Opinion ID: 768669
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Perceived Constitutional Flaws

Text: 80 Judge Gibson homes in on the indictment's use of the term ownership interest to describe beneficial share ownership. He concludes that the indictment is constitutionally flawed because, by employing the term ownership interest it failed to: (1) put Pirro on notice of the charged crime as required by the Sixth Amendment; and (2) give the grand jury an understanding of what was necessary to establish the elements of that crime as required by the Fifth Amendment. See ante at 95. I disagree with both conclusions. 81
82 A defendant unquestionably enjoys the right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against him. U.S. Const. amend. VI. All that is necessary to satisfy this constitutional mandate is that the indictment inform[] the defendant of the offense charged with sufficient clarity so that he will not be misled while preparing his defense. United States v. Brozyna, 571 F.2d 742, 746 (2d Cir. 1978) (internal quotation marks omitted); see United States v. Alfonso, 143 F.3d 772, 776 (2d Cir. 1998) (same). The Sixth Amendment's notice protection is implemented by the requirement of Rule 7(c)(1) that an indictment contain a plain, concise and definite written statement of the essential facts constituting the offense charged. Fed. R. Crim. Pro. 7(c); see United States v. Walsh, 194 F.3d 37, 44 (2d Cir. 1999). 83 Here, the indictment satisfies these requirements. To be sure, the indictment does not use the label beneficial shareholder to describe Boyle, nor, for that matter, use the term nominee to describe Pirro. Nevertheless, the indictment: (1) describes in detail the evolution of Pirro's and Boyle's scheme, including the specific facts that led to Boyle's acquisition of a 45% ownership interest in DPC; and (2) notifies Pirro that this conduct allegedly violated § 7206(1). 84 Under any man-in-the-street reading, the language 45% ownership interest is sufficiently specific to apprise Pirro that he is being charged with a violation of § 7206(1) based on the concealment of Boyle's 45% ownership of DPC. Indeed, the defendant implicitly concedes that he had sufficient notice of the crime charged to allow him to prepare a defense. His brief on this appeal advances no real complaint that he was deprived of constitutional notice. And his successful Rule 12 motion in the district court did not argue for dismissal based on failure of notice, but rather on the weightier objection that there is no legal duty to fill out a Schedule K-1 for a person who enjoys only quasi-shareholder status. Finally, the district court did not even base its dismissal on failure of notice. Instead, as Judge Gibson concedes, the district court dismissed the Boyle Allegations because it concluded that a legal obligation to include an individual with an ownership interest on an S Corporation's tax return is debatable. Ante at 88. 85 In these circumstances, Russell v. United States, 369 U.S. 749 (1962), is totally unhelpful to Pirro. The Russell court did indeed hold that an indictment which failed to sufficiently apprise the defendant [of the crime charged] was inadequate. See 369 U.S. at 764. But the Court did so in unique circumstances which have been distinguished numerous times by this and other courts, see, e.g., Walsh, 194 F.3d at 45; United States v. McClean, 528 F.2d 1250, 1257 (2d Cir. 1976); United States v. Paulino, 935 F.2d 739, 750 n.4 (6th Cir. 1991) (collecting cases), and which bear little relationship to the issues confronting us today. 86 In Russell, the Court condemned indictments that alleged refusal to answer questions posed by the House Committee on Un American Activities. This refusal, the indictment charged, violated 2 U.S.C. § 192 which made it a misdemeanor to refuse[] to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry. The Court held that the defendants could not be guilty under § 192 unless the questions [they] refused to answer were in fact pertinent to a specific topic under [congressional] inquiry. 369 U.S. at 768. Crucially, however, the indictment failed to specify even the subject matter under congressional inquiry. Thus, the Russell defendants faced trial with the chief issue undefined. Id. at 766. 87 Here, there are no such problems. We all know what the issues are. As has already been made apparent, the Pirro indictment includes such a statement of facts and circumstances as to descend to particulars. Id. at 765. Unlike the cryptic indictments in Russell, the indictment here charges that Pirro failed to report [on the 1992 return] the hospital Chairman's ownership interest in DPC, and misstated thereon his own ownership interest in DPC, and failed to reflect thereon all of the payments DPC had made, through PMM, to the hospital Chairman's wholly owned company. In my view, this Circuit's case law simply does not require the government to descend into any greater particularity. 2 88 In sum, by relying on the notice requirements of the Sixth Amendment, Judge Gibson rests on a theory that: (a) has never been argued by the defendant; (b) was not relied on by the district court; and (c) demands a level of specificity beyond what the Constitution requires. 89
