Opinion ID: 771572
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Pinkerton charge

Text: 18 Patel next challenges the district court's instruction to the jury regarding criminal liability pursuant to Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640 (1946). This liability theory is relevant to counts 4 and 6 of the indictment, which concerned money laundering transactions for which only Bala was present. Defendant argues that the instruction was plainly erroneous because it permitted the jury to find Patel guilty of both charged substantive crimes even if he reasonably could foresee only one of the crimes. Defendant argues that the instruction as a whole gave the mis-impression that Pinkerton is a strict liability theory making Patel responsible for all of Bala's conduct, even if the conduct was not foreseeable to Patel. 19 Because defendant did not object to the charge at trial, our review is for plain error. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(b). We must examine not only the specific language that defendant challenges but also the instructions as a whole to see if the entire charge delivered a correct interpretation of the law. United States v. Carr, 880 F.2d 1550, 1555 (2d Cir. 1989) (internal quotation marks omitted). 20 After the jury finds that a conspiracy exists, it may consider whether a defendant is liable for the acts of his co-conspirators. The Pinkerton theory permits criminal liability of a conspirator for the substantive crimes committed by his co-conspirators to the extent those offenses were reasonably foreseeable consequences of acts furthering the unlawful agreement, even if he did not himself participate in the substantive crimes. United States v. Romero, 897 F.2d 47, 51 (2d Cir. 1990) (internal quotation marks omitted). The jury must decide whether a particular substantive crime is foreseeable and in furtherance of the conspiracy. Id. 21 Patel does not argue that the facts of the case did not call for a Pinkerton charge, and he included one in his requested jury instructions. Instead, defendant claims that the charge Judge McAvoy read to the jury was plainly erroneous because it spoke of the substantive crime in its description of the first and third elements of Pinkerton liability and described the fifth element as requiring that the defendant could have reasonably foreseen that a substantive crime might be committed by his coconspirators. Patel argues that the instruction suffers from the very same defect that we found plainly erroneous in United States v. Gallerani, 68 F.3d 611, 620 (2d Cir. 1995). 22 Patel's comparison is inapt. In Gallerani, the district court not only referred to substantive crime in the singular but also described the first element of Pinkerton liability as that one of the crimes charged in the substantive counts was committed. Id. (emphasis in original). We concluded that the instruction permitted the jury to find a defendant guilty of numerous alleged substantive offenses as long as his co-conspirator committed just one of them. Id. The charge that Judge McAvoy read did not permit that inference and made no error in describing the first element, which was critical to the decision in Gallerani. The district court described the first element as that the crime charged in the substantive counts were committed, which is exactly the wording defendant requested. In fact, the only variance between the district court's instruction on the Pinkerton elements and the charge Patel requested is the use of the article a instead of the in the fifth element. Thus, defendant's challenge to the jury instruction is without merit.