Opinion ID: 2709418
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Specific phrasing

Text: Under the second step of our analysis, we must also decide whether the district court’s phrasing of the instruction constituted an abuse of discretion. Dickerson, 705 F.3d at 688. It was not. The case law on this issue is muddled, and the district court tried to use phrases that the jury would find meaningful. We do not feel those choices misled or confused the jury in a way that warrants reversal. Brown first argues that the court’s instruction did not specifically state that the jury must acquit if it found only that the seller knew the buyer would resell the drugs. Although true, that omission would not have confused the jury. The first sentence of the instruction explicitly stated, “[a] conspiracy to distribute drugs or possess drugs with intent to distribute requires more than simply an agreement to exchange money for drugs which the seller knows will be resold.” (R. 115 at 23.) Thus, the instruction makes clear that mere knowledge of No. 12-2743 21 further sales is not a conspiracy. Furthermore, the jury also received an instruction that, if it did not find the existence of a conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, then it must acquit. (Id. at 20.) Therefore, when considered in tandem, these two instructions provide the guidance Brown claims was lacking. Brown also argues that the instruction invoked an impermissible multi-factor approach. This argument misconstrues our precedent. Some of our opinions on buyer-seller instructions indeed criticize a multi-factor approach to this issue. See, e.g., Nunez, 673 F.3d at 664–66; Colon, 549 F.3d at 567–70. This criticism, however, was primarily aimed toward the old pattern instruction. See Nunez, 673 F.3d at 664–66 (criticizing several factors in the old instruction); Colon, 549 F.3d at 567–70. As discussed earlier, that instruction not only provided no guidance on how to weigh its various factors, but it also included several factors that did not actually distinguish conspiracies from buyer-seller relationships. Our cases do not prohibit a multi-factor approach per se. Rather, district courts must be careful to avoid the maladies that plagued our old pattern instruction. The court in this case certainly did so. Finally, Brown alleges that the district court abused its discretion by even offering an instruction that discussed credit sales, because, according to Brown, the government did not show any evidence of credit sales. This argument serves as an apt transition into the second section of this opinion, which discusses sufficiency of the evidence. More details can be found in the section below, but, for now, we simply state that there was sufficient evidence for the court to include credit sales in the instruction. 22 No. 12-2743 Thus, for the reasons listed above, we find the wording of the district court’s buyer-seller instruction was not an abuse of discretion.