Opinion ID: 552750
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Jury Unanimity Instruction

Text: 36 As to the IC's final point--that no specific unanimity instruction was required as to Count 9--upon reviewing the petition, the response of North, and the instructions of the district court to the jury, we conclude that this point is well taken. This Count of the indictment charged that North, having custody of NSC documents, 'willfully and knowingly did conceal, remove, mutilate, obliterate, falsify and destroy and did cause to be concealed, removed, mutilated, obliterated, falsified and destroyed records, papers and documents filed and deposited in a public office....'  United States v. North, Maj.Op. at 876, quoting Joint Appendix at 260-61. As originally conceived, Count 9 concerned North's handling of at least three groups of documents in several distinct incidents. At the time of the issuance of our original opinion, both the majority opinion (Maj.Op. at 876-877) and the dissent (Dissent at 925) failed to note that the district court had instructed the jury to limit its consideration to a single incident involving five specific documents. Therefore, each opinion dealt with the question as if all documents and incidents originally charged in the indictment were still before the jury. 37 The IC in his motion for reconsideration called our attention to the trial court's limiting instruction. We now review the instruction including the limitation under the principle that these instructions must be considered as a whole. United States v. Mangieri, 694 F.2d 1270, 1280 (D.C.Cir.1982). Having done so, we conclude that the instructions on Count 9 as a whole did not pose a genuine risk that the jury [would be] confused. United States v. Duncan, 850 F.2d 1104, 1114 (6th Cir.1988), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 732, 107 L.Ed.2d 751 (1990). As the IC argues in his petition for rehearing, [t]he evidence was identical as to all five documents ... [t]hus, the jury was restricted to one continuous course of events. United States v. North, 716 F.Supp. 644, 649 (D.D.C.1989). Thus, the omission of a specific unanimity instruction did not constitute reversible error. We will therefore allow the petition of the Independent Counsel to this limited extent, and withdraw Section II of our prior opinion herein. 38