90 The grand jury clause of the Fifth Amendment is similarly irrelevant to this appeal. That clause prohibits prosecution for charges not presented to the grand jury. See Walsh, 194 F.3d at 44. All that is required to satisfy the clause is that the indictment contain some amount of factual particularity to ensure that the prosecution will not fill in elements of its case with facts other than those considered by the grand jury. Id. (citations omitted). 91 Judge Gibson notes that it was only after the indictment was returned, that the government specified that Boyle, as the holder of a 45% ownership interest, was a 45% beneficial shareholder of DPC. The suggestion is that the government's post-indictment refusal to adhere slavishly to the 45% ownership interest language already appearing in the indictment somehow constitutes an impermissible modification of the essential elements of the § 7206(1) charge presented to the grand jury. I cannot agree. 92 In my view, this is hardly a case where [a]t every stage . . . the defendant [is] met with a different theory. Russell, 369 U.S. at 768. To the contrary, it strikes me that the government's theory here has remained absolutely constant. Simply put, the Boyle Allegations charge that Pirro violated § 7206(1) by lying on his tax returns about Boyle's ownership of 45% of DPC. To the extent that the government's change in nomenclature from 45% ownership interest to 45% beneficial shareholder has any significance, it simply adds detail, and indeed narrows rather than broadens the original charges. United States v. Zvi, 168 F.3d 49, 54 (2d Cir. 1999). As such, it was entirely permissible. See e.g., United States v. Miller, 471 U.S. 130, 145 (1985); see also United States v. Castro, 776 F.2d 1118, 1123 (3d Cir. 1985) (no violation of Fifth Amendment where variation did not broaden the bases for conviction, but instead narrowed the scope of the evidence to prove an offense included in the indictment.). 93 Although this Circuit long ago abandoned technical rigidity in reviewing indictments, United States v. Wydermyer, 51 F.3d 319, 324 (2d Cir. 1995), Judge Gibson also seeks to support his Fifth Amendment theory by engrafting an additional layer of complexity onto our indictment jurisprudence. He concludes that the indictment was defective because it fails to explicitly specify the legal duty which made Pirro's lies about Boyle a crime under § 7206(1). See ante at 92-93. Such specificity was required, Judge Gibson maintains, because of the principle that where an indictment charges a crime that depends in turn on violation of another statute, the indictment must identify the underlying offense. Id. 94 This has never been the law in this Circuit. To the contrary, we have consistently upheld indictments that 'do little more than to track the language of the statute charged and state the time and place (in approximate terms) of the alleged crime.' Walsh, 194 F.3d at 44 (quoting United States v. Tramunti, 513 F.2d 1087, 1113 (2d Cir. 1975)); see United States v. Alfonso, 143 F.3d 772, 776 (2d Cir. 1998); United States v. Stavroulakis, 952 F.2d 686, 693 (2d Cir. 1992). 95 These requirements were more than satisfied by Pirro's indictment. Indeed, this is not a case like United States v. Berlin, 472 F.2d 1002, 1006 (2d Cir. 1973) in which the government actually omitted a requisite element of the charged offense from the indictment presented to the grand jury. No such omission occurred here. To the contrary, the indictment alleges each essential element of a § 7206(1) violation - charging that Pirro willfully and knowingly filed a false tax return that he did not believe to be true and correct as to every material matter. See United States v. Peters, 153 F.3d 445, 461 (7th Cir. 1998) (listing elements of a § 7206(1) violation). More than that, the indictment specifies that Pirro violated § 7206(1) by concealing Boyle's 45% ownership interest in DPC. Under our case law, this was all that was necessary. See Walsh, 194 F.3d at 44; Alfonso, 143 F.3d at 776; Stavroulakis, 952 F.2d at 693. 96 In sum, both my colleagues may legitimately question whether Pirro's failure to mention in DPC's tax return Boyle's real ownership of DPC constitutes a crime. This is a fair question that turns on whether Pirro had a known legal duty to disclose Boyle's beneficial shareholding in DPC. The question of whether there is a known legal duty, however, is one of law for the court, not the grand jury, to resolve. See United States v. Ingredient Technology Corp., 698 F.2d 88, 97 (2d Cir. 1983). Whatever the answer to that question, there can be no doubt that the § 7206(1) charge itself was fairly presented to the grand jury. 97