Court Opinion

ID: 9462115
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:32:28.659105+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:24.876538
License: Public Domain

LAY, HEANEY and BRIGHT, Circuit Judges
(dissenting).
We respectfully dissent. The defendant is entitled to a new trial based on the trial court’s erroneous instruction.
We sense there exists no fundamental disagreement between the majority and dissenting views herein on the law governing the definition of willfulness under § 7203. At issue here is the adequacy of the district court’s instructions; in other words whether the district court properly conveyed to the jury the necessary elements of the offense under § 7203. The majority concedes lack of clarity in the district court’s instruction and suggests modification of the instruction. However, in doing so, it finds no prejudicial error.
In view of the Supreme Court opinion in United States v. Bishop, 412 U.S. 346, 93 S.Ct. 2608, 36 L.Ed.2d 941 (1973), there should exist no major dispute as to what the term willful means under § 7203. Bishop emphasized that an essential element of willfulness is a specific intent to evade the law. The Supreme Court in Bishop observed:
The Court’s consistent interpretation of the word “willfully” to require an element of mens rea implements the *979pervasive intent of Congress to construct penalties that separate the purposeful tax violator from the well-meaning, but easily confused, mass of taxpayers.
Id. at 361, 93 S.Ct. at 2017.
This court in United States v. Bengimina, 499 F.2d 117 (8th Cir. 1974), recognized that the term willful is consistent with the rule in Bishop. Judge Gibson in announcing the court’s decision at that time wrote:
This requirement of willfulness has been formulated as:
“[B]ad faith or evil intent,” Murdock, 290 U.S. at 398 [54 S.Ct. at 226], or “evil motive and want of justification in view of all the financial circumstances of the taxpayer,” Spies, 317 U.S. at 498 [63 S.Ct. at 364], or knowledge that the taxpayer “should have reported more income than he did.” Sansone, 380 U.S., at 353 [85 S.Ct. at 1011].
Id. at 119 (emphasis added).
Our earlier panel opinion recognized that it is not essential to include the terms “bad purpose or evil motive” in the definition of willfulness as long as the trial court makes clear that willfulness is a “voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal duty.” The panel also recognized that the decisions of United States v. Hawk, 497 F.2d 365 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 838, 95 S.Ct. 67, 42 L.Ed.2d 65 (1974), United States v. Klee, 494 F.2d 394 (9th Cir.) cert. denied, 419 U.S. 835, 95 S.Ct. 62, 42 L.Ed.2d 61 (1974) and United States v. McCorkle, 511 F.2d 482 (7th Cir. 1975) (en banc), petition for cert. filed, 17 Cr.L. 4082 (U.S. May 1, 1975) (No. 74-1371) all hold that the statute does not require proof of intent to defraud.
The trial court instructed the jury that the defendant could be convicted if she intended not to file a return when she knew she should file. However the court also instructed the jury that the defendant could be guilty under § 7203 if she simply failed to file “deliberately, intentionally and without justifiable excuse.” 1 If we correctly understand the reasoning of the majority opinion it is urged that “without justifiable excuse” supplies the missing element of mens rea, that is the bad purpose and evil motive not to comply with a known legal duty. The majority reasons that in the future it would be better to abandon the phrase “without justifiable excuse” and instruct specifically that there must be a voluntary and intentional violation of a known legal duty.2 We agree as to the *980need for new phraseology, but we respectfully submit the ambiguity resulting from the district court’s instruction failed to clearly set forth the necessary requirement of mens rea and resulted in prejudicial error to the defendant.
The majority reasons that the term “without justifiable excuse” is simply another way of saying that the jury must find a wrongful purpose to disobey the law. In so doing, the majority distinguishes between “without justifiable excuse” and “without legal justification,” asserting that the former is a subjective standard and includes the necessary element of mens rea : bad purpose and evil intent. While distinguishing this from the objective standard of “without legal justification” is instructive at this point, no such distinction was drawn for the jury and they may have confused the two standards.3
Herein lies the prejudice. The jury could have believed the reason Ms. Pohlman gave for failing to file, a reason which negates mens rea, and yet have found her guilty. Their verdict could have resulted from a belief that, although the defendant’s excuse was the reason, it was not justifiable under the law. The statute plainly requires more. The jury must find that her failure to file arose from a bad motive and evil intent not to file a timely return, fully aware of her obligation to do otherwise.4
In United States v. McCorkle, supra, the defendant urged that the trial court failed to instruct that the defendant could not be convicted of willfulness under § 7203 if he possessed a “justifiable excuse.” The 7th Circuit disagreed by saying:
Since the instructions required the jury to find an intentional violation of a known legal duty, it would have been essential for the jury to conclude that McCorkle’s conduct was unjustified.
511 F.2d at 486.
However, in this case it was not implicit in the jury’s findings that the defendant’s reason was unjustifiable that it was also an intentional violation of a known legal duty. An unjustifiable excuse for failure to file does not necessarily inform a layman that it must necessarily be an intentional violation of the law and thus the instruction was deficient.
In United States v. Achtenberg, 459 F.2d 91 (8th Cir.) cert. denied, 409 U.S. 932, 93 S.Ct. 229, 34 L.Ed.2d 187 (1972) this court emphasized that prejudicial error occurs when the jury is not clearly informed as to the elements of an offense. Our court stated:
“Obviously, if the jury is to function effectively, it must be given a clear *981statement of each element which the Government must prove. The elements, as expressed in the statute, are hardly set forth with sufficient clarity to permit the jury to perform its duty intelligently. . . . ”
Id. at 97, quoting from Jackson v. United States, 121 U.S.App.D.C. 160, 348 F.2d 772, 774 (1965).
It is axiomatic where the instruction is equivocal in a criminal trial the defendant must be given the benefit of doubt as to existing prejudice. See Bollenbach v. United States, 326 U.S. 607, 613, 66 S.Ct. 402, 90 L.Ed. 350 (1946).
Here the jury was given the alternative of convicting if they found the defendant possessed a wrongful purpose to disobey the law or even if she did not, as long as they found there did not exist a justifiable excuse for her failure to file. This was clear error and Ms. Pohlman is entitled to a new trial.

