Opinion ID: 779552
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Corruptly Element of Bribery

Text: 35 The first question challenging the Court is whether, as the majority holds, a defendant acts corruptly so as to violate the bribery statute if he intends his payment to influence a public official in any manner, or, as I think, only if he intends the public official to do what the official should not do, or to refrain from doing what he should. I thus do not disagree with the majority that a bribe payer is looking for a quid pro quo; unlike the majority, however, I think that the nature of the quid pro quo the payer is looking for matters. The corruptly element indicates that the bribe payer seeks not any manner of benefit, but seeks, rather, to corrupt. 36 To obtain relief based on a challenge to a jury instruction, a defendant must show both that the charges he requested accurately represented the law in every respect[,] and that, viewing as a whole the charge actually given, he was prejudiced. United States v. Pujana-Mena, 949 F.2d 24, 27 (2d Cir.1991) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). I address these requirements in turn. 37 Bribery under 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(1)(A) requires the jury to find that the defendant directly or indirectly, corruptly g[a]ve[], offer[ed] or promised [some]thing of value to [a] public official ... with intent ... to influence any official act performed or to be performed. Id. (emphasis added). As the majority explains, [Alfisi] argued that [USDA inspector] Cashin and other USDA officials at the [Hunts Point Market] were operating an extortion scheme and that Alfisi was coerced into paying Cashin solely to ensure that Cashin would do his job properly. Ante at 148. Alfisi contended in the district court that because he paid Cashin to do his job properly, the payment was not made corruptly; a person acts corruptly only if he intends to cause an official to breach a public duty. Thus, Alfisi argued, if an official threatens to abuse his position in a way that will harm an individual, and that individual then makes a payment to avoid the abuse, the individual does not act corruptly because his intent is not to corrupt, but only to avoid the effects of corruption. Accordingly, Alfisi requested an instruction providing that to act `corruptly' is to act with the specific intent to secure an unlawful advantage or benefit. Appellant's Letter to the District Court dated Oct. 23, 2000, at 2 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). 38 Alfisi's requested instruction accurately reflects the law as I understand it. The mere presence of lawlessness or corruption in the circumstances of a payment to an official is not enough to make it corrupt and therefore a bribe. Rather, an unlawful or corrupt result must be that which the payer specifically seeks to achieve. 39 Bribery is a crime of specific intent. United States v. Barash, 365 F.2d 395, 402 (2d Cir.1966). A person therefore does not commit bribery unless he intends to bring about the evil sought to be prevented by the bribery statute, United States v. Jacobs, 431 F.2d 754, 759 (2d Cir.1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 950, 91 S.Ct. 1613, 29 L.Ed.2d 120 (1971). The evil of bribery that the criminal law seeks to prevent, we have said, is 40 the aftermath suffered by the public when an official is corrupted and thereby perfidiously fails to perform his public service and duty. Thus the purpose of the statute is to discourage one from seeking an advantage by attempting to influence an official to depart from conduct deemed essential to the public interest. 41 Id. (emphasis added). Jacobs thus stands for the proposition that a bribe payer seeks advantage or benefit by attempting to influence an official to breach a public duty. We have repeatedly reaffirmed this principle. As is evident in many of our cases dealing with bribery, a fundamental concept of a `corrupt' act is a breach of some official duty owed to the government or the public at large. United States v. Rooney, 37 F.3d 847, 852 (2d Cir.1994); accord United States v. Zacher, 586 F.2d 912, 915 (2d Cir.1978) (The common thread that runs through common law and statutory formulations of the crime of bribery is the element of corruption, breach of trust, or violation of duty.); United States ex rel. Sollazzo v. Esperdy, 285 F.2d 341, 342 (2d Cir.1961) (Bribery in essence is an attempt to influence another to disregard his duty while continuing to appear devoted to it or to repay trust with disloyalty.). 42 Our cases thus provide that a payment made in the course of a shakedown where the public official demands payment as a quid pro quo for proper execution of his duty is not a bribe. A person who makes a payment pursuant to such extortion intends not to cultivate corruption, but only to avoid the tendrils of a corruption already sprouted. Such a person does not act corruptly within the meaning of the statute because he does not seek the lawlessness that the bribery statute aims to prevent. 