Opinion ID: 1384716
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Attempted Obstruction of Justice Instructions Were Adequate

Text: Matthews argues three errors in the instructions for obstruction of justice under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(1). First, he contends the instructions contained an erroneous definition of corruptly. Second, he believes the instructions failed to require proof of a sufficient nexus between his acts and a particular official proceeding. Third, Matthews says the instructions did not require the jury to find that his efforts to conceal the gun were corrupt. Common to each of these arguments is a suggestion that the jury instructions understated the mens rea necessary for an obstruction of justice conviction. For reasons detailed below, we disagree. Before proceeding to Matthews's arguments, we set forth the relevant statutory provisions and jury instructions. Section 1512(c)(1) provides that: (c) Whoever corruptly (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding . . . shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. The district court instructed the jury that to convict Matthews of attempted obstruction of justice under § 1512(c)(1), it must be satisfied that the government proved the following propositions: First, Ronald Matthews attempted to destroy or conceal an object; second, Ronald Matthews acted with intent to impair the object's availability for use in an official proceeding; and third, Ronald Matthews acted corruptly. . . . For purposes of these instructions an official proceeding need not be pending or about to be instituted at the time of the offense. The term official proceeding as used in these instructions means the federal grand jury for the Southern District of Illinois. Corruptly as used in these instructions, means that the defendant acted with the purpose of wrongfully impeding the due administration of justice.
We begin with Matthews's contention that the instructions provided a flawed definition of the word corruptly. According to Matthews, the district court should have defined corruptly to mean acting with an improper motive or with an evil or wicked purpose. Matthews says the district court's failure to give this instruction permitted him to be punished for innocent conduct. In this instance, he contends, the word corruptly did not serve its intended function of distinguishing innocent obstructive actssuch as an attorney's act of advising his client to assert the right to remain silentfrom corrupt obstructive acts. Although this argument is not without force, it ultimately fails. For his argument, Matthews relies heavily on Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696, 125 S.Ct. 2129, 161 L.Ed.2d 1008 (2005), where the Court explained how the word corruptly serves to separate criminal and innocent acts of obstruction. Arthur Andersen concerned the elements of obstruction of justice under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b), which criminalizes knowingly . . . corruptly persuad[ing] another person . . . with intent to . . . cause or induce any person to . . . conceal an object with intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding. Id. at 703, 125 S.Ct. 2129. Arthur Andersen was convicted of obstructing justice under that section because it destroyed documents related to its representation of Enron Corporation after obtaining knowledge of an ongoing SEC investigation of Enron. In reversing Arthur Andersen's conviction, the Court observed that it is not necessarily corrupt to persuade another person to withhold documents from a government proceeding, even with the intent to impede government factfinding. Id. at 703-04, 125 S.Ct. 2129. If the intent to impede a proceeding were corrupt per se, the Court reasoned, an attorney who persuades his client to withhold documents under a valid claim of privilege would be guilty of obstruction. Id. at 704, 125 S.Ct. 2129. The Court then considered whether the district court's instructions were so broad as to prohibit innocent acts of obstruction and concluded that they were. The Court noted that the district court was initially inclined to instruct the jury that corruptly meant knowingly and dishonestly, with the specific intent to subvert or undermine the integrity of a proceeding. Id. at 706, 125 S.Ct. 2129. However, at the government's request, the district court excluded the word dishonestly from the definition, ultimately instructing the jury to convict if it found [the defendant] intended to `subvert, undermine, or impede' governmental factfinding. . . . Id. With that change, [n]o longer was any type of `dishonesty' necessary to a finding of guilt, and it was enough for petitioner to have simply `impeded' the Government's factfinding ability. Id. Stripped of any requirement that the defendant act dishonestly, [t]he instructions diluted the meaning of `corruptly' so that it covered innocent conduct. Id. Matthews claims that the definition of corruptly in his instructions erred in a similar fashion; we do not agree. In this case, the district court's definition of corruptly did not create the misimpression that any act designed to impede prosecution is inherently corrupt. Rather, citing the Seventh Circuit's pattern jury instructions verbatim, the district court defined corruptly as acting with the purpose of wrongfully impeding the due administration of justice. See Seventh Circuit Pattern Criminal Federal Jury Instructions for 18 U.S.C. § 1503 (1999) (emphasis added). [2] Unlike