Opinion ID: 654601
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: United States v. Gipson and the Distinct Conceptual Groupings Test

Text: 44 Correa argues that this court's precedent in Gipson mandates reversal of the district court's exclusion of his unanimity instruction. In Gipson, this court was confronted with the construction of a statute which criminalized any of six proscribed acts--receiving, concealing, storing, bartering, selling, or disposing--involving a stolen vehicle moving in interstate commerce. 553 F.2d at 458. Evidence was introduced at trial that the defendant had engaged in each of the prohibited acts. Id. at 455. Since all six alternatives were given to the jury in a single count, the jurors requested guidance as to whether they must agree on one of the acts in particular before a conviction could be returned. Id. at 455-56. In response, the trial court specifically instructed the jury as follows: 45 A third question that may be the one the jury is really asking is, must there be an agreement by all twelve jurors as to which act of those several charged in Count Two, that the defendant did.... If all twelve agreed that he had done some one of those acts, but there was not agreement that he had done the same act, would that support a conviction? The answer is yes. 46 Id. at 456. Not surprisingly, the jury convicted Gipson of this count when it resumed deliberations. This court reversed, holding that it was impermissible to submit such disparate theories in one count and to instruct the jurors that they need not agree on which act the defendant had committed in violation of the statute. Id. at 458-59. Instead, the trial court should have split the acts into distinct conceptual groupings to preserve the defendant's right to a unanimous verdict. Id. 12 This Circuit considered it impermissible to fold together the two groupings into one charge question since they were sufficiently different that the jury may have been permitted to convict Gipson even though there may have been significant disagreement among the jurors as to what he did. Id. However, within each of these groupings, the acts are sufficiently analogous to permit a jury finding of the actus reus of the offense to be deemed 'unanimous' despite differences among jurors as to which of the intragroup acts the defendant committed. Id. at 458. The conceptual groupings test, as it came to be known, was adopted in several jurisdictions. E.g.,United States v. Duncan, 850 F.2d 1104, 1113 (6th Cir.1988), cert. denied sub nom. Downing v. United States, 493 U.S. 1025, 110 S.Ct. 732, 107 L.Ed.2d 751 (1990); United States v. Peterson, 768 F.2d 64, 66-67 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 923, 106 S.Ct. 257, 88 L.Ed.2d 264 (1985). 47 The Supreme Court has recently criticized the Gipson rationale when it interpreted the unanimity requirement in the context of the Arizona first-degree murder statute. SeeSchad v. Arizona, --- U.S. ----, ----, 111 S.Ct. 2491, 2494, 115 L.Ed.2d 555 (1991). The government implies that Schad has drained Gipson of its vitality. Brief of Appellee at p. 23. Schad involved a constitutional attack upon Arizona's first-degree murder statute which allows for conviction either for premeditated murder or for felony murder. Justice Souter, writing for the plurality, framed the issue as one of what limits may be imposed upon a state in defining alternative means to commission of a criminal action. --- U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 2496. Specifically, the Court was to determine whether Arizona could, in accordance with the federal Constitution, define premeditated murder and felony murder as alternative means to satisfy the mens rea element of first degree murder. Id. Asserting that there was no reason ... why the rule that the jury need not agree as to mere means of satisfying the actus reus element of an offense 13 should not apply equally to alternative means of satisfying the element of mens rea, at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 2497, the plurality advocated a new approach to defining the permissible limits for statutory alternatives. Id. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 2500. In doing so, Justice Souter rejected the Gipson distinct conceptual groupings test as being too indeterminate to provide concrete guidance to courts faced with verdict specificity questions. --- U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 2498. According to the plurality, instead of deriv[ing] any single test for the level of definitional and verdict specificity permitted by the Constitution, the court should instead focus upon a distillate of the concept of due process with its demands for fundamental fairness ... and for the rationality that is an essential component of that fairness. Id. In applying this fairness and rationality approach in a given case, Justice Souter counseled that the court must look both to history and wide practice as guides to fundamental values, as well as to narrower analytical methods of testing the moral and practical equivalence of the different mental states that may satisfy the mens rea element of a single offense. Id. 14 The plurality then concluded that equating premeditation and felonious intent as comparably culpable mental states finds substantial historical and contemporary echoes, and is therefore permissible. Id. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 2501. 15 48