. In setting this meaning of willfulness off from the rest of the instruction the trial court uses the disjunctive “or.”

. We fail to understand why the language of the majority opinion strains so hard to avoid use of the very language the Supreme Court approved in Murdock and Bishop. “Bad purpose and evil motive to disobey the law” is clearly an element of the offense and are words easily phrased and understood. A much preferred instruction to the abbreviated version suggested by the majority is approved by the 9th Circuit in United States v. Klee, supra. The instruction reads:
“The term willfully used in the statute which I have read to you, that is, referring to one who willfully fails to make such a return, means voluntary, purposeful, deliberate and intentionally, [sic] as distinguished from accidental, inadvertent, or negligent.
Mere negligence, even gross negligence, is not sufficient to constitute willfulness under the criminal law.
The failure to make a timely return is willful if the defendant’s failure to act was voluntary and purposeful, and with the specific intent to fail to do what he knew the law requires to be done; that is to say, with a bad purpose or evil motive to disobey or disregard the law which requires to (sic) file a timely return which discloses to the government facts material to the determination of his tax liability.
There is no necessity that the government prove that the defendant had an intention to defraud it, or to evade the payment of any taxes, for the defendant’s failure to file to be willful under this provision of the law.
On the other hand, the defendant’s conduct is not willful if you find that he failed to file a return because of negligence, in advertence, accident or reckless disregard for the requirements of the law, or due to his good faith misunderstanding of the requirements of the law.”
494 F.2d at 395 n. 1.
*980Devitt and Blackmar have recently recommended use of the 9th Circuit instruction. See E. Devitt and C. Blackmar, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions § 52.31 (Supp.1975).

. The term “without justifiable excuse” encompasses at least the term “without legal justification.” Even if it also encompasses the requisite bad purpose and evil motive, as the majority argues, there is no way of knowing whether the jury found the bad purpose required by Murdock and Bishop.

. The second paragraph of the challenged instruction does not cure the deficiency created by the ambiguity of the term “without justifiable excuse.” It is true that the defendant’s conduct is not “willful” under the statute, “if she acted through negligence, inadvertence, or mistake, or due to her good faith misunderstanding of the requirements of the law.” However, these criteria are stated as defenses, and do not specifically define the government’s burden to show that the defendant must have possessed a wrongful purpose in failing to file. It is imperative for the instruction to clearly convey that the government must bear the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had the requisite bad purpose and evil motive to evade the law’s requirements. Thus, the second paragraph of the instruction is insufficient to cure the ambiguity of the preceding paragraph.
The first paragraph could have been cured by replacing the “or” with “and.” If this were done, the jury would have had to find that the offense was done “deliberately, and intentionally, and without justifiable excuse,” (even if considered to mean without legal justification) and “with the wrongful purpose of deliberately intending not to file a return which defendant knew she should have filed . . . .” This would have clearly set out the requirement of bad purpose and evil motive.