the willfulness instruction. See Brown v. Greene, 577 F.3d 107, 111-12 (2d Cir.2009) (collecting cases upholding jury charges containing language that might have created some confusion about the burden of proof, because the charges as a whole made clear that the cases were governed by the beyond a reasonable doubt standard); United States v. Locascio, 6 F.3d 924, 941 (2d Cir.1993) (ambiguous summary of element did not warrant reversal where earlier discussion of element was clear). This was not a case in which the jury instructions were insufficiently detailed as to an essential element of the crime and were never clarified by other language, such that the jury could have convicted based on a legally erroneous theory. See, e.g., United States v. Hassan, 578 F.3d 108, 129-34 (2d Cir.2008) (instructions that failed to explain to jury that defendant needed to have intent to import particular controlled substance and that other substances referenced in the evidence were not controlled substances left open possibility for jury to convict on importation of other substances that were not illegal). Here, the instructions clarified what was required to convict, and the judge's three-question summary of the charge was perfectly clear, removing the possibility of any confusion on the jury's part. Cf. United States v. Moran, 493 F.3d 1002, 1009-10 (9th Cir.2007) (while instructions might have had minor ambiguity after a careful picking apart of their wording, clear summarizing or overview paragraph that conveys basic point to jury can cure potential error). Mahender Sabhnani makes two arguments in reply. First, he contends that Judge Spatt erroneously believed that he could be convicted for aiding and abetting based solely on his failures to act. To be sure, when counsel objected to the instruction on willfulness during the charging conference, Judge Spatt did overrule the objection, suggesting that the employer of a domestic servant does have an obligation to act when he allows for five years ... beatings, deprivation, lack of food, sleeping on the floor, wearing tattered gowns, [and] hit[s] with a stick to take place in his home. Tr. 4427. Notably, however, in denying Mahender's Rule 29 motion, the judge noted that there was sufficient evidence at the trial to prove that Mahender affirmatively acted with the specific intent to advance the crimes alleged in the indictment. Even more importantly, the jury only heard the instructions, not Judge Spatt's opinion at the charging conference, and our concern on appeal is the effect of jury instructions, not the district court's purpose in stating the jury instructions as it did. Hassan, 578 F.3d at 132. Mahender points next to the government's summation. In his sole reference to the necessary requirements for aiding and abetting, the government attorney stated without objection during the main summation that: You don't have to have actually committed the crime to be an aider and abettor. All that needs to be established is that somebody else committed the crime, and that you knowingly and willfully associated yourself with that other person in some way to help with the crime. Help with the crime. And that can be done by actions, or it can be done by a failure to act. A failure to act with specific intent, to fail to do something the law requires. Tr. 4693. Mahender contends that these words created a not insubstantial risk that the willfulness instruction led the jurors to convict him on an invalid basis. Mahender's Br. 29. Here, however, we have already determined that the jury instructions, read as a whole, clearly apprised the jury of what it was required to find in order to convict. We agree that a party's summation can heighten the already present risk that an erroneous jury instruction may mislead the jury. See, e.g., United States v. Joseph, 542 F.3d 13, 18-19 (2d Cir.2008). But that situation is not this case. The jury instructions, which we presume that jurors follow, see, e.g., United States v. Stewart, 433 F.3d 273, 310 (2d Cir.2006), were clear that Mahender could not be convicted solely because he knew of Varsha's crimes or acquiesced in her actions, without acting himself. And to the extent the prosecutor's summation did misstate the applicable law, Mahender raised no objection below and does not press the issue here in those terms. Given our conclusion that the instructions as a whole adequately conveyed to the jury the law it was to apply, we need not and do not address Mahender's argument that the error he alleges was sufficiently prejudicial to taint each of his convictions, including the four separate conspiracy convictions to which the challenged instructions did not apply. We conclude simply that the aiding and abetting instruction, considered as a whole, adequately conveyed to the jury the necessary and applicable requirements for aiding and abetting, and that Mahender's argument to the contrary is without merit.