Opinion ID: 37901
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Contested Jury Instructions

Text: Defendants contest the trial court’s instruction to the jury that it was not necessary for the government to prove “all the details alleged in the indictment concerning the precise nature and purpose of the alleged scheme.” They take issue as well with the court’s instruction that “it must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants knowingly devised or intended to devise a scheme substantially similar to that charged in the indictment and that they executed or attempted to execute the same.” These instructions, defendants argue, may have caused them to be found guilty of uncharged conduct or may have resulted in a non-unanimous verdict. The government responds first by pointing out that the instructions at issue required the jury to convict only for conduct charged in the indictment. It acknowledges, however, that the indictment charged multiple executions of a scheme in but a single count, and that this potentially posed a danger of a non-unanimous verdict. Conceding that a special unanimity instruction would have avoided this claimed problem with the indictment,51 the government hearing, 269 F.3d 1023 (9th Cir. 2001). The Ninth Circuit’s rule, established by other cases, requires that a defendant offer an alternative instruction, which the defendants in this case do not claim to have done. See United States v. Kessi, 868 F.2d 1097, 1102 (9th Cir. 1989). 51 See United States v. Baytank, 934 F.2d 599, 609 (5th Cir. 1991) (“[T]he complaint comes down to whether the jury instructions were sufficient, as it is clear that this aspect of a duplicity problem can be cured by appropriate special 25 nevertheless contends that the court’s general unanimity instruction (“Your verdict must be unanimous as to each defendant named in the indictment.”) was sufficient. Citing our decision in United States v. Tucker, the government goes on to argue that, absent evidence to the contrary, a court has no reason to assume that a verdict is not unanimous.52 The government argues further that defendants have produced no evidence that they were prejudiced. The key issue at trial was whether defendants’ business was a fraudulent scheme under § 1347. As there is no question that, if the business was fraudulent, defendants executed the fraud numerous times, argues the government, there is little danger that the jury convicted defendants non-unanimously. Although the indictment was duplicitous and did create the potential risk of a non-unanimous verdict, the district court instructed the jury that it must find that defendants had executed or attempted to execute the fraudulent scheme. As we noted above in our discussion of defendants’ challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, there was ample evidence supporting the government’s charges as to several of the executions of the scheme listed in the indictment, and there is no real danger that the jury did not agree instructions which . . . inform the jury that it must unanimously agree on the specific basis . . . on which it finds the defendant guilty”)(emphasis in original). 52 345 F.3d 320, 336 (5th Cir. 2003). 26 that defendants had executed the scheme. Even if the district court might have erred in not giving a special unanimity instruction to cure the defect in the indictment, such omission did not prejudice defendants.53