Opinion ID: 201790
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the perjury conviction

Text: 36 The district court instructed the jury that in order to convict Richardson of perjury on Count One, its members had to agree unanimously that the same false statement or statements amounted to perjury beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Glantz, 847 F.2d 1, 10 (1st Cir.1988) (no error in jury instructions [that] could only be interpreted by the jury to mean that the defendant must be acquitted on the count unless the entire jury believed beyond a reasonable doubt that the appellant was guilty of one specific act of perjury alleged in that count). Because the court submitted the case to the jury for a general verdict instead of a special verdict, it is impossible to know which one or more of the nineteen false statements it found, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, to constitute perjury, and which statements (if any) it determined to fall short of that standard when it found Richardson guilty of perjury on Count One. 37 Richardson argues that the jury's guilty verdict must be vacated because at least one of the nineteen alternate grounds submitted by the government is legally insupportable, and the jury's verdict may have rested on such an invalid ground. Richardson acknowledges that, ordinarily, a general jury verdict [is] valid so long as it [is] legally supportable on one of the submitted grounds — even though that [gives] no assurance that a valid ground, rather than an invalid one, was actually the basis for the jury's action. Griffin v. United States, 502 U.S. 46, 49, 112 S.Ct. 466, 116 L.Ed.2d 371 (1991). However, a guilty verdict may rest on an invalid ground either because it is based on evidence that no reasonable person could regard as sufficient, id. at 59, 112 S.Ct. 466, or because it advances a particular theory of conviction . . . [that] is contrary to law, id. While jurors, in a criminal case, are well equipped to analyze the evidence in order to avoid resting a guilty verdict on a factually inadequate theory, they are not generally equipped to determine whether a particular theory of conviction submitted to them is contrary to law.  Id. (emphasis added). Accordingly, where a general verdict may rest on a ground that is invalid because the theory of conviction is contrary to law — as opposed to a ground that is invalid because the evidence supporting it is insufficient as a matter of law — the verdict must be set aside despite the existence of an alternate, legally valid ground of conviction. Id.; see also United States v. Nieves-Burgos, 62 F.3d 431, 434-36 (1st Cir.1995). 38 Richardson argues that at least one of the nineteen false statements alleged in Count One of the indictment advances a legally erroneous theory of perjury, requiring us to vacate her conviction. See United States v. Boots, 80 F.3d 580, 589 (1st Cir.1996) (general verdict that may have been grounded on legally erroneous theory requires setting aside verdict on all grounds), overruled in part by Pasquantino v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 125 S.Ct. 1766, 161 L.Ed.2d 619 (2005); cf. United States v. Lighte, 782 F.2d 367, 377 (2d Cir.1986) (remanding for new trial on one count of perjury alleging multiple false statements without determining whether legal defect resulted from insufficiency of evidence or legally erroneous theory of conviction). We review this question of law de novo. United States v. Ferrario-Pozzi, 368 F.3d 5, 8 (1st Cir.2004). 39
40 The statute under which Richardson was convicted, 18 U.S.C. § 1623(a), prohibits a grand jury witness from knowingly mak[ing] any false material declaration under oath during the colloquy. Richardson does not dispute that she testified under oath before the grand jury, nor that her allegedly false statements were material to the grand jury investigation. Rather, she argues that the government's theories of perjury are contrary to law because her statements are either literally true or were made in response to fundamentally ambiguous questions. In either case, Richardson argues, she could not have made statements with the knowledge that they were false. 41 In general, [t]he determination as to the defendant's state of mind — [her] belief in the untruthfulness of [her] statement — is one which a jury is best equipped to perform. United States v. Reveron Martinez, 836 F.2d 684, 689 (1st Cir.1988) (internal quotation marks omitted). Furthermore, because the falsity of a statement in many circumstances depends on the meaning of the question to which it responds, a jury may be required to examine the question and answer . . . in the context of the investigation as a whole and the state of the defendant's knowledge. United States v. DeZarn, 157 F.3d 1042, 1048 (6th Cir.1998). Richardson nevertheless maintains that her challenges go beyond assailing the sufficiency of the evidence before the jury because several of the government's alternate theories of conviction are contrary to the strict requirements imposed by the law of perjury.
