Opinion ID: 746455
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: False Declaration to Grand Jury

Text: 199 The jury convicted Congo of Count Thirty-One, which alleged that he violated 18 U.S.C. § 1623 by knowingly making a false material declaration when testifying before the grand jury that was investigating whether the schemes at issue in these prosecutions constituted mail fraud. The Superseding Indictment asserted that Congo testified as to the following before the grand jury: 200 Q: Did you ever have--tell me what work did FWG employees do on your dissertation. 201 A: Well, I'm not sure how you want me to answer that when you say what work did they do on my dissertation. The employees at FWG that offered to read over my dissertation and stuff were Jimmy Steele and Karen Seiser. 202 Q: Did Karen offer to read over it? 203 A: Yes. 204 Q: That was her idea? 205 A: Yes. 206 Q: And Jimmy Steele's idea to read over it? 207 A: Yeah. I mean they knew I was working on it. And they said I'll be glad to take a look at it. And, you know, specifically, what Jimmy did, there was what we call pull-down menus that Jimmy gave me, and I told this to Mr. Wilkes, there is a pull-down menu selection in my dissertation that Jimmy got his software from a Paradox training class that he took. I was talking to Jimmy one time about wanting to embellish my program, make it a little snazzier. And he said, here, try this. And so he gave me some program codes and it seemed to work well. 208 Karen, I remember Karen offering to do these little fault-free boxes, if you will, in my dissertation, you know, where I draw the little boxes and I had them all drawn out, and I was going to try to figure out a way to take it over to the graphics department at Marshal and just let those guys do it. And she said I can do it, no sweat, I can do that, it won't take me ten minutes. I said are you sure, and she said sure, no problem. Karen offered to do that. 209 Q: How much time do you figure she spent on your dissertation? 210 A: Karen? 211 Q: Uh-huh. 212 A: All in all maybe a week at the most. I think Karen started in the Huntsville office sometime around January or so of '90, something along in there. And Jimmy on his thing I don't know, ten hours, 15 hours, whatever. 213 Q: Now, you say a week, would that mean a solid week at one time or-- 214 A: No. 215 Q: --40 hours spread out over several-- 216 A: This was spread out over--well, let's see. I first met Karen I think sometime around January and I more or less had everything all wrapped up in mid-February, so there is like a five, six-week time frame in there, so it's sometime, 40 hours over five or six weeks. 217 . . . . . 218 Q: You never heard anybody--were you ever aware of anybody ever complaining about having to work on your dissertation? 219 A: Nobody ever worked on my dissertation, you know. I want to make that clear. Nobody worked on my dissertation. They offered to look at my dissertation as a colleague and a friend and such. I mean, when you've been working together for a long time, you really get to become colleagues. And Karen had just finished her dissertation the year before and I had used hers as the format for how to structure mine, so, no, I mean, they very willingly offered to look at it. 220 . . . . . 221 Q: You say that these people worked on your dissertation as friends, that's the context in which you had them do it? 222 A: I didn't have them do it. They offered to do it. 223 Count Thirty-One alleged that the above testimony was false and in violation of § 1623 because Congo knew that individual FWG employees did not offer to aid him in the preparation of his dissertation out of friendship, but were directed to do so and did work on his dissertation because of his position with NASA. The Superseding Indictment therefore did not base this count upon a claim that Congo lied about the amount of help which he received on his dissertation, but rather on a claim that he lied about the motives of those who helped him. The indictment further stated that [i]t was material to the investigation that the grand jury ascertain whether [Congo] had abused or misused his position as COTR on a contract between NASA and FWG Associates, Inc. 224 Congo asserts that his § 1623 conviction cannot stand because there is insufficient evidence that he lied to the grand jury. Specifically, he argues that his statements that Karen Seiser and Jimmy Steele offered to work on his dissertation as colleagues and friends are literally true. The falsity of the statements at issue is necessarily an element under § 1623. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 1623; United States v. Gulley, 992 F.2d 108, 112 (7th Cir.1993). 225 Congo is correct that the government failed to introduce any evidence regarding the motives of Jimmy Steele. He also is correct that Seiser, who consistently testified that she worked on his dissertation only because Turner had instructed her to, testified during cross-examination that it probably was she who approached Congo regarding her working on his thesis, and that she never explicitly informed him while working on the thesis that she was acting only according to the instructions of Turner. Nonetheless, Seiser also testified that, during a lunch initiated by Congo in the summer of 1990, before the grand jury proceedings but during the investigation by the government, Congo stated to Seiser that he saw her help in writing his dissertation as though she was helping him out as a personal friend and colleague. Seiser testified, however, that she responded to Congo by explaining that I didn't necessarily see it that way, that I was being paid by FWG, and I didn't, I didn't necessarily do it as a friend, I did it as a paid employee. This testimony provides sufficient support for the conclusion by the jury that Congo lied when he claimed that he believed that FWG employees offered to work on his thesis out of friendship. 226 Moreover, the record contains circumstantial evidence that Congo knew that his statement that Seiser had offered to work on his dissertation as a colleague and a friend was false, including evidence that 1) Seiser perhaps had met Congo for thirty seconds before working at FWG and was not a friend of his; 2) Seiser began working on his dissertation shortly after she began to work at FWG; 3) Congo ordered Seiser about as if she were an employee; 4) Congo wrote a memo to the secretary of Frost in which he directed the secretary to have Karen Siser [sic] redo table 18; and 5) Congo admitted that he thought that Seiser had spent the equivalent of a full work week on his dissertation, a significant sacrifice for one motivated solely by friendship and collegiality. Sufficient evidence therefore supports the finding that Congo lied about his beliefs concerning the motives of Seiser. 