43 We recognized this principle in Barash, a case in which we dismissed an argument that economic coercion is merely an affirmative defense to the bribery statute: 44 We think that if a government officer threatens serious economic loss unless paid for giving a citizen his due, the latter is entitled to have the jury consider this, not as a complete defense like duress but as bearing on the specific intent required for the commission of bribery. 45 Barash, 365 F.2d at 401-02. If a person could violate the bribery statute even if he hoped only to influence a public official to give him his due, then the fact that the person was under pressure to pay for his due would not bear on the question of specific intent. But Barash holds the opposite, and thus supports Alfisi's position. To act corruptly and therefore to commit bribery, a person must do more than merely seek to secure some benefit or quid pro quo. Rather, the benefit sought must entail a breach of duty or trust. I therefore conclude that the jury instruction that Alfisi requested was correct as a matter of law. 46 The jury instructions submitted by the district court, on the other hand, not only seem to me to be at odds with our caselaw, they also appear to me to violate principles of statutory construction. The district court's instructions defined corruptly as  specific intent to influence ... official acts .... Trial Tr. of Oct. 24, 2000, at 942 (emphasis added). Inserting this definition of corruptly into the terms of the bribery statute, the district court effectively instructed the jury that Alfisi committed bribery if he directly or indirectly, with specific intent to influence official acts [the court's definition of corruptly], [gave], offer[ed] or promise[d] [some]thing of value to [a] public official with intent to influence any official act.  (emphasis added; ellipses omitted). The district court merely used the statute's other terms to define corruptly, thus effectively reading corruptly out of the statute. I think that this was clearly an error. It is a well-settled rule of statutory construction that all parts of a statute, if at all possible, are to be given effect. Weinberger v. Hynson, Westcott & Dunning, Inc., 412 U.S. 609, 633, 93 S.Ct. 2469, 37 L.Ed.2d 207 (1973) (citing Jarecki v. G.D. Searle & Co., 367 U.S. 303, 307, 81 S.Ct. 1579, 6 L.Ed.2d 859 (1961), and D. Ginsberg & Sons, Inc. v. Popkin, 285 U.S. 204, 208, 52 S.Ct. 322, 76 L.Ed. 704 (1932)). Alfisi's definition of corruptly, unlike the district court's, gives separate meaning to each of the terms of the statute. 2 47 I find unpersuasive the majority's attempts to correct the district court's error and its reasons for dismissing Alfisi's interpretation of the statute. As indicated, it seems to me that the district court's definition of corruptly rendered that term surplusage. The majority attempts to salvage the district court's instructions by holding that they gave meaning to the term corruptly by defining it as connoting a  quid pro quo. Ante at 149-50. As noted, I agree that bribery involves the seeking of a quid pro quo, that is, an advantage in exchange for a payment. But attributing the quid pro quo element to the word corruptly does not avoid the surplusage because the words of the statute indicate that the quid pro quo element is established not by the term corruptly, but rather by the other terms, i.e., a payment with intent ... to influence any official act. That seems to me to be the import of United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of Cal., 526 U.S. 398, 119 S.Ct. 1402, 143 L.Ed.2d 576 (1999), upon which the majority relies for the proposition that a bribe payer seeks a quid pro quo. In comparing a bribe with an illegal gratuity, Sun-Diamond does not address the fact that the bribery statute contains the term corruptly while the illegal gratuity statute does not; it addresses instead the fact that the bribery statute requires intent to influence an official act while the illegal gratuity statute does not. 426 U.S. at 404, 96 S.Ct. 2119. Sun-Diamond then holds what plain meaning suggests: The quid pro quo element arises not from the term corruptly, but rather from the term to influence: 48 The distinguishing feature of each crime is its intent element. Bribery requires intent to influence an official act or to be influenced in an official act, while illegal gratuity requires only that the gratuity be given or accepted for or because of an official act. In other words, for bribery there must be a quid pro quo — a specific intent to give or receive something in exchange for an official act. An illegal gratuity, on the other hand, may constitute merely a reward for some future act that the public official will take (and may already have determined to take), or for a past act that he has already taken. 49 Id. at 404-05, 119 S.Ct. 1402 (emphasis in original). In holding that the `corrupt' intent necessary to a bribery conviction is in the nature of a quid pro quo requirement, ante at 149, the majority's construction of the statute seems not only at odds with Sun-Diamond, but also renders the term to influence surplusage by attributing its meaning to the term corruptly. 