Opinion ID: 621801
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Chris Cain's Remaining Claims

Text: In addition to challenging his conviction on the RICO counts, Chris Cain makes a number of other arguments. First, he challenges the adequacy of the indictment with regard to one of the mail fraud charges. At trial, the government argued that Chris Cain violated the mail fraud statute by scheming to burn down a house owned by his parents so that they could collect the insurance proceeds. Chris Cain maintains that the relevant count of the indictment fail[ed] to allege a cognizable mail fraud, and [that] the government's efforts to remedy this defect at trial worked a constructive amendment. In support of this argument, Chris Cain cites United States v. Ingles, 445 F.3d 830 (5th Cir.2006), in which the Fifth Circuit held that the mail fraud statute did not embrace a defendant's plot to burn down his son's house, where the son, who was the insured party, had no knowledge of the plot and the father merely hoped for or expected a share of the insurance proceeds. Id. at 836-38. We need not consider whether to adopt Ingles as the law of this Circuit, because, contrary to Chris Cain's assertions, the indictment did charge that Ann Cain and David Cain, Sr. were complicit in their son's fraud. In assessing Chris Cain's constructive amendment claim, we must consider whether the indictment gave notice of the core of criminality to be proven at trial, United States v. Patino, 962 F.2d 263, 266 (2d Cir. 1992) (internal citations and quotations omitted), and whether the proof that the government actually presented modif[ied] essential elements of the offense charged, United States v. Clemente, 22 F.3d 477, 482 (2d Cir.1994). We have no trouble concluding that Chris Cain had sufficient notice that the government would attempt to prove that his parents knew of and participated in his insurance fraud scheme. The indictment alleged that Ann Cain and David Cain, Sr. made a claim to the New York Central Mutual Insurance Company in which they falsely stated, in sum and substance, that the fire that destroyed the aforesaid residence was the result of an accident, and not the result of any intentional act (emphasis added). As Chris Cain's trial counsel acknowledged before the district court, the parents' claim could be false only if one or both of them knew or had some connection with the fire by procuring it or doing it directly. It is therefore clear that the indictment gave Chris Cain adequate notice of the charge against which he would be required to defend. Nor is it the case, as Chris Cain contends, that the district court's charge allowed the jury to convict him of mail fraud even if Ann Cain and David Cain, Sr. had no knowledge of the scheme and therefore filed a legitimate insurance claim. The jury was instructed that in order to return a conviction, it was required to find that insurance fraud scheme was carried out using false or fraudulent . . . representations and that a statement, representation or claim is false if untrue when made and was then known to be untrue by the person making it or causing it to be made. The jury was also told that the government alleges that a false representation was made when . . . Ann Cain and David Cain, Sr. . . . stated that the fire that destroyed the property specified in the count at issue was not the result of design or procurement on the part of the insured or that the cause and origin of the fire was unknown to the insured. Regardless of who the jury understood to be the person . . . causing [the insurance claim] to be made, in order to find that the claim was false under the court's instruction, the jury was required to conclude that the assertion that the insured partiesAnn Cain and David Cain, Sr.did not procure the fire or know its origin was untrue when made. Second, Chris Cain raises a related objection to the district court's admission of certain testimony about the arson of his parents' rental property. At trial, the government offered testimony from Darwin Fifield, a tenant in the house just prior to its destruction. Fifield testified that, less than two weeks before the fire, he had an argument with Ann Cain during which she said that she would rather burn the house than let [him] have it and that it was worth more to her burned to the ground than it was for [the Fifields] to be living in it. The defense objected to the statements as hearsay, but the district court admitted them as statements of [Ann Cain's] then existing . . . intent under the hearsay exception set out in Federal Rule of Evidence 803(3). Cain argues that the admission of the statements was erroneous in light of the fact that they were devoid of any [reference to an] intention to act in the future. Moreover, as Chris Cain notes, we have construed Rule 803(3) to permit admission of a statement of intent against a non-declarant only when there is independent evidence which connects the declarant's statement with the non-declarant's activities. United States v. Delvecchio, 816 F.2d 859, 863 (2d Cir.1987). Although Rule 803(3) is broader than Cain suggests, embracing not only statements of intent but statements of the declarant's then existing state of mind, emotion, sensation, or physical condition more generally, see Fed.R.Evid. 803(3), we need not decide whether these statements come within the rule or whether the requirements of Delvecchio were satisfied. To the extent that the statements were offered as relevant to Ann Cain's state of mind, they were not hearsay at all. Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, to constitute hearsay, a statement must be an assertion, Fed.R.Evid. 801(a)(1), that is offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted, id. 801(c). The purpose of the rule is to exclude from the jury's consideration factual assertions made by declarants whose credibility is neither supported by an oath nor subject to testing by cross-examination. See 5 Weinstein's Federal Evidence § 802.02[3] (The hearsay rule seeks to eliminate the danger that evidence will lack reliability because faults in the perception, memory, or narration of the declarant will not be exposed.). As Chris Cain's argument itself points out, Ann Cain's statements did not contain any direct assertion about her intention to burn down the house. Nothing in the government's proposed use of the statements rested on Ann Cain's truthfulness. Rather, any evidentiary weight the statements may have had with respect to the question of her intentions was circumstantial, and its probative value rested on the fact that they were made (as to which the jury could assess the credibility of the witness, Fifield, who testified, under oath and subject to cross-examination, that they were made). In other words, the statements had evidentiary weight not for their truth value as statements about what Ann Cain preferred or what the value of the house was, but rather because they expressed anger at Fifield, demonstrated consciousness