Arthur Andersen, where the `corruptly' instructions did no limiting work whatsoever, id., the instruction in this case specifically required a finding that Matthews had the purpose to wrongfully impede. Matthews protests that this was hardly enough. He urges that corruptly means to act with an improper motive or with an evil or wicked purpose and that wrongfully fails to convey that meaning. But we do not think the word corruptly need be read so narrowly. First, in Arthur Andersen, the Court propounded a definition of corruptly that is consistent with that provided in this case. The Court noted that `[c]orrupt' and `corruptly' are normally associated with wrongful, immoral, depraved, or evil. 544 U.S. at 705, 125 S.Ct. 2129 (emphases added); see United States v. Quattrone, 441 F.3d 153, 173 (2d Cir.2006) (defining the corrupt intent required for a § 1503 conviction as a `wrongful' or `immoral' intent to obstruct the grand jury's administration of justice). Second, we think the word wrongfully performs the limiting work discussed in Arthur Andersen. As explained in Arthur Andersen, under limited circumstances, a defendant is privileged to obstruct the prosecution of a crime. That privilege flows from the defendant's enjoyment of a legal right  such as the right to avoid self-incrimination. By including the word wrongfully in the definition of corruptly and criminalizing only the act of wrongfully impeding the due administration of justice, the instructions directed the jury to convict only those who have no legal right to impede justice. Cf. United States v. Bohle, 445 F.2d 54, 60 (7th Cir. 1971) (explaining that to seize a plane with a wrongful intent means to act with the general criminal intent present when one seizes or exercises control of an aircraft without having any legal right to do so.) (emphasis added), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Lawson, 653 F.2d 299, 303 n. 12 (7th Cir.1981). Thus, we see no reason to narrow our definition of the word corruptly, particularly when the Supreme Court has not retreated from our formulation. Moreover, even if we were to accept Matthews's view that the district court defined corruptly too broadly, he still could not prevail. Matthews has simply failed to show that he was prejudiced by the district court's definition of corruptly. See Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 9-10, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 144 L.Ed.2d 35 (1999) (harmless-error analysis applies when a district court's jury instructions omit or misstate an element of an offense). Specifically, he does not explain how he would have benefitted had the district court defined corruptly in accordance with his wishes to mean acting with improper motive. The overwhelming evidence established that Matthews orchestrated a scheme to conceal Qattoum's revolver from federal investigators in effort to thwart a federal firearms prosecution, and the apparent motive for his obstructive acts helping a friend escape legitimate prosecutionis surely improper. Therefore, we find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Matthews was not prejudiced by the district court's failure to offer Matthews's proposed definition of corruptly. See United States v. Haddad, 462 F.3d 783, 793 (7th Cir.2006) (An error is harmless if it is `clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have found the defendant guilty absent the error.') (quoting Neder, 527 U.S. at 18, 119 S.Ct. 1827).
On appeal, Matthews argues for the first time that the instructions did not indicate that the word corruptly was meant to modify the acts of destroying or concealing the gun. The argument goes: because the attempted obstruction of justice instruction listed corruptly as an independent third element, the jury was led to convict based on a finding that Matthews had acted corruptly in ways unrelated to the first two elements of the offense. As he failed to raise this argument below, we review only for plain error. United States v. Allen, 390 F.3d 944, 952 (7th Cir.2004); Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b). Matthews's interpretation unreasonably parses the instruction. Contrary to his claim that the instructions placed `corruptly' conspicuously by itself, as a solitary third element, the corruptly element immediately followed the other two elements of the offense; and all three appeared in the same sentence. The first element required a finding that Matthews attempted to destroy or conceal an object. The next two elements refer back to and modify the first. Both the clause that Matthews challenges (Matthews acted corruptly) and the preceding clause (Matthews acted with the intent to impair the object's availability) naturally describe the acts of attempting to conceal or destroy the object. The instructions fairly and adequately indicated that the jury needed to find that Matthews corruptly attempted to conceal the firearm. Furthermore, we note that this is a typical and unproblematic structure for presenting mens rea elements. See, e.g., Seventh Circuit Pattern Criminal Federal Jury Instructions for 18 U.S.C. § 152(6) (Third, the defendant acted knowingly and fraudulently.); Seventh Circuit Pattern Criminal Federal Jury Instructions for 26 U.S.C. § 7203 (Third, defendant acted willfully); Seventh Circuit Pattern Criminal Federal Jury Instructions for 18 U.S.C. § 286 (Fourth, that the defendant acted with the intent to defraud.). We find no error in the structure of the obstruction of justice instruction.
