Opinion ID: 791970
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Unanimity Instruction

Text: 34 1. The Instructions on the Racketeering Predicate Acts. Carr also argues that the district court erred in its instructions to the jury regarding the jury's consideration of Count One, containing the racketeering charge. As noted above, that Count included allegations that Carr had engaged in three specific predicate acts. Only if the jury concluded that the government had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Carr had committed at least two of them could it properly have convicted him of engaging in a prohibited pattern of racketeering activity. See 18 U.S.C. § 1961(5) (`pattern of racketeering activity' requires at least two acts of racketeering activity). Over Carr's objection, the district court ultimately told the jury, in the court's instructions and supplemental instructions, that it must reach a unanimous decision in order to return a finding of proved or not proved as to any predicate act. 35 In its original instructions to the jury on the racketeering charge, the court stated, [I]n order to convict, you must find that ... Carr committed at least two of the acts of racketeering referred to in the indictment.... [Y]ou must be unanimous in your decision before you can make a finding of proved as to any of these acts. Trial Tr., Aug. 18, 2003, at 1144. The court emphasized that the jurors must also agree on which two predicate acts had been proved. 36 [Y]ou must make an affirmative finding of proved for at least two of them in order for a conviction. Obviously, you can't have some jurors agreeing on racketeering act number one and some other jurors agreeing on racketeering act number two. You have to be unanimous, all 12 of you, before you can make a finding of proved on any one of these. 37 Id. 38 Although the court instructed the jurors that a finding of proved on any of the racketeering acts must be unanimous, it initially instructed the jurors that a finding of not proved need not be unanimous: 39 [A]ny verdict of guilty or not guilty must be the unanimous verdict of all 12 sitting jurors. Any finding of proved with respect to the racketeering acts alleged in Count One must be the unanimous finding of all 12 jurors. Here you do not need to be unanimous to say not proved [as to any one of the acts]. If you are not unanimous in favor of the proved finding, simply check not proved. But you must be unanimous on any proved finding, all 12 jurors on any finding. Id. at 1165-66 (emphasis added). 4 40 After receiving these instructions, the jury began deliberations. On the first day, the jurors met for about an hour. On the second day, after deliberating for several hours, the jury sent a note to the court asking, If we cannot come to a unanimous agreement on one of the three racketeering acts, what do we do? ... Can we leave the boxes blank? Trial Tr., Aug. 19, 2003, at 1188. 41 The court discussed the question with counsel for the government and for Carr. They both were of the view that the court should simply restate its earlier instruction, saying that if the jury was unable to unanimously agree that an act was proved, then it should return a finding of not proved. But the court disagreed. It was apparently concerned about the possibility that repeating the original instruction might result in what the court thought to be an erroneous verdict—if, for example, the jury reached a verdict of not guilty based on a unanimous proved finding as to one predicate act, a unanimous not proved finding as to another act, and the jury was unable to decide as to the third act. 5 In such a case, the court said, a verdict of guilty on the racketeering charge would be clearly inappropriate; but a verdict of not guilty would also be inappropriate because it could not be said that the jury had unanimously agreed on the verdict. 6 Under those circumstances, the jury would not have been able to agree that Carr's participation in at least two acts was not proved. 42 In light of this concern, and over Carr's objections (the government eventually consented to the court's revised instructions), the court responded to the jury's request for clarification as follows: 43 [I]n order to find the defendant guilty on Count One, the jury would have to be unanimous in finding that the government has proven ... beyond a reasonable doubt at least two of these three acts of racketeering.... [I]n order to find the defendant not guilty on Count One, the jury would have to find that the government had failed to prove at least two acts of racketeering. Id. at 1207-08. The court continued: 44 Now, what I'm really ending up saying to you is something which I think I did not make clear yesterday, and that is that to check either the box proved or the box not proved, there has to be a unanimous finding by all 12 jurors. If you're split 6-6, you can't check the not proved box. The not proved box has to be just as unanimous as a finding of not guilty as the ultimate finding. 45 Id. at 1210. 46 After receiving the supplemental instructions, the jury deliberated for approximately one-half hour. It then reached a verdict of guilty on all counts, including Count One. As to Count One, it reached a verdict of proved as to all of the three predicate offenses. 47 2. The Court's Asserted Direction to Find Carr Guilty. 48 Carr argues first that the instructions given by the district court effectively directed the jury to reach a guilty verdict on the racketeering count. With the instructions, Carr argues, the jurors could have understood the judge to mean that unless all of [the jurors] agreed that proof was lacking, they had to convict. Def.Appellant's Br. at 10. 49 This contention is meritless. There is no sense in which the court's instructions implied that if the jury did not unanimously find the government's proof insufficient, it had to make a finding of 'proved.' Id. at 24. Instead, the court repeatedly emphasized that the jurors could not conclude that the government had proved an act if they did not reach unanimous agreement that the government had proved the act beyond a reasonable doubt. 7 In the absence of any suggestion in the instructions that an inability to agree that a racketeering act was not proved could or should lead the jury to find instead that the act was proved, we reject Carr's first argument. 