Opinion ID: 199256
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Elements of the Honest Services Mail Fraud Statutes

Text: 31 The government must prove two elements to establish a violation of § 1341. The simpler of the two elements requires the defendant to have used the mails in furtherance of the scheme to defraud. See Woodward, 149 F.3d at 54; Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 723. The mailings themselves need not be essential to the defendant's scheme; rather, the mailings must have been made to execute the scheme. See United States v. Schmuck, 489 U.S. 705, 710-11 (1989); see also Silvano, 812 F.2d at 760 (A mailing need only be closely related to the scheme and reasonably foreseeable as a result of the defendant's actions.). There is no requirement that the defendant herself was responsible for the mailing that establishes the jurisdictional hook. See United States v. Morrow, 39 F.3d 1228, 1237 (1st Cir. 1994). 32 The second element of mail fraud requires the prosecution to establish that the defendant participated in a scheme or artifice to defraud with the specific intent 7 to defraud. See Woodward, 149 F.3d at 54; Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 723. Scheme or artifice to defraud is defined by § 1346 as a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services. 18 U.S.C. § 1346. In Woodward, drawing upon Sawyer, we articulated the following formulation of the elements of § 1346: In Sawyer, we noted two of the ways that a public official can steal his honest services from his public employer: (1) the official can be influenced or otherwise improperly affected in the performance of his duties . . . ; or (2) the official can fail to disclose a conflict of interest, resulting in personal gain. Woodward, 149 F.3d at 57 (citations omitted). 8 See also Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 724 (The cases in which a deprivation of an official's honest services is found typically involve either bribery of the official 9 or her failure to disclose a conflict of interest, resulting in personal gain.). We have recognized that this duty of disclosure arises not exclusively by statute, but also from the general fiduciary duty a public official owes to the public. In Woodward, we noted, separate and apart from the state statute, '[t]he obligation to disclose material information inheres in the legislator's general fiduciary duty to the public.' 149 F.3d at 62 (quoting Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 733 n.17). See also Silvano, 812 F.2d at 759 (stating, the affirmative duty to disclose material information arises out of a government official's fiduciary relationship to his or her employer). 33 Because the practice of using hospitality to cultivate business relationships is longstanding and pervasive, Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 741, it may become difficult to distinguish between lawful entertaining and acts that violate the honest services mail fraud statute. Intent is thus a crucial aspect of proof in any such prosecution, and [d]irect proof of fraudulent intent is often difficult to find. United States v. Rosen, 130 F.3d 5, 9 (1st Cir. 1997). Having closely examined this issue of intent in Sawyer, we said in that opinion that the government must prove that the accused acted with two kinds of intent: that she intended to deprive the public of her honest services, and that she intended to deceive the public. See Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 729; see also Woodward, 149 F.3d at 55. While proof of the two kinds of intent might seem similar, these inquiries are distinct. See Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 729 n.12. [W]hile it may be difficult to conceive of a scheme to deprive someone of the right to honest services without intending to deceive that person, the intent to deceive must nonetheless be established. Id. at 732 n.16. 10 34 For the government to establish the requisite intent to deprive the public of a legislator's honest services, the first of the two intent requirements for honest services mail fraud, the defendant must have intended to influence that legislator in her official action. See Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 729. The government may demonstrate this intent in many ways: 35 For example, a bribery-like, corrupt intent to influence official action necessarily is an intent to deprive the public of an official's honest services. A person might not, however, give an unlawful gratuity with the intent to effect a specific quid pro quo. Rather, as the government contends here, a person with continuing and long-term interests before an official might engage in a pattern of repeated, intentional gratuity offenses in order to coax ongoing favorable official action in derogation of the public's right to impartial official services. 36 Id. at 730. We reversed Sawyer's convictions for mail and wire fraud because we concluded that the jury instructions at his trial permitted the jury to convict him without finding that he intended to influence official action. 11 37 Significantly, this framework for establishing honest services mail fraud under § 1341 does not require proof of a violation of any state law. Because the duty of honest services owed by government officials derives from fiduciary duties at common law as well as from statute, see Silvano, 812 F.2d at 759, there is no need to base a prosecution under § 1341 on allegations that the defendant also violated state law. We recognized this point when we reversed Sawyer's conviction on direct appeal. See Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 726 (proof of a state law violation is not required for conviction of honest services fraud); see also United States v. DeSantis, 134 F.3d 760, 769 (6th Cir. 1998) (finding defendant prosecuted under § 1341 was entitled to a jury instruction cautioning the jury that they could not convict him merely because he knowingly violated a state law); United States v. Brumley, 116 F.3d 728, 734 (5th Cir. 1997) (the mere violation of a [state] gratuity statute . . . will not suffice) (en banc); United States v. Williams, 545 F.2d 47, 50 (8th Cir. 1976) (stating, [a] conviction for mail fraud does not depend upon a violation of state law); United States v. Bush, 522 F.2d 641, 646 n.6 (7th Cir. 1975) (finding that a conviction for mail fraud is not dependent upon a violation of state law.). Accordingly, the government was not required to charge that Sawyer violated section three - or any other state Massachusetts gratuity, gift, or bribery law - in order to secure his conviction under § 1341. Sawyer concedes this point in his brief by acknowledging our statement to that effect in Sawyer. 38 Nonetheless, as Sawyer correctly states in his brief, [t]o say that proof of a state law violation 'is not required,' however, is not the same as saying that it is not permitted. (Emphasis added). Indeed, proving violations of state law is one way a federal prosecutor might choose to structure a prosecution for honest services mail fraud. In Sawyer's case, the government adopted this strategy in the original indictment. See Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 726 (noting, the parties agree that the indictment, as structured, required [the prosecution] to prove that Sawyer violated at least one state law.). Using the state law violations as the sole vehicle to prove the scheme or artifice to defraud allowed the government to narrow the issues of intent and good faith. Id. at 727. As explained in his brief, the crux of Sawyer's argument for coram nobis is that the prosecution continued to rely on violations of Massachusetts law in the information: 39 Thus, on remand after this Court's decision in Sawyer, the government had two basic options for continuing to press its honest services mail fraud claim against Sawyer with regard to the gratuities that he allegedly had made. First, it could continue to assert what it had been asserting all along: that Sawyer had engaged in a scheme or artifice to defraud by violating the state gratuity law with the requisite, corrupt intent to deprive the public of an official's honest services. Alternatively, it could attempt to demonstrate that Sawyer's actions were intended to induce a breach of some non-statutory source of state legislators' common law fiduciary duty to the public, without regard to the application of the gratuity statute. . . . The government opted for the former. 40 (Footnote omitted). If a prosecution for honest services mail fraud is structured as the indictment was, using state law violations as the sole vehicle to prove the scheme to defraud, failing to prove that the defendant violated the state law becomes fatal to the government's case. See Sawyer, 85 F.3d at 726.