Court Opinion

ID: 9918666
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-01-16 15:01:03.893771+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:04:22.900081
License: Public Domain

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                                                       [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                     In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                          For the Eleventh Circuit

                            ____________________

                                  No. 23-11423
                            ____________________

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                          Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
        versus
        SUZANNE ELLEN KAYE,
        a.k.a. Muckbang01,
        a.k.a. suzannekaye3,
        a.k.a. agent of Angry Patriot Hippie,

                                                       Defendant-Appellant.

                            ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Southern District of Florida
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        2                      Opinion of the Court                 23-11423

                       D.C. Docket No. 9:21-cr-80039-RLR-1
                            ____________________

        Before ROSENBAUM, NEWSOM, and LUCK, Circuit Judges.
        PER CURIAM:
               Suzanne Kaye was convicted by a jury of one count of vio-
        lating 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) for making threats to shoot an FBI agent
        in videos she posted to her social-media accounts. On appeal, Kaye
        argues that the district court erred by excluding her expert and fail-
        ing to adopt three of her requested jury instructions. After careful
        consideration, we affirm.
                                          I.
              We take the facts below from the evidence adduced at trial.
              Kaye, under her username “Angry Patriot Hippie,” began
        posting videos on social media in 2020 to “get famous.” Among
        the content she shared, Kaye posted videos with political content.
              On January 16, 2021, ten days after the events at the Capitol
        on January 6, 2021, the FBI received a tip about Kaye and January
        6th. The FBI referred the tip to its oﬃce in West Palm Beach, Flor-
        ida, which assigned Agent Arthur Smith to interview Kaye. After
        attempting to visit Kaye at her last known address, Agent Smith
        eventually connected with Kaye over the phone. Kaye told Agent
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        23-11423                  Opinion of the Court                               3

        Smith that she wasn’t at the Capitol on January 6th. 1 Still, she in-
        vited Agent Smith to visit her home to chat with her, and she gave
        him her home address.
               Agent Smith told Kaye he would visit her residence later that
        day, but as it turned out, he was ultimately unable to do so. Instead,
        Agent Smith called Kaye and left a voicemail message to let her
        know that he would not be coming, but he never heard back from
        her. For her part, Kaye did not receive the message. So, she testi-
        ﬁed, when nobody showed up, she concluded that the call had been
        a “joke.”
               Kaye took this “joke” as an idea for a post for her social-me-
        dia accounts, and she wrote a script for a video “parody[ing]” her
        experience with Agent Smith. According to Kaye, “[t]he video was
        supposed to have shown a nervous person taking a swig of whis-
        key2 out of a bottle and then retelling the story of what happened
        on the telephone.” Kaye made several diﬀerent takes of the video,
        publicly posting two versions to diﬀerent social-media accounts on
        the evening of January 31, 2021.
               In a 50-second video posted on Facebook entitled, “Fuck the
        FBI,” Kaye stated the following:

        1 At trial, the district court informed the venire that Kaye was not alleged to
        have been present at the Capitol for the events of January 6th, and she was not
        charged with any events related to January 6th.
        2 According to Kaye, the whiskey bottle contained iced tea.
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        4                        Opinion of the Court                    23-11423

               Hello my TikTok patriot friends. Gotta have a drink.
               [Drinks from the whiskey bottle] Just got a call from
               the FBI. They want to come talk to me about my visit
               to D.C. on January 6th. I told them: you can’t come
               and talk to me unless I have counsel. And being that
               I can’t aﬀord counsel, you’ll have to arrest me so I can
               use my right of counsel. You guys just spent four
               years persecuting a three-star general with no evi-
               dence. 3 You think I’m gonna let you come fucking
               talk to me? You’re out your motherfucking mind,
               bro. That’s not gonna happen. I’m a fucking patriot.
               And I exercise my First Amendment right on my free-
               dom of speech, and my Second Amendment right to
               shoot your fucking ass if you come here.
        Kaye also posted this video to Instagram. This video formed the
        basis for Count One.
               The second video at issue in this case, a 59-second video
        Kaye also posted on Instagram, was likewise titled “Fuck the FBI.”
        But in this longer take, Kaye’s tone was noticeably angrier:
               Friends. I’m here to let you know I need a drink.
               [Drinks from the whiskey bottle] Just got a call from
               the FBI. They want to come talk to me about my visit
               to D.C. on January 6th. I told them: Bro, I ain’t gonna
               talk to you unless I have counsel. And being that I
               can’t aﬀord counsel right now, you’re gonna have to
               arrest me so I can exercise my right to counsel. And