227 Congo also argues that his § 1623 conviction must be reversed because the District Court, rather than the jury, decided the issue of whether his false statements to the grand jury were material. Materiality is an element of perjury under § 1623. See Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, ----, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 1548, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997). Further, the jury, not the court, must decide the issue of materiality under § 1623. See id.; see also United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995)(assuming 18 U.S.C. § 1001 has materiality element, jury must decide issue). When a defendant did not object to the trial court deciding materiality, we apply Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b), which provides that [p]lain errors or defects affecting substantial rights may be noticed although they were not brought to the attention of the court, in order to decide whether we should correct the error. See Johnson, 520 U.S. at ---- - ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1548-49. 228 Congo concedes that he did not object when the District Court decided the materiality of his statements. He nonetheless insists that the failure of the District Court to allow the jury to decide materiality necessarily requires reversal because such an error is structural. The Johnson Court, however, explicitly rejected this argument and held that Rule 52(b) applies when a defendant during a direct criminal appeal did not object before the trial court, regardless of whether the error claimed is structural. See id. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1548; see also United States v. Sassanelli, 118 F.3d 495, 499 (6th Cir.1997)(under Johnson, Rule 52(b) applies to structural errors). 229 Before an appellate court may correct an error not raised at trial, the defendant must satisfy a four-part test imposed by Rule 52(b). He must demonstrate that (1) that the instruction was error; (2) that the error was plain; (3) that the plain error affected the defendant's substantial rights; and (4) that the court should exercise its discretion to correct the error because the error 'seriously affected the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.'  Sassanelli, 118 F.3d at 499 (quoting Olano, 507 U.S. at 732, 113 S.Ct. at 1776-77). 230 In this case, the failure of the District Court to submit the issue of materiality to the jury was error. See Johnson, 520 U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1549. 19 Further, the error was plain, because the law at the time of trial, which held that materiality was a question of law, see, e.g., United States v. Adams, 870 F.2d 1140, 1147 (6th Cir.1989), was both settled and clearly contrary to current law. See Johnson, 520 U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1549. Accordingly, Congo has satisfied the first two elements of the four-part test under Rule 52(b). 231 Congo, however, cannot satisfy the fourth requirement, that the error seriously affected the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings. In Johnson, the defendant was unable to satisfy this final requirement because the evidence of materiality was overwhelming; the Court found that the defendant presented no plausible argument that her lying about the source of tens of thousands of dollars which she had used to improve her home was not material to the grand jury investigation, which in part concerned whether the defendant's boyfriend had concealed his drug proceeds as real estate investments. See id. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1550. Likewise, we believe that the evidence of materiality in this case was overwhelming. A statement is material under § 1623 if it has 'a natural tendency to influence, or be capable of influencing, the decision of the decisionmaking body to which it is addressed.'  Sassanelli, 118 F.3d at 499 (quoting Gaudin, 515 U.S. at 509, 115 S.Ct. at 2313 (quoting Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759, 770, 108 S.Ct. 1537, 1546, 99 L.Ed.2d 839 (1988))); see also United States v. Rogers, 118 F.3d 466, 470 (6th Cir.1997)(articulating identical test for materiality of statement under 18 U.S.C. § 1001). Although a false statement must have the capacity to influence a decision, it does not have to be actually influential in order to be material. See Rogers, 118 F.3d at 472. In this case, the grand jury was investigating whether Frost and Turner were helping students to attain their degrees without completing legitimate dissertations in exchange for agreements by the students to use their government positions to secure contracts or contract modifications for FWG. Whether the FWG employees who worked on the thesis of Congo did so voluntarily and on the basis of friendship, or instead acted out of compulsion and at the direction of Frost, is a question whose resolution was clearly capable of influencing the grand jury in its determination of whether defendants were participating in a fraudulent degrees-for-contracts scheme. See Sassanelli, 118 F.3d at 499, 500 (because there was no serious argument that denial by defendant of any involvement in false invoice scheme at issue could not have influenced court presiding over civil action against defendant, defendant failed to satisfy fourth prong of Rule 52(b) test); United States v. McGhee, 119 F.3d 422, 424 (6th Cir.1997)(fourth prong of Rule 52(b) test not satisfied when evidence of materiality was overwhelming); see also Rogers, 118 F.3d at 472 (failure to submit materiality to jury did not affect substantial rights under third prong of Rule 52(b) test when lie was capable of influencing FBI agents even though agents knew its falsity); United States v. Barrow, 118 F.3d 482, 493 (6th Cir.1997)(because evidence established unquestionable materiality of false statements to IRS regarding income, impossible for defendant to satisfy fourth prong of Rule 52(b)). Indeed, like the defendants in Johnson, 520 U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1550, Sassanelli, 118 F.3d at 499, and McGhee, 119 F.3d at 424, Congo has not challenged the materiality of the lie for which the jury convicted him, although he has challenged the sufficiency of the evidence that he lied. 20 Rather, he has argued only that not instructing the jury on materiality requires reversal because it is a structural error, a claim foreclosed by Johnson. 232 This conclusion does not contradict our prior finding that insufficient evidence supports the mail fraud convictions of Congo based upon the degrees-for-contracts theory. See supra Section II.A. [M]aterially false grand jury testimony is a criminal offense, regardless of whether the grand jury's investigation ultimately leads to a valid indictment for a federal offense. Callanan v. United States, 881 F.2d 229, 236 (6th Cir.1989)(upholding § 1623 conviction for perjury concerning mail fraud scheme, even though later convictions for mail fraud scheme were vacated because they were based upon intangible rights to honest services doctrine invalidated by McNally ). Accordingly, the fact that the government has failed to prove that Congo committed mail fraud by abusing his government position on behalf of Frost and Turner does not prevent his misstatement regarding the motives of the FWG employees who worked on his thesis from being perjury.