Opinion ID: 765611
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Telephone Facilitation Counts

Text: 30 Escobar also argues that the district court erred in its instructions to the jury on three telephone facilitation counts, which charged him with using a telephone in facilitating the importation of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 843(b). 9 Specifically, Escobar contends that the district court should have expressly instructed the jury that in order to convict under section 843(b), it had to find that the underlying drug offenses alleged to have been facilitated by his telephone use - namely, the importations - were actually committed. Because Escobar did not object to the district court's instructions during the trial and raises this issue for the first time on appeal, we review only for plain error. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(b); Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 466-67 (1997); United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732 (1993). 31 The federal courts have uniformly held that, to obtain a conviction on a charge of telephone facilitation pursuant to section 843, the government must prove commission of the underlying offense. See United States v. Iennaco, 893 F.2d 394, 396-97 (D.C. Cir. 1990); United States v. Dotson, 895 F.2d 263, 264 (6th Cir. 1990)(citing United States v. McGhee, 854 F.2d 905, 908 (6th Cir. 1988)); United States v. Johnstone, 856 F.2d 539, 543 (3d Cir. 1988); United States v. Mims, 812 F.2d 1068, 1077 (8th Cir. 1987); United States v. Russo, 796 F.2d 1443, 1463-64 (11th Cir. 1986); United States v. Rey, 641 F.2d 222, 224 n.6 (5th Cir. 1981); United States v. Webster, 639 F.2d 174, 189 (4th Cir. 1981); United States v. Watson, 594 F.2d 1330, 1342-43 (10th Cir. 1979); United States v. Steinberg, 525 F.2d 1126, 1133-34 (2d Cir. 1975). But Escobar's challenge, though predicated on section 843(b)'s requirement that the underlying drug offense have been committed, is more specific: he assigns error to the district court's failure to expressly charge the jury regarding this requirement (over and above recitation of the statutory language). On this narrower instructional point, there is little authority. Indeed, we have discovered only one case that has addressed whether a district court must instruct the jury in the manner urged by Escobar. See Dotson, 895 F.2d at 263 (holding that the district court should have expressly charged the jury that it had to find underlying crimes were actually committed, but concluding that the court's error was harmless). 32 Although the language of section 843(b) itself arguably conveys without any need for elaboration the requirement of a jury finding that the underlying drug offense was committed, we agree that an instruction would have clarified any potential ambiguity in section 843(b)'s language on that point. See id. at 264. However, given the scarcity of authority mandating such an instruction, combined with the nature of the alleged instructional error, 10 we cannot conclude that any error in the court's instructions was plain, see Olano, 507 U.S. at 734 (for the purposes of Rule 52(b), the word plain is synonymous with clear, or, equivalently, obvious), or that it affected Escobar's substantial rights or denigrated the judicial proceedings, see Johnson, 520 U.S. at 467.