50 3. The Court's Asserted Reallocation of the Burden of Proof. As we have noted, for a conviction under 18 U.S.C §§ 1961, 1962(c), which criminalize conducting the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, the government must prove a pattern of racketeering consisting of at least two predicate acts, 18 U.S.C. § 1961(5). And the jury must find that the prosecution proved each one of those two or more specifically alleged predicate acts beyond a reasonable doubt. See Monsanto v. United States, 348 F.3d 345, 346 (2d Cir.2003), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 125 S.Ct. 153, 160 L.Ed.2d 49 (2004); United States v. Dhinsa, 243 F.3d 635, 670 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 534 U.S. 897, 122 S.Ct. 219, 151 L.Ed.2d 156 (2001); cf. Richardson v. United States, 526 U.S. 813, 815, 119 S.Ct. 1707, 143 L.Ed.2d 985 (1999) (A jury in a federal criminal case brought under [18 U.S.C.] § 848 [criminalizing engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise] must unanimously agree not only that the defendant committed some `continuing series of violations' but also that the defendants committed each of the individual `violations' necessary to make up that `continuing series.'). it was not erough, then, for the jury in this case to decide unanimously that the government had proved two predicate offenses committed by Carr beyond a reasonable doubt without agreeing on which offenses they were. And the court so charged them. 51 But the court in its supplemental instructions also told the jury the obverse: that it was not enough to acquit the defendant for the jury to decide unanimously that the government had failed to prove two predicate offenses beyond a reasonable doubt. It had to decide unanimously as to each of at least two specific offenses that the government had failed to carry its burden of proof. And if the jury both failed to convict and failed to acquit, following those instructions, it was unable to reach a verdict, i.e., it was hung. 52 We have our doubts, however, as to whether, had the jury agreed unanimously that the government had failed to prove two of the predicate acts beyond a reasonable doubt, without agreeing specifically as to which two had been not proved, it should necessarily have reported itself as being at an impasse, rather than returning a verdict of acquittal for Carr. Hypothetically, for example, the jury could have agreed unanimously that Carr had not committed the first predicate act, murder, but divided on the proof of his guilt as to the second act, robbery, and third act, engaging in a narcotics conspiracy. It would in that case be possible that every juror voted not proved as to two predicate acts, the first one and one of the two others. This is not what happened and the issue is not therefore before us. But by its supplemental instructions, the district court implied that a jury thus divided must report itself at an impasse on the count in question. We are not convinced that, to the contrary, the jury could not under those circumstance properly vote to acquit the defendant. The fact that the jury must agree unanimously and separately as to every element of an offense, Richardson, 526 U.S. at 818, 119 S.Ct. 1707, in this case two predicate acts, in order to convict may or may not imply that the jury must agree unanimously and separately that the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt as to two specific predicate acts in order to acquit. This is not, however, an issue we must decide today. 53 But if the district court's instructions were in error in this regard, the error plainly had no effect on the verdict. As noted, the issue was raised by the jury's question, If we cannot come to a unanimous agreement on one of the three racketeering acts, what do we do? ... Can we leave the boxes blank? Trial Tr., Aug. 19, 2003, at 1188. In response, the court assumed hypothetically that the verdict depended on the jury's decision as to that undecided third predicate act. Apparently concerned that the jury might acquit because it was divided as to the third act and was unanimously of the view that another predicate act was not proved, the court instructed the jury (rightly or wrongly) that if it could not decide unanimously one way or the other as to each of two or more predicate acts, it should report that it was unable to reach a verdict on Count One. 54 But half an hour later, the jury reached a verdict, convicting Carr on all counts and in the course thereof concluding that the government had proved beyond a reasonable doubt all three predicate racketeering acts of which Carr had been charged. The meaning of the jury's question becomes, in retrospect, quite clear: It had decided unanimously that the government had established beyond, a reasonable doubt that Carr was guilty of two predicate acts. Assuming of course that the other elements of the crime had been established, he was therefore guilty on Count One. But the jury had not achieved unanimity as to the third predicate act, and it wanted to know whether it had to. In fact it did not have to; once Carr lost as to two predicate acts, the jury's decision as to the third did not affect the jury's verdict on Count One. But having asked the question, prodded by the courts response in the form of supplemental instructions, the jury returned to the jury room, resolved its doubts about the third predicate act, and decided that, like the first two, this one (whichever one was) too had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Irrespective of that decision as to the third act, which, as we have said, was apparently the product of the challenged supplemental instructions, the defendant was duly convicted on Count One. 55 Put another way, the district court was explaining to the jury what it should do if it was not unanimous that Carr had committed each of two of the three charged predicate acts. Had the jury reported that it could not reach a verdict, rather than returning a verdict of guilty, that might have been a result of the supplemental instructions and therefore arguably incorrect. But, upon completion of deliberations, the jury was unanimous not only that two predicate acts had been proved, but that all three had been. The challenged instructions apparently had no impact on the jury aside from forcing it to deliberate to a conclusion as to a third predicate act, which, it turned out, was unnecessary to the conviction. 56 As the government rightly points out, by requiring unanimity in a finding of not proved, the district court did not alter its clear directive that unanimity was also required to find that an act was proved. Appellee's Br. at 33. The instructions make very clear that to find Carr guilty, the jury would have to unanimously find that the government had proved at least two of these three acts of racketeering .. and the jury would have to be unanimous in finding one particular act and the second particular act. [It] would have to be unanimous in those findings. Trial Tr., Aug. 19, 2003, at 1208. The court clearly and correctly instructed the jury that if it concluded that Carr committed only two of the acts, they were required to agree unanimously on which two acts in order to return a verdict of guilty. It would require a great leap of speculation to conclude that the instructions as to the jury's need to be unanimous in finding that two of three predicate acts had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt somehow had a material effect on its unanimous decision that all three predicate acts had been so proved. 57 It is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that [the] jury would have found the defendant guilty absent the [asserted] error. Neder 527 U.S. at 18, 119 S.Ct. 1827. Since any error in the instruction was harmless, the verdict must remain undisturbed. See Anderson v. Branen, 17 F.3d 552, 556 (2d Cir.1994). 58