Opinion ID: 3013312
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Review of General Verdicts

Text: The Government contended at oral argument, and in supplemental briefing, that according to United States v. Asher, 854 F.2d 1483 (3d Cir. 1988), we should affirm the mail fraud convictions even if we determine that Theory Three, which relied on Margiotta, was not legally viable. In Asher, the jury returned a general verdict convicting the defendant of mail fraud, and thus did not specify whether it followed the prosecutor’s monetary-loss or deprivation of honest services theory. After the conviction, the Supreme Court ruled in McNally v. United States, 483 U.S. 350 (1987), that honest services fraud was not a legally viable theory of prosecution under § 1341. Despite not knowing whether the jury relied on the now-impermissible honest services fraud theory, we sustained the defendant’s conviction in Asher because we were “unable to hypothesize a set of circumstances under which this jury . . . could not have found a fraudulent scheme that consisted solely of depriving the citizens of their right to honest government that did not also involve tangible losses. . . .” 854 F.2d at 1495-96. The jury in this case also returned a general verdict, and thus did not specify which of the Government’s theories of mail fraud the jury believed Murphy had violated. In the Government’s submission, even if we find the Margiotta theory of mail fraud not legally viable, we must sustain Murphy’s mail fraud conviction because, as in Asher, there is no way that the jury could have found that Murphy deprived Passaic County of its right to his honest services without also finding that he devised a fraudulent scheme to 12 deprive the County of money, i.e., the payments to the Panel. We need not evaluate the merits of the Government’s contention, however, because the Supreme Court’s opinion in Griffin v. United States, 502 U.S. 46 (1991), and our interpretation of Griffin in United States v. Syme, 276 F.3d 131 (3d Cir. 2002), undermine Asher. In Griffin, the Court articulated a “clear line” distinguishing general verdicts that could have relied on a factually insufficient theory from those that might have been based on a legally invalid theory. 502 U.S. at 59. The former would be sustained, but the latter would merit reversal as the Court explained: Jurors are not generally equipped to determine whether a particular theory of conviction submitted to them is contrary to law — whether, for example, the action in question is protected by the Constitution, is time barred, or fails to come within the statutory definition of the crime. When, therefore, jurors have been left the option of relying upon a legally inadequate theory, there is no reason to think that their own intelligence and expertise will save them from error. Quite the opposite is true, however, when they have been left the option of relying upon a factually inadequate theory, since jurors are well equipped to analyze the evidence. Id. In Syme, we examined Griffin and the Court’s prior decisions concerning whether general verdicts consisting of an unconstitutional, legally invalid, or factually inadequate theory could be sustained. We concluded that “under Griffin, if one of two or more alternative theories supporting a count of conviction is either (1) unconstitutional, or (2) legally invalid, then the reviewing court should vacate the jury verdict and remand for a new trial without the invalid or unconstitutional theory.” 276 F.3d at 144. We are therefore satisfied that current precedent dictates that, should we find one of the Government’s theories of mail fraud legally invalid, we must reverse Murphy’s conviction on the mail fraud counts and remand for a new trial because the jury returned a general verdict. 13