Opinion ID: 622756
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Supplemental Charge

Text: In response to a jury request to clarify how many acts have to be proven in order to reach a verdict on Count No. One, i.e., substantive racketeering, Trial Tr. at 1854, the district court instructed that [b]efore you can find the defendant guilty of Count No. One, you must find beyond a reasonable doubt unanimously that at least two racketeering acts have been proved, id. at 1859. The district court re-emphasized that proof of two acts was not itself sufficient to support conviction; the government was further required to prove each of the other elements of racketeering. Defense counsel expressly agreed to this instruction before it was read to the jury, raising an objection only after the jury indicated it had reached a verdict. We need not here decide whether counsel's failure to object to the supplemental instruction before the jury resumed its deliberations limits our review to plain error, see Fed.R.Crim.P. 30(d), because the instruction was not error at all. Coppola contends that the instruction suggests a goal to convict insofar as it responds to a jury inquiry about the number of acts required to reach a verdict with the number of acts required to reach a guilty verdict. Appellant Br. at 102. But the jury inquiry can only reasonably be construed to pertain to a guilty verdict as there would be no need to ask how many acts must be proved to return a verdict of acquittal. Because the supplemental instruction was a correct statement of the law, we identify no error.