Opinion ID: 3011009
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Corrupt Persuasion

Text: The Ninth Circuit has held that lying to a witness is not corrupt persuasion, though appealing to a witness to avoid testifying truthfully in order to protect one's career would be. See United States v. Aguilar, 21 F.3d 1475, 1485-86 (9th Cir. 1994) (en banc), rev'd on other grounds, 515 U.S. 593 (1995). United States v. Poindexter, 951 F.2d 369 (D.C. Cir. 1991), gives more guidance on the meaning of corrupt persuasion. Poindexter interpreted 18 U.S.C.S 1505, which prohibits obstructing proceedings before congressional committees. Poindexter was charged with obstruction of justice for lying to Congress, which the government argued was corrupt persuasion. The majority held that the term could not be extended to encompass simple lying to a congressional committee. As the court explained, corruptly has two possible meanings, transitive and intransitive. The transitive meaning would involve persuading another by means of corruption or bribery, while the intransitive would involve persuading wickedly or immorally, that is, with a bad motive. Poindexter endorsed the transitive meaning in order to avoid what it perceived as a potentially unconstitutional vagueness, and also because the other terms in the statute were transitive (by threats, by force, etc.). It further found that corrupt persuasion could not be cabined simply by saying that the term covered influencing another to act `immorally' or `improperly,'  as that simply substitutes one indefinite term for another. _________________________________________________________________ 4. Several courts have held that asking a witness to tell what he knows to be a lie is not misleading conduct because there is nothing misleading about a request to lie. See, e.g., United States v. Kulczyk, 931 F.2d 542, 546 (9th Cir. 1991); United States v. King, 762 F.2d 232 (2d Cir. 1985). The government has not identified any way in which Davis's conduct was misleading. Indeed, on the government's own theory he told the truth as he perceived it: Sabol was an informant. If asking for a lie is not misleading to the target, surely telling the truth is not. 25 The Poindexter court determined that corrupt persuasion is  `corrupting' another person by influencing him to violate his legal duty, id. at 379, and that thecore of the statutory prohibition of corrupt persuasion was aimed at a person who, for the purpose of influencing an inquiry, influences another person (through bribery or otherwise) to violate a legal duty, id. at 385. See also United States v. Morrison, 98 F.3d 619, 630 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (influencing a witness to violate her legal duty to testify truthfully constituted corrupt persuasion under S 1512(b)). We approved of Poindexter's reasoning in theS 1512 context in United States v. Farrell, 126 F.3d 484 (3d Cir. 1997). Farrell was convicted of witness tampering for attempting to dissuade a coconspirator from providing information to federal investigators about Farrell's involvement in a conspiracy. We reversed his conviction: Without any definitional assistance, we find the phrase corruptly persuades to be ambiguous. We agree with Farrell that the phrase cannot mean simply persuades with the intent to hinder communication to law enforcement because such an interpretation would render the word corruptly meaningless. Farrell, 126 F.3d at 487. While we were confident that bribing someone to withhold information or persuading someone to provide false information would be corrupt persuasion, we declined to define the term more abstractly. See id. at 488. Farrell concluded that the statute did not cover a noncoercive attempt to persuade a coconspirator who had a Fifth Amendment right not to disclose information about the conspiracy to refrain, in accordance with that right, from volunteering information to investigators. See id. at 488.5 The government argues that Farrell is distinguishable because the defendant in that case was acting in furtherance of his own interest in avoiding a coconspirator's disclosure of a crime, while here Davis was a malicious _________________________________________________________________ 5. We declined, however, to resolve whether discouraging the testimony of a potential witness who did not possess a Fifth Amendment privilege of his or her own would violate S 1512. See Farrell, 126 F.3d at 489 n.3. 26 interloper. While we agree that Davis may have violated S 1512(b), see infra, we caution that Davis's malicious purpose to expose an informant is insufficient under Farrell to justify a conviction: We read the inclusion of corruptly in S 1512(b) as necessarily implying that an individual can persuade another not to disclose information to a law enforcement official with the intent of hindering an investigation without violating the statute, i.e., without doing so corruptly. Thus, more culpability is required for a statutory violation than that involved in the act of attempting to discourage disclosure in order to hinder an investigation. Id. at 489. Davis may be properly convicted under S 1512(b) because there was testimony that he suggested that Vittorio should kill Sabol and asked Vittorio for a gun so that Davis himself could kill Sabol. By suggesting that Vittorio should do something about Sabol or get Davis a gun, Davis urged Vittorio to violate his legal duty not to kill Sabol or aid in Sabol's death. This conduct would constitute corrupt persuasion under the statute. The fact that Davis never had direct contact with Sabol is irrelevant, because all that is required under S 1512(b) is that a defendant corruptly persuade another person with the requisite intent. That person need not be the witness. Moreover, Vittorio's testimony that he was never persuaded to kill Sabol does not exonerate Davis. If Davis intended to corruptly persuade, his attempt violates the statute.6 _________________________________________________________________ 6. Although Davis does not raise the issue, we note that the District Court's instruction on corrupt persuasion does not track Farrell. The Court instructed the jury that [t]he word`corruptly' means having improper motive or purpose of obstructing justice. SA at 1426. Farrell and Poindexter suggest that this instruction provides insufficient guidance to the jury, as anyone with the intent to interfere with an investigation has improper motives. On remand, the Court should clarify that corrupt persuasion involves more than an improper motive, and includes inducements to violence. 27