Opinion ID: 2999173
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Marriage fraud may be committed by one party

Text: to the marriage, or a person who arranged the marriage, yet the other spouse may genuinely intend to marry. If one spouse intended the mar- riage to be fraudulent, when the ceremony took place, but the other spouse intended it to be gen- uine, then the one committed marriage fraud but not the other. 3. The marriage is legitimate so long as Anouar Darif intended to establish a life with his spouse at the time he married her, even if securing an immi- gration benefit was one of the factors that led him to marry her. 4. A marriage between a foreign person and a United States citizen is not required to be more conven- tional, or successful, than a marriage between U.S. citizens. The district court denied the inclusion of all four instructions. Defendant argues that this was error because all of the instructions are necessary to provide the jury with a full and accurate statement of the marriage fraud offense. Defendant bases this argument on several cases from other federal circuit courts, but none from the Seventh Circuit. See United States v. Orellana-Blanco, 294 F.3d 1143, 1151 (9th Cir. 2002); United States v. Tagalicud, 84 F.3d 1180, 1185 (9th Cir. 1996); Cho v. Gonzalez, 404 F.3d 96, 102-03 (1st Cir. 2005); Bark v. Immigration & Naturalization Service, 511 F.2d 1200, 1201-02 (9th Cir. 1975). We find that Defendant’s proposed jury instructions are not supported by the language of the statute defining the marriage fraud offense, 8 U.S.C. § 1325(c), nor by this Circuit’s case law. The statute provides that “[a]ny individual who knowingly enters into a marriage for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws No. 05-3377 15 shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or fined not more than $250,000, or both.” 8 U.S.C. § 1325(c). Defendant’s first and third proposed jury instructions are misstatements of the law. Under this Circuit’s precedent, the government is not required to show that Defendant lacked intent to establish a life with Kirklin; it need only show that Defendant entered into the marriage with Kirklin for the purpose of evading immigration laws. Additionally, even if Defendant “intended to establish a life with” Kirklin, he still could have entered into the marriage for purposes of evading the immigration laws—especially since Defendant and Kirklin would have to appear before the INS several years into their marriage in order for Defendant to receive a permanent green card. The second instruction proposed by Defendant is already encompassed in the directions the district court approved. The district court instructed the jury that it must find “that the defendant knowingly entered into a marriage for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws.” (Emphasis added.) If the jury agreed with Defendant’s argument that he thought he was entering a valid marriage even though Kirklin did not, then it would find, under the existing jury instructions, that defendant had not “knowingly entered into” the marriage for fraudulent purposes. The fourth instruction proposed by Defendant is simply irrelevant. Neither the government nor the district court ever suggested that a marriage between a foreign citizen and a U.S. citizen is fraudulent unless it is conventional and successful. The key inquiry, which is reflected in the jury instructions that were used at Defendant’s trial, is whether Defendant entered into the marriage for the purpose of evading the immigration laws. If the answer is yes, it does not matter how conventional or successful the marriage is, Defendant has committed marriage fraud. 16 No. 05-3377 Likewise, if the answer is no, it does not matter how unconventional or unsuccessful the marriage is, Defendant is innocent. 2. Witness Tampering Defendant asserts that he asked the district court to include a definition of “corruptly persuade” in the jury instructions, but that the court refused to do so. Defendant never claims that he offered his own definition of the phrase. The witness tampering offense is defined at 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b): (b) Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to— (1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding[ ] ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. The district court instructed the jury that in order to find Defendant guilty of witness tampering, it must find that 1. On or about October 12, 2004, Dianna Kirklin was a prospective witness; 2. That the defendant attempted to corruptly persuade Kirklin to provide false testimony; 3. That the defendant acted knowingly with the intent to influence Kirklin’s testimony. No. 05-3377 17 Defendant argues that under the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696, 125 S. Ct. 2129 (2005), the district court’s failure to define “corruptly persuade” for the jury constitutes reversible error. In Arthur Andersen, the Court found that a jury instruction on a witness tampering charge was insufficient because it failed to adequately convey 1) that the statute contains an intent element; and 2) that the statute requires proof of a nexus between the corrupt persuasion and a particular proceeding. See Arthur Andersen, 125 S. Ct. at 2136-37. We find that Defendant has waived his right to challenge the omission of the definition of “corruptly persuade,” because he did not raise it before the district court. At trial, Defendant agreed to the proposed jury instructions for the witness tampering charge. Indeed, the district court used instructions that Defendant himself proposed. Cf. United States v. Gonzalez, 319 F.3d 291, 298 (7th Cir. 2003) (challenge to jury instruction waived when defendants accepted challenged instruction). Defendant did ask the district court whether the jury might be confused by the term “corruptly persuade” and whether there was a standard definition of the term. The district court responded that there was not, and told Defendant to file a proposed definition if he wanted one to be included. Defendant did not file a proposed instruction, and cannot now complain that the district court erred by not including its own definition. Finally, we note that the jury instructions used by the district court were sufficient under Arthur Andersen, 125 S. Ct. 2129. In that case, the defendant was charged with witness tampering based on its order to employees to shred certain documents. The Supreme Court found that the jury instructions on the charge were insufficient because they “required no type of dishonesty and required 18 No. 05-3377 no nexus between the persuasion used to destroy documents and any particular proceeding.” Id. at 2136. Those problems are absent here. The district court’s jury instructions adequately convey that the jury must find that Defendant acted dishonestly. They state that the jury must find that Defendant “attempted to corruptly persuade Kirklin to provide false testimony” and “acted knowingly with intent to influence Kirklin’s testimony.” (Emphasis added.) It was also sufficiently clear to the jury that the witness tampering charge was related to “a particular proceeding.” They jury instructions state that the jury must find that “on or about October 12, 2004, Dianna Kirklin was a prospective witness.” On October 12, 2004, Defendant was in jail awaiting trial on the marriage fraud charges. Kirklin was a prospective witness at his trial on those charges. Thus, in this case, failure to include a definition of the term “corruptly persuade” did not deny Defendant a fair trial.