Opinion ID: 199073
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Arruda's Challenge to the Jury Instructions

Text: 35 Arruda objected to one sentence in the district court's jury instructions on the requirements for proving a defendant's involvement in a conspiracy: Proof that a defendant willfully joined in the agreement may be based on evidence of that defendant's own actions or words. That sentence was similar to, but differed in one noteworthy respect from, a portion of Instruction 4.03 of the Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions for the District Courts of the First Circuit (1998) 4 : Proof that [defendant] willfully joined in the agreement must be based upon evidence of his/her own words and/or actions. (emphasis added). 36 The quoted language from the pattern instruction, though not found verbatim in any of our cases, is a correct statement of the law. A conspiracy conviction requires that a defendant's membership in the conspiracy be proved on the basis of his own words and actions (not on the basis of mere association or knowledge of wrongdoing). United States v. Cintolo, 818 F.2d 980, 1003 (1st Cir. 1987); see also, e.g., United States v. Torres, 965 F.2d 303, 308 (7th Cir. 1992) (As a matter of substantive law, membership in a conspiracy depends on the accused's own acts and words.). Arruda argues that by using the word may instead of must, the district court erroneously implied that other types of evidence, such as his association with the conspirators or his knowledge of their wrongdoing, could be sufficient to prove that he willfully joined the conspiracy. 37 Jury instructions must be gauged in the context of the charge as a whole, not in isolation. United States v. Robbio, 186 F.3d 37, 42 (1st Cir. 1999) (internal quotation marks omitted). Although the word may creates an arguable ambiguity, the court's instructions did not affirmatively suggest that proof of Arruda's joining the conspiracy could be based on mere association or knowledge of wrongdoing. Other portions of the instructions effectively made the point that Arruda's guilt could only be established by his own words or actions. The court told the jury that mere association does not establish membership in a conspiracy, that the defendant must have willfully joined the conspiracy, and that the government had to prove both intent to agree and intent to commit the underlying crime. Most significantly, the court also stated that 38 no defendant may be found guilty for the acts of others unless you find that that defendant himself engaged in criminal acts. . . . The fundamental question is whether or not through acts and statements of his own, reflected both in those acts and statements and in the other evidence in this case, the defendant has been shown beyond a reasonable doubt to have engaged in the crime that is alleged. 39 Those additional instructions cured the possible ambiguity of the word may. The charge as a whole correctly informed the jury that a guilty verdict against Arruda on the conspiracy charge had to rest on evidence of his own actions or words. 40 Affirmed.