        3 Kaye testified that she was referring to Michael Flynn, whom she viewed as

        having been persecuted by the FBI.
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        23-11423               Opinion of the Court                        5

              being that you don’t even know where I live and you
              have to ask me, I ain’t talking to you either. You just
              spent four years persecuting a three-star general with
              no evidence. You think I’m gonna fucking let you
              come talk to me? I’m an American. I know my fuck-
              ing rights. My First Amendment right to free speech.
              My Second Amendment right to carry a gun, to shoot
              your fucking ass if you come to my house. So fuck
              you. Fuck you following me. I don’t fucking care.
              I’m glad you know who I am, motherfucker.
        Kaye posted this same video on her TikTok account as well. In the
        TikTok version of the second video, Kaye added a cover of the Po-
        lice song “Every Breath You Take” as background music because,
        she said, the FBI was “watching” Kaye, like the lyrics in the song.
        This second video formed the basis for Count Two. While Agent
        Smith acknowledged the videos related to each count were similar,
        he distinguished the two videos by the angle at which they were
        shot, the “tone” of each video, and the inclusion of music in the
        second video.
               Kaye testiﬁed that she did not intend to threaten the FBI, and
        that the video was just “a freaking TikTok.” She also testiﬁed that
        she did not own any guns because she has a marijuana license, and
        she’d “rather smoke than shoot.” Kaye did not tag or otherwise
        direct the videos to the FBI or Agent Smith’s attention.
              Unaware of the videos, Agent Smith went to Kaye’s address
        unannounced on February 2, 2021. When no one answered the
        door, Agent Smith called Kaye. But she did not answer. At that
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                 23-11423

        point, Agent Smith left, and he and his supervisor decided to “close
        down” the lead related to Kaye.
              On February 8, 2021, a second tip alerted the FBI about
        Kaye’s videos. Because of the perceived threat to an agent’s life,
        the FBI sent the tip and the videos to the West Palm Beach Oﬃce
        with priority status. After receiving the video from his supervisor,
        Agent Smith understood the video as “a threat to shoot me if I go
        [to Kaye’s house].”
                Law enforcement arrested Kaye, and a grand jury charged
        her with two counts of violating § 875(c), one for each video. The
        district court found that whether Kaye’s statements constituted a
        “true threat” and were therefore unprotected by the First Amend-
        ment presented a question for the trier of fact, so Kaye’s case pro-
        ceeded to trial.
             Before trial, the district court issued several rulings that Kaye
        now appeals.
                First, the district court granted the government’s motion to
        exclude Kaye’s media law and policy expert, Dr. Brooks Fuller.
        United States v. Kaye, No. 21-80039-CR, 2022 WL 860380 (S.D. Fla.
        Mar. 23, 2022). Kaye gave notice of her intent to call Dr. Fuller to
        “testify to the historical and contemporary protection aﬀorded to
        controversial political expression” and to opine that the videos
        “likely do[] not articulate a true threat in violation of 18 U.S.C.
        § 875(c).”
             After a Daubert hearing, the district court granted the gov-
        ernment’s motion to exclude Dr. Fuller’s testimony on three
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        23-11423               Opinion of the Court                        7