on the part of Ann Cain of the possibility of burning the house, and indeed could be taken as implied threats to do just that. A jury that credited Fifield's testimony that the statements were made could infer from them that Ann Cain had some involvement in the actual arson of the house that occurred shortly thereafter, without making any assessment as to the credibility of Ann Cain as the proponent of any factual assertion whatsoever. Thus, even if the district court erred in its Rule 803(3) analysis, that error was harmless because the statements were not used for an impermissible hearsay purpose and should have been admitted in any case. See United States v. Germosen, 139 F.3d 120, 127 (2d Cir.1998) (discussing the harmless error standard). Of course, under this analysis, the defendants might have sought an instruction directing that the jury not consider the statements to establish the truth of what they asserted i.e. that Ann Cain actually preferred the destruction of the house and that it was in fact worth more burned to the ground than with Fifield in it. But that argument was equally available to Chris Cain under the district court's statement-of-intent theory, and he failed to raise it. Moreover, because the non-hearsay and hearsay uses are virtually the same, insofar as both constitute almost indistinguishable variations on the point that Ann Cain's words would give a reasonable juror a basis for inferring that she was implicated in the arson that shortly followed them, any error in failing to parse out the subtly different chains of reasoning that would lead to that conclusion was harmless: the true sting of the statements is not in the truth of any assertion that they make, but lies precisely in the fact that Ann Cain twice spoke of burning Fifield's residence, during an angry confrontation with him only days before his house was in fact deliberately burned by Ann Cain's own son. Chris Cain also raises three objections to the district court's calculation of his sentencing guidelines range. Although we must remand for resentencing in any event in light of our reversal of the RICO convictions, we address his sentencing claims for the benefit of the district court on remand. We review the district court's interpretations of the Sentencing Guidelines de novo and its related findings of fact for clear error. United States v. Guang, 511 F.3d 110, 122 (2d Cir.2007). Chris Cain argues first that the evidence was legally insufficient to support his conviction on one of the RICO predicates conspiracy to destroy a vehicle belonging to Timothy Callaghan, a deputy in the Niagara County Sheriff's Department. Although the jury found this predicate proven, the government now concedes that the evidence did not support the finding. In any event, the claim is moot in light of our decision to reverse Chris Cain's RICO convictions and vacate his sentence. Cain's second sentencing argument is that the district court made insufficient factual findings to support the two-level enhancement for obstruction of justice that it adopted pursuant to U.S. Sentencing Guidelines § 3C1.1. The Probation Department found that Cain hid Mechelle Lawless from law enforcement for several weeks in order to prevent her from assisting authorities investigating the October 2, 2003 robbery of the Carter residence, and the district court adopted this finding without objection. Chris Cain now argues, however, that the district court's application of the obstruction enhancement was inconsistent with its earlier conclusion that the government had presented insufficient evidence to sustain a witness tampering conviction with respect to the same incident. That argument is meritless. The theory of witness tampering charged in the indictment required the government to prove that Chris Cain engag[ed] in misleading conduct toward Mechelle Lawless with intent to ... evade legal process summoning [her] to appear as a witness. 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)(2)(c). The district court dismissed the count because, at the time of the alleged conduct, the particular grand jury whose summons was referenced in the indictment had not yet been impaneled. Unlike the witness tampering statute, however, U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1 is not limited to avoidance of formal legal process. The sentencing court could thus conclude that, in hiding Lawless, Cain attempted to obstruct[] or impede[] ... the administration of justice with respect to the investigation of the Carter robbery without contradicting its Rule 29 ruling. U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1. Finally, Chris Cain argues that the district court erred in considering a prior trespass conviction for the purposes of calculating his criminal history score under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2. The Probation Department found that, among his other prior offenses, Chris Cain had been convicted in Somerset County, New York of Criminal Trespass in the Third Degree and sentenced to fifteen days time served. The Department recommended that the district court add one point to Chris Cain's criminal history computation because trespassing is listed in U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(c)(1) as a petty offense that must be counted if the prior offense was similar to an instant offense. Chris Cain objected to the additional point on the ground that trespassing is not similar to robbery or any of the other offenses for which he was convicted. At sentencing, the judge rejected this argument, stating: The defendant objects to one point that's being added under guideline 4A1.2(c)(1), which provides a sentencing for petty or misdemeanor offenses [is] counted only if the offense at issue is similar to [] one of the listed offenses. One of the listed offenses is trespassing. And in paragraph 102 the probation officer correctly determined that the defendant's November, 1995 conviction for criminal trespass is assessed one criminal history point because trespassing is one of the listed offenses under 4A1.2(c). The district court seems to have understood the guideline to condition whether a petty offense conviction is counted on whether the prior offense is similar to one of the enumerated offenses, of which trespassing is one. In fact the district court was required to find not only that the prior conviction was for one of the enumerated offenses or offenses similar to them but also that the prior conviction was similar to an instant offensethat is, to one of the offenses upon which the defendant is to be sentenced. On remand, it remains open to the district court to find that trespassing is sufficiently similar to one of the offenses of conviction that it may be included in Chris Cain's criminal history calculation. We express no view as to whether such a finding would be appropriate in this case. We merely note that, on the record before us, the district court does not seem to have made such a finding in the first instance.