Opinion ID: 2999927
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Disconnect Argument

Text: We review jury instructions as a whole to determine whether they fairly and adequately represent the issues to the jury. See United States v. Alhalabi, 443 F.3d 605, 612 (7th Cir. 2006). We review a district court’s decision to not instruct the jury on a theory of defense de novo. United States v. Hendricks, 319 F.3d 993, 1005 (7th Cir. 2003). A defendant is entitled to an instruction on his theory of the defense if four conditions are met. Id. at 1005-06. Only two of those four conditions are relevant here: the instruction must reflect a theory that is supported by the evidence and failing to include the instrucNo. 06-1769 5 tion must deny the defendant a fair trial. Id. at 1006. As we set out below, neither of these two prerequisites are met, and the failure to include White’s proffered instruction was not an error. Under Indiana’s conflict of interest laws, it is a felony if a “public servant . . . knowingly or intentionally: (1) has a pecuniary interest in; or (2) derives a profit from; a contract or purchase connected with an action by the government entity served by the public servant.” Ind. Code § 35-44-1-3. A government servant can escape this by filing a conflict of interest disclosure. Ind. Code § 35-44-1-3(c). There is no dispute between the parties that White was a public servant of the City of Gary within the meaning of the statute. Nor is there any dispute that the City of Gary is a government entity. For that matter, there is no dispute on appeal that he had a pecuniary interest in or derived a profit from the contract. The only significant dispute is whether the contract was “connected with an action by the governmental entity served by” White. It is White’s theory of the case that the Park District is a separate governmental entity from the City of Gary and that the contract in question was between Raycor and the Park District—not between Raycor and the City of Gary. To that end, he wanted the jury instructions to include the entire definition of “government entity” so that the jury would be informed that the Park District is also a government entity. At the outset, we should note that we are dubious that the rote recitation of a statute can be construed as a “theory of defense” under Hendricks. Assuming for the moment that cutting and pasting the statute would have constituted a theory, White’s argument is still wide of the mark. It is logically flawed because it presupposes that a contract can only be “connected to” one government entity—that by being connected to the Park District the 6 No. 06-1769 contract could not possibly have been connected to the City of Gary as a whole. There is no doubt that the fence contract in question was connected to the Park District; nor is there a dispute that White was not a public servant of the Park District. But neither of those facts is relevant to whether the contract was also connected to the City of Gary. This connection to the City of Gary was the only connection alleged in the indictment. In this sense, the jury instruction that White offered, even if it were construed as a theory, does not reflect a theory that has any evidentiary support because it is entirely non-responsive to the conduct that was alleged in the indictment. White also fails to demonstrate how the exclusion of the instruction resulted in a denial of a fair trial. White was free to base his defense on the argument that there were numerous ways that the Park District and the Raycor contract were independent of the City of Gary. The district court did not prevent him from making any of those arguments. Unfortunately for White, the government also provided evidence that would allow a jury to find that the Raycor contract was connected to the City of Gary. All of that evidence was relevant to the question of whether White defrauded the City of Gary of his honest services. What would not have been relevant would have been to instruct the jury on any of a number of other government entities that were not defrauded by White. Given the conduct alleged in the indictment and the issues that were contended between the parties, we believe that the district court did not improperly exclude the proffered jury instruction because it would not have reflected a theory that was supported by the other facts and the law and because the court granted White the latitude to make his argument to the jury orally. The instructions as a whole fairly and adequately represented the issues to the jury. Therefore, excluding White’s proposed jury instruction was not a reversible error. No. 06-1769 7 We turn then to the district court’s decision to prevent White’s counsel from reading the entire Indiana statute regarding government entities to the jury. The trial judge has the “discretion to limit argument over time consuming peripheral issues in the interests of judicial economy and reducing juror confusion.” United States v. Mahone, 537 F.2d 922, 928 (7th Cir. 1976). Nevertheless, “exercising tight control over the argument is undesirable when it precludes counsel from raising a significant issue.” Id. The question is whether the trial court abused its discretion in deciding to prevent the recitation of the statute to the jury. “It is a basic premise of our legal system that juries are the triers of fact only; it is for the judge, not the jury, to interpret the law.” United States v. Tokash, 282 F.3d 962, 968 (7th Cir. 2002). Jury instructions are the means that the court uses to inform the jury of the law that is relevant to the case. Although there are some circumstances when reading the law, either statute or case law, might be properly permitted by the court, there are few instances where a party is entitled to read law to the jury. See generally V. Woerner, Counsel’s Right in Criminal Prosecution to Argue Law or to Read Lawbooks to the Jury, 67 A.L.R. 2d 245; Jacob Stein, Closing Arguments § 1:69 (2d ed. 2006). Although the selective use of statutes can be a permissible aspect of argument, particularly when a party might highlight certain parts of the instruction that the jury will shortly receive from the court in written form, a party is not entitled to read portions of the law that the trial court has already determined to be irrelevant to the facts of the case at hand. See Wayne R. LaFave, et al., 5 Criminal Procedure § 24.7(e) (2d ed. 1999) (“More frequently, successful challenges to prosecutorial argument have involved references (often accurate) to aspects of the law that are beyond the elements considered in the judge’s charge. Indeed, those references 8 No. 06-1769 usually are to matters on which a judge would refuse to charge a jury if requested because they detract from its responsibility to decide the issue before it.”). Such was the case here. The district court had already decided to exclude the full extent of the Indiana statute from the written jury instructions. As we noted above, that decision was not an error. It would make little sense to exclude a statute as potentially confusing for the jury when provided in written form, but then allow that same statute to be read to the jury when the potential for confusion and misinterpretation is even greater. The court properly provided the jury with the necessary interpretation of the law as it applied to the specific charges contained in the indictment. White was not denied the opportunity to tell the jury that the Park District was also a government entity—although as we noted above that fact was logically insufficient to escape criminal liability. He was also free to make all manner of arguments that the contract was not connected to the City of Gary. But those arguments were met with other evidence from the government. Therefore, we believe that it was not an abuse of discretion to limit defense counsel from reciting the statute during closing argument.