Opinion ID: 1384716
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Corruptly Was Properly Defined

Text: 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).