Opinion ID: 6330205
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Pinkerton Liability Instruction

Text: Hofstetter and Newman were both charged with distributing and dispensing controlled substances, aided and abetted by each other, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841. The district court explained to the jury that the government could prove Hofstetter and Newman guilty of this crime in one of three ways: The first is by convincing you that they personally committed or participated in this crime. The second is based on the legal rule that all members of a conspiracy are responsible for acts committed by the other members, as long as those acts are committed to help advance the conspiracy and are within the reasonably foreseeable scope of the agreement. (Trial Tr., R. 897, PageID 61819–20.) Third, the district court also noted that the jury could find the defendants guilty “if [they] intentionally helped or encouraged others to commit the crime”— that is, under an aiding and abetting theory of liability. (Id. at PageID 61819.) Only Hofstetter was convicted. Hofstetter argues on appeal that the jury should not have been told about the second conspiracy-based method of liability. In particular, she claims that the jury should not have been Nos. 20-6245/6426/6427/6428 United States v. Hofstetter, et al. Page 12 able “to consider the conspiracy law as a means to convict” her because she was not charged with conspiracy in this count, and the elements for aiding and abetting are different from conspiracy. (Hofstetter Br. 20.) Because she did not object to the district court’s instructions before it issued them, we review the instructions for plain error. Semrau, 693 F.3d at 527. The conspiracy-based method that the district court outlined is known as Pinkerton liability. See Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640 (1946). “Pinkerton is a doctrine about guilt-stage liability for a co-conspirator’s substantive offenses.” United States v. Hamm, 952 F.3d 728, 747 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 2695 (2020), and cert. denied sub nom. Shields v. United States, 141 S. Ct. 312 (2020). We have long held that “persons indicted as aiders and abettors”—as Hofstetter was with respect to this claim—“may be convicted pursuant to a Pinkerton instruction.” United States v. Lawson, 872 F.2d 179, 182 (6th Cir. 1989) (quoting United States v. Cerone, 830 F.2d 938, 944 (8th Cir. 1987)). Further, “a district court may properly provide a Pinkerton instruction regarding a substantive offense, even when the defendant is not charged with the offense of conspiracy.” United States v. Budd, 496 F.3d 517, 528 (6th Cir. 2007) (affirming the district court’s instructions, which included a Pinkerton instruction for a non-conspiracy offense); see also United States v. Adkins, 372 F. App’x 647, 652 (6th Cir. 2010). Accordingly, there is no plain error in the district court’s given instruction, and we affirm.