        grounds. Kaye, 2022 WL 860380, at *2–5. First, the court found
        that Dr. Fuller’s case-speciﬁc testimony took the form of a legal
        conclusion, which Federal Rule of Evidence 704 bars. Id. at *4–5
        (“Whether or not a true threat existed is central to the ﬁrst element
        of 875(c) and remains solely within the jury’s province.”). Second,
        the court determined that the remaining testimony (both case-spe-
        ciﬁc and about media generally) was not helpful under Rule 702(a)
        because the jury was capable of evaluating how a reasonable per-
        son would view the video and its context in social media without
        the testimony of an expert. Id. at *3–4. And third, the court con-
        cluded that the testimony created a risk of confusing the issues for
        the jury under Rule 403 because the jury might conﬂate Dr. Fuller’s
        evaluation and understanding of the law with the jury’s task and
        the court’s instructions. Id. at *3–5. For example, the court rea-
        soned, Dr. Fuller’s expert testimony could confuse the jury about
        “the very nature of the reasonable person standard,” which “pre-
        supposes non-expertise.” Id. at *4. In short, the court was con-
        cerned that Dr. Fuller’s testimony would “distract the jurors from
        applying the law to the facts of this case.” Id.
               Second, the court declined to adopt three of Kaye’s proposed
        jury instructions. Kaye requested, and the government opposed, a
        modiﬁed § 875(c) oﬀense instruction, a defense-theory instruction,
        and an instruction informing the jury that it could not convict Kaye
        based on her political views.
              For the oﬀense instruction, the government asked for the
        Eleventh Circuit’s pattern instruction, which deﬁnes “true threat”
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        8                          Opinion of the Court                       23-11423

        as “a serious threat—not idle talk, a careless remark, or something
        said jokingly—that is made under circumstances that would place
        a reasonable person in fear of being injured.” United States v. Elonis,
        575 U.S. 723 (2015); 11th Cir. Crim. Pattern Instr. O30.3 at 215 (Mar.
        10, 2022). Kaye’s proposed modiﬁed instruction removed the pat-
        tern instruction’s deﬁnition of “true threat” and added two para-
        graphs about “protected political speech.” 4 The court rejected the
        modiﬁcation and gave the pattern instruction instead.

        4 Kaye’s modified instruction proposed omitting the pattern instruction’s def-

        inition of “true threat” and replacing it with the following:
                        An issue in this case is whether the defendant’s speech
                was constitutionally protected political speech or whether it
                constituted a “true threat.” “True threats” encompass state-
                ments in which the speaker means to communicate a serious
                expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence
                to a particular individual or group of individuals. A “true
                threat” is not the same as crude, reactionary, unpleasant, or of-
                fensive language. Speech that merely advocates force or vio-
                lence, when it does not incite imminent lawless action, is pro-
                tected under the First Amendment.
                        In considering whether speech was a “true threat,” you
                must also consider the entire context in which her speech was
                made. For example, the Supreme Court has found that telling
                a group of protestors at an anti-draft political rally at the
                height of the Vietnam war that “if they ever make me carry a
                riﬂe the ﬁrst man I want to get in my sights” is the president
                was constitutionally protected political speech and not a true
                threat. In so doing, the Court considered the entire context in
                which the statement was made and not solely the defendant’s
                words.
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        23-11423                 Opinion of the Court                             9

                Kaye also requested a defense-theory instruction that con-
        trasted “true threats” with “vehement, caustic, and sometimes un-
        pleasant sharp attacks on public oﬃcials” protected by the First
        Amendment. Although the court gave a defense theory instruc-
        tion, it cut much of the language Kaye suggested. The court’s de-
        fense-theory instruction stated that “Kaye contends that her state-
        ments were not ‘true threats,’ but rather, political speech protected
        by the First Amendment.” The instruction did not deﬁne political
        speech, but it again deﬁned a “true threat” as “a serious threat—
        not idle talk, a careless remark, or something said jokingly—that is
        made under circumstances that would place a reasonable person in
        fear of being kidnapped, killed, or physically injured.” And the
        court directed that if the jury had a reasonable doubt as to whether
        Kaye’s statements were “true threats,” it must ﬁnd Kaye not guilty.
        In declining to use Kaye’s instruction, the court emphasized its
        view that although it found Kaye’s proposed language to be inap-
        propriate for a jury instruction, “[i]t doesn’t mean that the Defense
        can’t make that argument in its closing arguments.”
               The defense also proposed instructing the jury that it could
        not “ﬁnd the Defendant guilty because you disagree with or ﬁnd
        distasteful her political views.” 5 The court declined to give the

