Opinion ID: 767958
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Other New Evidence

Text: 62 As to the other new evidence, there were no errors of law and there are simply too many gaps in the logic of the defense's lack-of-intent theory to find manifest abuse of discretion in the district court's decision to deny the new trial motions and the motion for reconsideration. 15 See Montilla-Rivera II, 171 F.3d at 40. We take as a given that the defendants accepted bribes and kickbacks, but find little solid evidence that American Honda's upper management directly received gratuities or expressly approved of the corruption. The defendants' argument requires a jury firstly to infer tacit approval of the corruption from the company's failure to act on rumors and warnings of corruption; secondly, to infer that the defendants knew of this tacit approval; thirdly, to infer that the defendants therefore believed the company had given its blessing to their activities; and fourthly, to infer that the defendants thus lacked the requisite intent. But the very point of this being new evidence is that the defendants did not know of these alleged acts of condonation and thus could not, based on them, have formed a belief that their activities were tacitly approved. These are perilously large leaps in logic. The coup de grace is that the evidence is clear that the defendants went to some effort to conceal their activities from American Honda management and others.