Court Opinion

ID: 9489910
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:27:32.13398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:47.529062
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I cannot join the majority in sustaining Jones’ conviction for aggravated sexual abuse and approving his 108-month sentence. The jury was improperly instructed on the element of force — an essential element of the offense charged and the element that elevated the crime to aggravated sexual abuse and mandated the increased sentence. This grave error in the jury instructions deprived Jones of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to have a jury determine his guilt of every element of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt. See Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 277-78, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 2080-81, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993). Because it cannot be said that the conviction was surely unattributable to the error, I respectfully dissent.
Jones was charged with aggravated sexual abuse in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2241(a)(1), which is defined as “knowingly causpng] another person to engage in a sexual act by using force against that other person.” (Emphasis added.) As our circuit has recognized, “[t]he force requirement of section 2241(a)(1) is met when the ‘sexual contact resulted from a restraint upon the other person that was sufficient that the other person could not escape the sexual contact.’” United States v. Fire Thunder, 908 F.2d 272, 274 (8th Cir.1990) (quoting United States v. Lauck, 905 F.2d 15 (2d Cir.1990)). Non-consensual sexual acts that do not involve the requisite level of actual force may constitute sexual abuse, as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2242,2 but do not rise to the level of aggravated sexual abuse.
At trial, with respect to the element of force, the district court instructed the jury:
[T]he words “by force” mean that the act of sexual intercourse was accomplished against the will of [the alleged victim] by the use of force, coercion, or threats of immediate bodily harm against the victim accompanied by apparent power of execution.
(Jury Inst. No. 5.) This instruction is flawed in several respects. Perhaps most importantly, it provides only a circular definition of force: it merely states “by force” means “by the use of force.” Without an adequate definition of force, the jury may well have inter*199preted “by force” to mean simply non-consensual, rather than requiring the use of actual restraint or physical pressure such that the alleged victim could not escape. Second, the instruction includes the term “coercion,” not part of the statutory definition of either aggravated sexual abuse or sexual abuse. This inclusion may have misled or confused the jury. Moreover, because the instruction is written in the disjunctive, it permitted the jury to convict Jones of aggravated sexual abuse for mere coercive conduct. Compounding the potential confusion, the instruction permitted the jury to convict Jones of the aggravated offense for “threats of immediate bodily harm against the victim.” Jones was not charged with either sexual abuse or aggravated sexual abuse involving the use of threats. See 18 U.S.C. § 2241(a)(2) (aggravated sexual abuse includes use of threats of death, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping); 18 U.S.C. § 2242(1) (sexual abuse includes the use of all other threats). Even if he had been, threatening or placing the victim in fear other than that someone “will be subjected to death, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping” would only constitute sexual abuse, not aggravated sexual abuse. Compare 18 U.S.C. § 2241(a)(2) with § 2242(1). With so many possible incorrect interpretations of the given instruction, we cannot assume that the jury somehow gleaned the only permissible interpretation to support a conviction: that Jones used actual force “sufficient that the [the victim] could not escape the sexual contact.”
Although Jones did not object to the instruction at trial or raise this issue on appeal, the error must not go unaddressed by our court. As the Supreme Court has long recognized, appellate courts, particularly when reviewing criminal cases, have the authority to notice significant errors sua sponte — to correct those errors that are “obvious” or “otherwise seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” See United States v. Atkinson, 297 U.S. 157, 160, 56 S.Ct. 391, 392, 80 L.Ed. 555 (1936). The error in this case rises to that level.
The error was plain under both the clear statutory language of the sexual abuse provisions and the definition of “force” established by this circuit several years before the trial. Failure to properly instruct the jury on an essential element of the charged offense affected Jones’ substantial rights because it deprived him of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to have a jury determine each and every element of the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 277-78, 113 S.Ct. at 2080-81. These constitutional deprivations cannot be considered harmless. The instruction permitted the jury to convict Jones of aggravated sexual abuse with a finding of only non-consensual sex. Moreover, the aggravated sexual abuse conviction required the district court to sentence Jones to a term between 108 and 135 months instead of the 70- to 87-month range for sexual abuse. Although the majority determined that sufficient evidence in the record supports Jones’ conviction, that does not end the analysis after an error of this importance has been detected. Rather, as the Supreme Court has instructed:
Harmless-error review looks ... to the basis on which the “jury actually rested its verdict.” The inquiry, in other words, is not whether, in a trial that occurred without the error, a guilty verdict would surely have been rendered, but whether the guilty verdict actually rendered in this trial was surely unattributable to the error. That must be so, because to hypothesize a guilty verdict that was never in fact rendered — no matter how inescapable the findings to support that verdict might be— would violate the jury-trial guarantee.
Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 279, 113 S.Ct. at 2081-82 (citations omitted).
In this case, looking at the instructions as a whole, no other instruction required the jury to make the necessary finding of force. Thus, the jury must have rested its verdict on the erroneous instruction. This court must not substitute its judgment for that of what a properly-instructed jury would conclude. Under any standard of review, our court should address this instructional error and vacate Jones’ conviction. Accordingly, I dissent.

. One commits sexual abuse, as defined by section 2242 if he or she knowingly,
(1) causes another person to engage in a sexual act by threatening or placing that other person in fear (other than by threatening or placing that other person in fear that any person will be subjected to death, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping); or
(2) engages in a sexual act with another person if that other person is—
(A) incapable of appraising the nature of the conduct; or
(B) physically incapable of declining participation in, or communicating unwillingness to engage in, that sexual act;
or attempts to do so.
18 U.S.C. § 2242.