Opinion ID: 323383
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: refusal of requested instruction.

Text: 27 Defendants requested an instruction as follows: 28 The Government has charged that the defendants joined with each other and with Travis Allen in a scheme to defraud the American Oil Company. That is, the Government has alleged that the defendants acted together or jointly, in furtherance of a single common scheme to defraud. I instruct you that you may not find any of the defendants guilty unless you first find that the Government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that there was such a single common scheme to defraud. 29 If you find that a reasonable doubt exists as to whether there was, or may have been, a series of separate and distinct schemes, then you must find all defendants not guilty. 30 If you find that the defendants were not acting as part of the same scheme, then you must find them not guilty, even if you find that they, or any of them, acted with intent to defraud. 31 The court did not give the instruction in the form requested. It did, however, instruct that the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants or any one or more of them participated in a scheme to defraud and that the mails were used in furtherance of it. It instructed at some length concerning the meaning of a 'joint enterprise mail fraud scheme' or the proof required to establish that there was such a scheme and that a defendant was knowingly a member of it; that the jury should first determine whether or not 'the mail fraud joint enterprise existed as alleged in the indictment'; and then whether a defendant willfully becomes a member of it. After pointing out that 'one may become a member of a criminal joint enterprise without full knowledge of the full details' but that 'a person that has no knowledge of such joint enterprise, but happens to act in a way which furthers some object or purpose of the said joint enterprise, does not thereby become a member.' The court stated that before a finding of membership could be made 'the evidence in the case must show beyond a reasonable doubt that the joint enterprise was knowingly formed and that defendant or any other person who is claimed to have been a member willfully participated in the unlawful plan with the intent to advance or further some object or purpose of the joint enterprise.' 32 For reasons indicated above in Part I, the instructions given by the court may have been more favorable to defendants than the law required, but in any event they adequately covered in substance the instructions requested by the defendants.