Opinion ID: 213506
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Conscious Avoidance Charge was Fundamentally Flawed

Text: The conscious avoidance instruction in this case, much like the one we found deficient in Kaiser, contained nothing to suggest that actual belief would absolve [the Quinoneses] of culpability. Kaiser, 609 F.3d at 566. The District Court charged the jury: In determining what the defendant knew or reasonably should have known, you may consider whether the defendant deliberately closed his eyes to what otherwise would have been obvious. This does not mean that the defendant acted carelessly, negligently or even foolishly. One may not, however, avoid criminal liability by wilfully and intentionally remaining ignorant of a fact material and important to his or her conduct. Thus, even if you find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was aware that there was a high probability that the doctors and pharmacists were acting outside the usual course of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose, but deliberately and consciously avoided learning this fact, then you may treat this deliberate avoidance of knowledge as the equivalent of knowledge. This instruction is completely silent on the Quinoneses' actual beliefs, and thus it is wholly deficient and clearly erroneous. The majority contends that the instruction above is distinguishable from the one found in Kaiser because here it was presented as an alternative means of proving what defendant[]s knew or reasonably should have known, Maj. Op. at 595, as opposed to only what the defendant knew, as was the case in Kaiser. This argument renders irrelevant the conscious avoidance instruction in this case. The instruction was presented as an alternative means for the jury to find the knowledge element of the charged offenses, and therefore may well have been the basis by which the jury found the Quinoneses guilty, particularly in its flawed state. The majority is wrong that the defendants' actual but unreasonable belief in the existence of a facthere, the doctors' and pharmacists' good faithcould not absolve the defendants of culpability. Id. Our conscious avoidance cases say the opposite: If the jury found that the Quinoneses actually believed that the doctors and pharmacists were acting in good faith, it could not have convicted them under the doctrine of conscious avoidance. Kaiser, 609 F.3d at 566; Sicignano, 78 F.3d at 72. Because the jury was not presented with the actual belief proviso, however, it had almost no alternative but to find the Quinoneses guilty when it combined the flawed conscious avoidance instruction with the should have known knowledge element. Because the conscious avoidance instruction was presented as an alternative basis on which the jury could find knowledge[,].... it is possible that the jury could have convicted [the Quinoneses] even if it concluded [they] had an actual belief that the doctors and pharmacists were acting in good faith. Kaiser, 609 F.3d at 566. Indeed, I am convinced that there is a reasonable probability that the jury convicted [the Quinoneses] on a conscious avoidance theory and that the jury would not have done so but for the instructional error. Id. at 567. Thus, the error seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings, Marcus, 130 S.Ct. at 2164, and by the same rationale we offered in Kaiser, the Quinoneses should be entitled to a new trial.