50 The majority also argues that Alfisi's position, i.e., that the term `corruptly' requires evidence of an intent to procure a violation of the public official's duty, both does not rest comfortably with the statutory language and creates a danger of underinclusion. Ante at 149-50. I think that Alfisi's construction is consistent with our case law, but even if it were not, I would find the majority's criticisms of it unpersuasive. 51 First, as I have indicated, it is the majority's suggested reading of the statute, and not Alfisi's, that I think rests uncomfortably with the statutory language because only Alfisi's gives separate meaning to each of the statute's terms — including corruptly and intent ... to influence any official act. 52 Second, an argument similar to the majority's underinclusion argument was rejected by the Supreme Court in Sun-Diamond. There the government sought to define the crime of paying an illegal gratuity broadly to cover gifts not associated with a specific official act. Sun-Diamond, 526 U.S. at 403, 119 S.Ct. 1402. The Supreme Court rejected that argument in part because: 53 [A] narrow, rather than a sweeping, prohibition is more compatible with the fact that [the illegal gratuity statute] is merely one strand of an intricate web of regulations, both administrative and criminal, governing the acceptance of gifts and other self-enriching actions by public officials.... [T]his is an area where precisely targeted prohibitions are commonplace, and where more general prohibitions have been qualified by numerous exceptions. Given that reality, a statute in this field that can linguistically be interpreted to be either a meat axe or a scalpel should reasonably be taken to be the latter. 54 Id. at 409, 412, 119 S.Ct. 1402. The top strand in the intricate web is the bribery statute, and so defendants loosed by a narrow construction of it will not fall far without tangling on other provisions. Specifically, individuals who pay public officials to avoid a threatened abuse rather than to engage in abuse will still be guilty of paying an illegal gratuity, a felony. 55 Finally, the majority argues that if a party to litigation were to pay a judge money in exchange for a favorable decision, that conduct would — and should — constitute bribery, even if a trier of fact might conclude ex post that the judgment was on the merits legally proper. Ante at 151. But such a payment would constitute bribery even under Alfisi's construction of the statute because the hypothetical payer specifically intends to influence the judge to breach his duties by deciding the case based on the identity of the parties rather than the merits. The majority rightly notes that [t]he legal merits, or lack thereof, of the judgment rendered is not an element of the offense. Id. But I do not understand Alfisi to argue otherwise. He asserts that to act `corruptly' is to act with the specific intent to secure an unlawful advantage or benefit. Under both the majority's and Alfisi's construction, all that matters is the payer's intent, which can be decided based upon the circumstances of the payment and need not depend on the payment's effect. A jury following Alfisi's statutory construction in the hypothetical case would no more need to decide whether a judgment was actually meritorious than would a jury following the majority's approach. 56 Because I conclude that Alfisi's requested jury instruction, unlike the one the district court gave, was legally correct, I turn to the second Pujana-Mena prong: prejudice. Alfisi objected to the instructions submitted, and, since they were erroneous, he is entitled to a new trial unless the error was harmless. Anderson v. Branen, 17 F.3d 552, 556 (2d Cir.1994). As indicated, Alfisi admitted at trial that he made payments to a government inspector (something he would have been hard put to deny in the face of the evidence), but argued that he did so only because the inspector threatened to breach his duty to provide critical inspection services in a timely manner if Alfisi did not pay. Alfisi supported this argument at trial with testimony by one government inspector that other inspectors were extorting and shaking down wholesalers and evidence that some of Cashin's inspections were accurate. If the jury had been properly instructed and had agreed with Alfisi on this point, it could not, in my view, have decided that the payments constituted bribes because Alfisi would not have acted corruptly. The district court defined the corruptly element, however, as requiring only a finding that Alfisi sought to influence the inspector. Intent to influence was, of course, stipulated: Alfisi admits that he sought to influence the inspector not to abuse his official position in a way that harmed Alfisi. He was thus prejudiced by the district court's instructions because, under them, the jury could have credited the evidence that Alfisi was merely submitting to extortion but still convicted him of bribery. I therefore conclude that Alfisi's bribery convictions should be overturned. 57