Opinion ID: 37901
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: “Void for Vagueness” Statutory Challenge

Text: We review challenges to the constitutionality of a statute de novo.31
Defendants charge that, under the circumstances of this case, § 1347 is “void for vagueness.” Their argument rests largely on claimed deficiencies in the jury instructions and in the indictment, which we discuss elsewhere in this opinion. Otherwise, defendants contend that, because the statute does not define “execution or attempt to execute” a health care fraud scheme, it did not adequately put them on notice that their conduct could be 30 As we noted above, Lostetter was indicted with the defendants but was not tried with them. 31 United States v. Monroe, 178 F.3d 304, 308 (5th Cir. 1999). 17 illegal. The Supreme Court requires that Congress define criminal offenses with “sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”32 Each vagueness challenge that does not involve First Amendment freedoms must be examined in light of its individual facts and circumstances.33 A challenge that a statute is unconstitutional for vagueness is closely related to an objection that a statute does not require a showing of specific intent.34 If a statute does include “willfulness” or specific intent as an element, it will normally not be so vague as to deprive a defendant of reasonable notice that his conduct is proscribed.35 Accordingly, we have upheld the constitutionality, against vagueness challenges, of both 32 Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357 (1983). 33 United States v. Gray, 96 F.3d 769, 776 (5th Cir. 1996). 34 United States v. Waymer, 55 F.3d 564, 568 (11th Cir. 1995)(holding that, as the bank fraud statute incorporates specific intent as an element, the defendant’s vagueness challenge to the statute must fail). 35 Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 102 (1945) (“But where the punishment imposed is only for an act knowingly done with the purpose of doing that which the statute prohibits, the accused cannot be said to suffer from lack of warning or knowledge that the act which he does is a violation of law. The requirement that the act must be willful or purposeful may not render certain, for all purposes, a statutory definition of the crime which is in some respects uncertain. But it does relieve the statute of the objection that it punishes without warning an offense of which the accused was unaware.”). 18 the bankruptcy fraud statute and former 18 U.S.C. § 1346, the general anti-fraud statute, because each requires the government to prove specific intent to defraud —— as does § 1347.36 Defendants do not contest that the jury was required to find that they acted with specific intent to defraud a health care benefit provider, or that the indictment adequately described the overall scheme to defraud health care benefit providers. Although the indictment itself may have been flawed, leaving defendants somewhat unsure which of the 13 listed executions of the scheme the government would attempt to prove at trial, neither the statute nor the indictment left defendants guessing at what conduct the government alleged was fraudulent, whom they defrauded, or how. Defendants’ real objection appears to be the fact that the indictment did not separately charge each execution of their scheme to defraud health care benefit programs, which, as we observed above, it was not required to do. Defendants do not advance that they did not understand what it meant to execute the scheme to defraud and therefore could not have intentionally violated the statute. We hold that defendants’ vagueness challenge to the constitutionality of the health care fraud statute fails.