Opinion ID: 757097
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Instructions Regarding Essential Elements of Offenses

Text: 98 In jury instruction 29, the district court cited to the jury pertinent aspects of 18 U.S.C. § 1163, including the section's definition of the term Indian tribal organization. The court then stated [t]he White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe is an Indian tribal organization. Jury Inst. 29, United States v. Wadena, No. 3-95-102 (D. Minn. June 24, 1996). In jury instruction 33, the district court listed the elements of an 18 U.S.C. § 666 violation. One element of a § 666 offense is that the accused must be an agent of an Indian tribal government or any agency thereof. 18 U.S.C. § 666 (emphasis added). In jury instruction 33, the court told the jury it must find that during the time period alleged in each count the defendant was an agent of the White Earth Band of Chippewa Indians. Jury Inst. 33, United States v. Wadena, No. 3-95-102 (D. Minn. June 24, 1996). Clark and Wadena assert that whether the Band was an Indian tribal organization under § 1163, and whether the Band was an Indian tribal government under § 666, were questions for the jury, and the district court violated their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights by instructing the jury that these essential elements of the § 1163 and § 666 offenses had already been proven. 99 A court may err when it instructs a jury that a fact essential to a defendant's conviction has already been established. See Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 277, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993). However, an error of this type is subject to harmless error review. See United States v. Raether, 82 F.3d 192, 194 (8th Cir.1996). Clark and Wadena have vigorously asserted throughout this appeal that the federal courts lack jurisdiction over this entire case because of the Band's status as an independent sovereign and their statuses as members of the Band. Given this position, we do not see how the court's errors in jury instructions 29 and 33, if any, could have harmed either Clark or Wadena. Thus, without addressing whether the district court's jury instructions 29 and 33 were in fact erroneous, we conclude the claimed error was harmless.