Opinion ID: 2974600
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Challenge to Jury Instruction

Text: Kuehnemund also objects to the district court’s jury instructions, claiming that including an instruction containing the words “reckless indifference” while also giving an instruction regarding “deliberate ignorance” was sufficiently confusing to invalidate the instructions on mail fraud. This argument fails as well. 1 The Smith court ultimately held that the use of the mails was not foreseeable in that case because it involved only the insurance company’s sending an accounting copy of a claims draft from one company office to another. 934 F.2d at 272. The opinion distinguished cases involving mailings between insurance agents and their home offices, noting that such mailings are foreseeable. Id. at 273. 6 “‘Trial courts have broad discretion in drafting jury instructions,’ and thus we will review the instructions only for abuse of discretion.” United States v. Jamieson, 427 F.3d 394, 414 (6th Cir. 2005) (quoting United States v. Prince, 214 F.3d 740, 761 (6th Cir. 2000)), cert. denied, 126 S. Ct. 2909 (2006). To show that the district court abused its discretion, the defendant must show that “the instructions, viewed as a whole, were confusing, misleading, or prejudicial.” Id. (quoting United States v. Harrod, 168 F.3d 887, 892 (6th Cir. 1999)). Kuehnemund offers no indication that the “reckless indifference” instruction actually confused the jury.2 Further, the context of the instructions reveals that the district court did not abuse its discretion. The district court first instructed the jury regarding the elements of mail fraud. In this instruction, the court noted that “[t]he term false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises” includes statements made “with reckless indifference as to whether” they were true or false. 5 Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) at 734. This instruction applied only to the mail-fraud counts, and was consistent with the mail-fraud instruction contained in the 2005 Sixth Circuit Pattern Jury Instructions § 10.01(2)(B).3 Next, the district court offered a more general instruction on proving the defendant’s state of mind. Here, the district court instructed, “No one can avoid responsibility for a crime by deliberately ignoring the obvious. If you are convinced that the defendant deliberately ignored a high probability that the [information] he was providing for 1994 through 1997 . . . was false, then you 2 The “reckless indifference” instruction is the only one to which Kuehnemund objected at