Opinion ID: 78019
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Pattern Jury Instructions and Constructive Amendment

Text: Williams contends that the district court's jury instructions created a constructive amendment to her indictment, violating her due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. [8] A constructive amendment to the indictment resulting from the district court's jury instructions is per se reversible error. See Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212, 219, 80 S.Ct. 270, 274, 4 L.Ed.2d 252 (1960); United States v. Behety 32 F.3d 503, 508 (11th Cir.1994). Under the Fifth Amendment, a defendant has the right to be tried on felony charges returned by a grand jury indictment. Stirone, 361 U.S. at 215, 80 S.Ct. at 272. Only the grand jury may broaden the charges in the indictment once it has been returned, and the district court may not do so by constructive amendment. Id. at 215-16, 80 S.Ct. at 272. `A constructive amendment to the indictment occurs where the jury instructions so modify the elements of the offense charged that the defendant may have been convicted on a ground not alleged by the grand jury's indictment.' United States v. Starke, 62 F.3d 1374, 1380 (11th Cir.1995) (quotation marks omitted) (quoting United States v. Lignarolo, 770 F.2d 971, 981 n. 15 (11th Cir.1985)). The indictment charged Williams and her husband, Bunnis Williams, with aiding and abetting each other, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2, in conjunction with seven counts of wire fraud and one count of federal funds theft. Williams argues that the district court's jury instructions constructively amended the indictment to allow a jury to find her guilty of aiding and abetting someone other than her husband. We find no such error from our review of the instructions. The district court instructed the jury as follows: [I]f the acts or conduct of an agent, employee, or other associate of a defendant are willfully directed or authorized by such defendant, or if a defendant aids and abets another person by willfully joining together with that person in the commission of the crime, then the law holds such defendant responsible for the conduct of that other person just as though the defendant had personally engaged in the conduct. R. 6 at 18. The district court has discretion in the wording and style of the jury instructions, so long as the instructions accurately reflect the law. Starke, 62 F.3d at 1380. These instructions provided two ways by which the jury could have found Williams's guilt: (1) that Williams committed the offenses as a principal through her direction of ETA employees, or (2) that Williams aided another person to commit the offenses, and thus find her criminally liable as an accomplice. Williams and her husband were each charged with the substantive counts, as well as with aiding and abetting each other, and tried together as co-defendants. Thus, these instructions accurately reflected the distinction between principal and accomplice liability from the indictment. Here, the district court read the pattern jury instruction for 18 U.S.C. § 2. While the district court did not specify Bunnis Williams by name in this pattern charge, it did not impermissibly expand the scope of the indictment. We therefore find no error in the district court's instructions. We must analyze jury instructions in the context of the evidence presented and the government's theory at trial to determine whether a constructive amendment to the indictment has occurred. In the context of the evidence presented in this case, the instructions did not allow the jury to find that the bookkeepers  who were never charged with criminal wrongdoing  were principally culpable for wire fraud and federal funds theft and to base Williams's guilt on her aiding and abetting the bookkeepers she directed. Such a reading of the jury instructions is untenable in light of the prosecution's theory and evidence. We therefore reject Williams's claim that the instruction resulted in a constructive amendment and find no error in the district court's use of the pattern instruction.