Opinion ID: 3185948
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: Even though Agent Smith’s testimony was admissible, we must still decide whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain the jury’s verdict that JPMorgan and Big Horn were FDIC insured when Defendant committed the charged acts. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, United States v. Cooper, 375 F.3d 1041, 1044 (10th Cir. 2004), we hold that the evidence was sufficient to find that JPMorgan was FDIC insured on the relevant date. Because that is enough to sustain the conviction, we affirm. At the outset we note that a bank’s status as an FDIC-insured institution on the date of the crime is an element of federal bank fraud that must be proved to the jury 16 beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Rackley, 986 F.2d 1357, 1360–61 (10th Cir. 1993) (“In order to convict the defendant of bank fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1344, the government was required to prove . . . that the financial institution was then insured by the [FDIC].”). Despite the importance of this element, this case is just one of many in which the government has treated proof of FDIC-insured status as an afterthought. We continue to be “troubled by the government’s casual treatment of this element.” United States v. Bindley, 157 F.3d 1235, 1239 (10th Cir. 1998). Proof is not difficult. The FDIC could not make it easier. Its website states that it can “assist prosecutors who need to prove an institution’s insured status under a criminal statute by providing a ‘proof’ of insured status.” FDIC, Instructions for Requesting Confirmation that an Institution was FDIC-Insured on the Date of an Offense (July 2, 2011), https://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/ProofofFDICInsuredStatus.html (last visited Nov. 13, 2015). All a prosecutor need do is send a fax to the number provided and the FDIC will provide a statement of coverage at the relevant time. See id; Ex. 1 at 2.2 To be sure, the evidence in this case was not as strong as the website procedure would have yielded. But viewed in the light most favorable to the government, it was sufficient. Regarding JPMorgan, Agent Smith testified that “in [his] research . . . 2 There may even be easier ways to prove a bank’s FDIC-insured status using the FDIC website. Given how simple the FDIC has made it for a prosecutor to prove coverage, we do not expect to see another case like this in this circuit. If we cannot rely on the assistant United States attorneys with their law degrees to obtain this evidence, perhaps we can at least rely on the FBI to deposit it in the prosecutor’s lap. 17 JPMorgan Chase bank [is] federally insured.” R., Vol. 3 at 86. He described that research as “pull[ing] up the FDIC website and [finding] their information and their certificate number.” Id. at 85.3 He said that checking the FDIC website to determine whether a bank is FDIC insured is part of his “normal course of business as an FBI agent.” Id. at 86. From this testimony a jury could reasonably infer that when Agent Smith accessed the FDIC website, he read entries showing that JPMorgan was insured by the FDIC on that date. And if the date that Smith checked the website was sufficiently close to the time of Defendant’s offense, the jury could also reasonably infer that the bank was insured at the time of Defendant’s offense. See Sliker, 751 F.2d at 484–85 (noting “the principle that the subsequent existence of a condition is some evidence of its prior existence, at least when the time span is not too great and there is no suggestion of an intervening circumstance that might call its previous existence into question,” and holding that testimony that bank “is” FDIC insured (at time of trial) permitted jury to infer that bank was insured at time of crime (more than three years earlier, see id. at 480, 496)). Compare United States v. Ware, 416 F.3d 1118, 1122 (9th Cir. 2005) (less than 3 The FDIC website provides a “BankFind” tool by which anyone can research the FDIC status of an individual bank. See FDIC, BankFind, https://research.fdic.gov/bankfind/ (last visited Feb. 5, 2016). This tool permits searching for FDIC-insured banking institutions by bank name, FDIC number, or location. See id. Once a bank is selected, the website provides various information about the bank, including FDIC status (active or inactive), FDIC certificate number, when the bank was established, and when it was first insured. See FDIC, BankFind: JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association (FDIC #: 628), https://research.fdic.gov/bankfind/detail.html?bank=628&name=JPMorgan%20 Chase%20Bank,%20National%20Association (last visited Feb. 5, 2015). Links are also available that display the bank’s locations, history, and financial data. See id. 18 six-month delay between crime and trial allows jury to infer “the existence of past insurance coverage from testimony of present insurance coverage”), with United States v. Ali, 266 F.3d 1242, 1244 (9th Cir. 2001) (no inference of FDIC coverage could be drawn based on testimony “solely in the present tense at trial, well over two years after the time of the alleged offense”). In this case the jury could draw a reasonable inference that Agent Smith checked the FDIC website within a few months of the offense. Defendant’s offense against JPMorgan occurred in August 2012. Smith investigated the matter and arrested Defendant in October, although only on the charge of defrauding Big Horn. A superseding indictment handed down in March 2013 included the charge of defrauding JPMorgan, which was described as a “federally insured financial institution[],” R., Vol. 1 at 66. (It appears that the jury was given a date-stamped copy of the indictment.) A jury could infer that Agent Smith conducted his research on JPMorgan’s FDIC insurance before that indictment issued, about seven months after the offense. In our view, that time lapse is sufficiently short that the jury could infer FDIC insurance coverage in the summer of 2012. See United States v. Brunson, 907 F.2d 117, 119 (10th Cir. 1990) (relying in part on documentary evidence showing federal insurance coverage seven months after the crime as circumstantial evidence of insurance on the date of the crime). Moreover, our examination of the trial exhibits reveals two mortgage-loan statements—dated July 30, 2012, and August 31, 2012—which both include the notation “JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Member FDIC.” United States v. Iverson, No. 12-CR19 245-J, Trial Ex. 