Court Opinion

ID: 9479968
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:33:57.507821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:23.817270
License: Public Domain

NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
While respecting the views of my esteemed colleagues, I adhere to my views expressed in the original opinion with respect to the jury instruction given by the trial court on the telephone facilitation charge. The majority concedes that “the instruction at issue, unaided by further explicit instruction, was unfair and inadequate because it allowed too much chance that an unsophisticated or inattentive juror might misconstrue the trial judge’s ‘facilitate the commission of’ phrase and vote to convict, in the words of the original majority opinion, ‘without finding that the underlying offense was actually committed.’ ”
While I agree that the “ambiguous and incomplete instruction in the present case did not invade the province of the jury and prevent it from considering whether or not the drug crimes underlying the facilitation counts actually occurred,” neither does it expressly inform the jury that it is required to find that those crimes had been committed. See Mentz, 840 F.2d at 324; Hoover, 802 F.2d at 177. I cannot agree that an instruction which failed to specifically charge the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the underlying offense had been committed is harmless error. Because I continue to believe that the instructions as given by the trial court failed to “fairly and adequately” describe the underlying offense element of those charges, I would vacate the jury’s verdict as to Counts Two through Ten.