42 In Bronston v. United States, 409 U.S. 352, 93 S.Ct. 595, 34 L.Ed.2d 568 (1973), the Supreme Court set exacting standards for maintaining a perjury prosecution. 16 The Court recognized that [u]nder the pressures and tensions of interrogation, it is not uncommon for the most earnest witnesses to give answers that are not entirely responsive. Sometimes the witness does not understand the question, or may in an excess of caution or apprehension read too much or too little into it. Id. at 358, 93 S.Ct. 595. Given this practical reality, [t]he burden is on the questioner to pin the witness down to the specific object of the questioner's inquiry. Id. at 360, 93 S.Ct. 595. Accordingly, [p]recise questioning is imperative as a predicate for the offense of perjury. Id. at 362, 93 S.Ct. 595. 43 Despite these general pronouncements, the Bronston Court's holding was narrow. The Court decided only that a jury could not be allowed to consider a perjury charge where the allegedly false statement was literally true but not responsive to the question asked and arguably misleading by negative implication. Id. at 353, 93 S.Ct. 595. The Court reasoned that [a] jury should not be permitted to engage in conjecture whether an unresponsive answer, true and complete on its face, was intended to mislead or divert the examiner; the state of mind of the witness is relevant only to the extent that it bears on whether `he does not believe [his answer] to be true.' Id. at 359, 93 S.Ct. 595 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 1621; alteration in original). Bronston thus requires dismissal of an indictment where . . . the government hinges its charge on the false implications of a statement that is not alleged to be false in itself. United States v. Finucan, 708 F.2d 838, 848 (1st Cir.1983). 44 Richardson, relying on Bronston, argues that several of the perjury charges against her are contrary to law because they allege the falsity of statements that are literally true. Bronston, however, is inapplicable to any of the false statements charged against Richardson. The government does not allege that any of Richardson's statements are facially true but arguably misleading by negative implication, Bronston, 409 U.S. at 353, 93 S.Ct. 595, thereby evincing only her intent to mislead or divert the examiner, id. at 359, 93 S.Ct. 595. Rather, the government alleges that Richardson knowingly made statements that are in direct conflict with facts the government alleges to be true, by denying that she committed acts the government maintains she in fact committed. See Glantz, 847 F.2d at 6 ( Bronston's literal truth defense inapplicable where no claim is made that [defendant's] statement . . . was true but unresponsive to the question asked before the grand jury). Whether or not the government's evidence was sufficient to prove the falsity of Richardson's statements, as well as that she knew her statements to be false when she made them, its theory of perjury is not contrary to law.
45 Richardson also argues that several of the false statements alleged in Count One of the indictment advance theories of conviction that are contrary to the law of perjury because they were made in response to fundamentally ambiguous questions. A question that is truly ambiguous or which affirmatively misleads the testifier can never provide a basis for a finding of perjury, as it could never be said that one intended to answer such a question untruthfully. DeZarn, 157 F.3d at 1049; see also United States v. Manapat, 928 F.2d 1097, 1101 (11th Cir.1991) (When the question that led to the allegedly false response is fundamentally ambiguous, we cannot allow juries to criminally convict a defendant based on their guess as to what the defendant was thinking at the time the response was made.). 46 By contrast, where a question is only arguably ambiguous, it is for the jury to decide whether the defendant has committed perjury. In such a case there is an actual possibility that the defendant intended to and did in fact give a response that was literally false. Finucan, 708 F.2d at 848 (citations omitted). In determining whether a statement made in response to an ambiguous question could be said to be false, the context of the question and answer becomes critically important. United States v. Farmer, 137 F.3d 1265, 1269 (10th Cir.1998); see also DeZarn, 157 F.3d at 1049 (jury must be allowed to consider evidence of the context of the questioning which would establish that the [d]efendant — despite the false premise of the question — knew exactly what the questions meant and exactly what they were referring to). 17 47 Because the meaning of a response to an ambiguous question may be highly context-specific, [w]here a question . . . is only arguably ambiguous, courts reviewing perjury convictions have viewed the defense of ambiguity as an attack upon the sufficiency of the evidence. Farmer, 137 F.3d at 1269; see also Glantz, 847 F.2d at 6 (noting that perjury convictions are barred for arguably untrue answers to vague or ambiguous questions when there is insufficient evidence of how they were understood by the witness). Richardson maintains that a perjury conviction based on a response to a fundamentally ambiguous question not only rests on insufficient contextual evidence of the intended falsity of the response, but also advances a theory of conviction that is contrary to law. Even assuming this to be true, none of the questions Richardson identifies rises to the level of being fundamentally, rather than arguably, ambiguous. 48 [T]o precisely define the point at which a question becomes fundamentally ambiguous, and thus not amenable to jury interpretation, is impossible. Farmer, 137 F.3d at 1269. Courts have nevertheless recognized that: 49 A question is fundamentally ambiguous when it is not a phrase with a meaning about which men of ordinary intellect could agree, nor one which could be used with mutual understanding by a questioner and answerer unless it were defined at the time it were sought and offered as testimony. 50