Matthews next contends that the district court erred in failing to require a meaningful nexus between the grand jury proceeding and his attempts to conceal the weapon. The instructions, he claims, permitted the jury to convict him even if it found that he only intended to impede an investigation, rather than a proceeding. At times, Matthews goes so far as to say that he should not have been convicted unless he knew that a proceeding was pending. As he preserved these arguments for appeal, our review is de novo. See Darif, 446 F.3d at 709. We begin by considering whether 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(1) requires a showing of nexus. In Arthur Andersen, the Court held that § 1512(b)(1) encompasses a nexus requirement. 544 U.S. at 707-08, 125 S.Ct. 2129. This means that to convict a defendant of obstructing justice under that subsection, the [obstructive] act must have a relationship in time, causation, or logic with the judicial proceedings. United States v. Aguilar, 515 U.S. 593, 599, 115 S.Ct. 2357, 132 L.Ed.2d 520 (1995). The government had argued against finding a nexus requirement under § 1512(b)(1), because to convict a defendant under any of 18 U.S.C. § 1512's subsections, an official proceeding `need not be pending or about to be instituted at the time of the offense.' Arthur Andersen, 544 U.S. at 707, 125 S.Ct. 2129 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 1512(e)(1), now codified at § 1512(f)(1)). However, the Court admonished: It is . . . one thing to say that a proceeding `need not be pending or about to be instituted at the time of the offense,' and quite another to say a proceeding need not even be foreseen. A `knowingly . . . corrupt persuader' cannot be someone who persuades others to shred documents under a document retention policy when he does not have in contemplation any particular official proceeding in which those documents might be material. Id. at 707-08, 125 S.Ct. 2129. We believe that logic applies with equal force to § 1512(c)(1) because that subsection, like § 1512(b)(1), speaks in terms of the relationship between obstructive acts and a proceeding. Compare § 1512(b)(1) (requiring that a defendant act with intent to . . . influence, delay or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding), with § 1512(c)(1) (requiring that defendant act with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding). Accordingly, before a defendant may be convicted of obstruction under § 1512(c)(1), he must believe that his acts will be likely to affect a pending or foreseeable proceeding. See Arthur Andersen, 544 U.S. at 707, 125 S.Ct. 2129; United States v. Kaplan, 490 F.3d 110, 125 (2d Cir.2007) ([A] `knowingly . . . corrupt persuader' must believe that his actions are likely to affect a particular, existing or foreseeable official proceeding.). [3] We think the jury instructions did an adequate job of conveying the nexus required under § 1512(c)(1). The instructions required the jury to find that Matthews attempted to conceal . . . an object, and that he did so with intent to impair the object's availability for use in an official proceeding.  (Emphasis added). The district court then specified that this official proceeding was the federal grand jury for the Southern District of Illinois. Under these instructions, the jury could only convict Matthews if it found that he attempted to conceal the gun with the intent to prevent its use in the federal grand jury. Contrary to Matthews's claim that the instructions eliminated any nexus, this instruction directly connected his acts with the grand jury proceeding. And, under these instructions, the jury could not have convicted Matthews without finding that he foresaw the grand jury proceedings; Matthews could not have acted with intent to impair the grand jury proceedings without some inkling that those proceedings were upcoming. The instructions did not misstate § 1512(c)(1)'s nexus requirement.