500 at 9–10, 13–14 (D. Wyo. 2012). These documents, admitted without objection as business records of the bank, are strong corroboration that JPMorgan was FDIC insured both immediately before and immediately after the offense occurred. See United States v. Pascarella, 84 F.3d 61, 71 (2d Cir. 1996) (finding sufficient evidence of bank’s FDIC insurance in part based on Defendant’s “bank statements stat[ing] that the bank was so insured”). In all, we are satisfied that the evidence regarding JPMorgan’s FDIC status was sufficient to support a jury finding that JPMorgan was FDIC insured on the date of the offense. Because there was sufficient evidence that JPMorgan was FDIC insured on the date of the offense, we need not address Defendant’s argument that there was insufficient evidence of Big Horn’s coverage. Defendant’s offense, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344, requires defrauding only one financial institution, not two. We recognize that the indictment charged Defendant with defrauding both institutions. But indictments typically charge alternative means of committing an offense in the conjunctive. Doing so establishes that the grand jury found that the defendant probably committed the offense via all the alternative means. See United States v. Daily, 921 F.2d 994, 1001 (10th Cir. 1990) (“[I]t is generally accepted procedure to use ‘and’ in an indictment where a statute uses the word ‘or.’ This assures that defendants are not convicted on information not considered by the grand jury.”), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506 (1995). This leaves to the petit jury to determine whether the government can prove any of the means. The jury instructions at trial typically describe 20 the means of committing the offense in the alternative and allow the jury to convict if it finds any of the means beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Earls, 42 F.3d 1321, 1327 (10th Cir. 1994) (“[I]t is entirely proper for the district court to instruct the jury in the disjunctive, though the indictment is worded in the conjunctive.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Gunter, 546 F.2d 861, 868–69 (10th Cir. 1976) (“It is hornbook law that a crime denounced in the statute disjunctively may be alleged in an indictment in the conjunctive, and thereafter proven in the disjunctive.”). If after conviction it is determined that there was insufficient evidence of guilt with respect to one of the alternative means, we presume that the jury did not base its verdict on that means and we will affirm if there was sufficient evidence of any of the other means. See Griffin v. United States, 502 U.S. 46, 56 (1991) (“Petitioner cites no case, and we are aware of none, in which we have set aside a general verdict because one of the possible bases of conviction was neither unconstitutional . . . nor even illegal . . . , but merely unsupported by sufficient evidence.”); United States v. Ayon Corrales, 608 F.3d 654, 657 (10th Cir. 2010) (“[W]hen there is sufficient evidence to support a conviction on one theory of guilt on which the jury was properly instructed, we will not reverse the conviction on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to convict on an alternative ground on which the jury was instructed.”). On occasion, as here, the jury instructions unnecessarily set forth the means of committing the offense in the conjunctive (just as in the indictment), stating that the jury 21 must find that the defendant committed the offense through all the alleged means.4 In that circumstance we have previously adopted what we have called the law of the case regarding unobjected-to elements instructions in criminal prosecutions. We have held that each charged element, even if unnecessary, must be proved, and reversal is required if there is insufficient evidence of any element. See, e.g., United States v. Romero, 136 F.3d 1268, 1273 (10th Cir. 1998); United States v. Cronic, 900 F.2d 1511, 1515 n.3 (10th Cir. 1990); United States v. Killip, 819 F.2d 1542, 1547–48 (10th Cir. 1987); United States v. Biglow, 554 F. App’x 679, 683–84 (10th Cir. 2014). But those holdings have 4 The jury was instructed that it must find that Defendant schemed to defraud “Big Horn Federal Savings Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank” and that “Big Horn Federal Savings Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank were insured by the [FDIC.].” R., Vol. 1 at 115 (emphasis added). Jury Instruction No. 18 told the jury: …. To find the defendant guilty of this crime you must be convinced that the government has proved each of the following beyond a reasonable doubt: First: the defendant, Marvin Iverson, knowingly executed a scheme or artifice to obtain money or property from Big Horn Federal Savings Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises; Second: Big Horn Federal Savings Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank are financial institutions within the meaning of the law; in this case, that means the government must prove that Big Horn Federal Savings Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank were insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; Third: the false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises that the defendant made were material, meaning they would naturally tend to influence, or were capable of influencing the decision of the Big Horn Federal Savings Bank and the JPMorgan Chase Bank. Id. at 115. 22 now been overruled by the Supreme Court’s opinion in Musacchio v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 709 (2016), which held that “when a jury instruction sets forth all the elements of the charged crime but incorrectly adds one more element, a sufficiency challenge should be assessed against the elements of the charged crime, not against the erroneously heightened command in the jury instruction,” id. at 715. The Court said that the law-ofthe-case doctrine is inapplicable in this context, explaining that “the doctrine is something of a misnomer when used to describe how an appellate court assesses a lower court’s rulings.” Id. at 716 (internal quotation marks omitted). The doctrine “generally provides that when a court decides upon a rule of law, that decision should continue to govern the same issues in subsequent stages in the same case. . . . [But an] appellate court’s function is to revisit matters decided in the trial court.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).5 In short, the government adequately proved the offense charged in the indictment.