        5 Kaye’s proposed instruction provided,

               You have just heard testimony and actually observed some ex-
               hibits related to what might be considered the Defendant’s po-
               litical views. You must treat this evidence with caution. This
               evidence alone cannot be used to find the Defendant guilty of
               the offense charged in the Indictment. It may, however, be
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        10                        Opinion of the Court                      23-11423

        instruction, again opining that the argument was appropriate for
        closing but not for a jury instruction. While the court did not give
        Kaye’s proposed political-views instruction, it did instruct the jury
        “not be inﬂuenced in any way by either sympathy for or prejudice
        against the Defendant or the Government.”
                After a three-day jury trial, the jury acquitted Kaye on Count
        One (for the shorter Facebook/Instagram video) but convicted her
        on Count Two (for the longer Instagram/TikTok video). The dis-
        trict court sentenced Kaye to 18 months in prison, a downward var-
        iance from the guideline range of 27–33 months.
                                              II.
                We begin with Kaye’s challenge to the district court’s exclu-
        sion of her expert. We review the district court’s rulings on the
        admissibility of expert testimony for abuse of discretion. United
        States v. Frazier, 387 F.3d 1244, 1258 (11th Cir. 2004) (en banc). 6 So

               considered by you for limited purposes, such as considering
               the context in which statements attributed to the Defendant
               were made, what the Defendant’s intent was in making the
               statement, and her expectation regarding the effects of her
               statement. You cannot find the Defendant guilty because you
               disagree with or find distasteful her political views.
        6 To the extent that Kaye argues that de novo review applies to the challenged

        district-court decisions because her defense involves the First Amendment,
        she is incorrect. To be sure, “we review district court decisions of constitu-
        tional issues––the most important issues of law––not for abuse of discretion
        but de novo.” United States v. Shamsid-Deen, 61 F.4th 935, 944–45 (11th Cir.
        2023). But this appeal does not require the court to resolve any constitutional
        questions. So review for abuse of discretion is appropriate.
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        23-11423               Opinion of the Court                         11

        we will not reverse the decision to exclude an expert “unless the
        ruling is manifestly erroneous,” id. (quoting Gen. Elec. Co. v. Joiner,
        522 U.S. 136, 142 (1997)) and it resulted “in a substantial prejudicial
        eﬀect,” United States v. Machado, 886 F.3d 1070, 1085 n.14 (11th Cir.
        2018). Here, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it
        excluded Kaye’s expert.
              Kaye argues that the district court was obligated to allow her
        expert to educate the jury or to instruct the jury on the concepts
        of protected political speech and the First Amendment. We disa-
        gree.
                The district court properly excluded Kaye’s expert for all the
        reasons it listed in its thorough opinion, including the one Kaye
        challenges on appeal: that Dr. Fuller’s testimony about “a long
        American tradition protecting political speech invoking violence”
        created a risk of confusing the issues for the jury. Kaye, 2022 WL
        860380, at *2–5. The district court’s discretion is “particularly
        broad” with respect to Rule 403 determinations. Bhogaita v.
        Altamonte Heights Condo. Ass’n, Inc., 765 F.3d 1277, 1291 (11th Cir.
        2014). And it was well within the district court’s discretion to con-
        clude that admitting Dr. Fuller’s testimony would create “an unjus-
        tiﬁable risk that the jury would substitute the expert’s evaluation
        of the video for their own.” Kaye, 2022 WL 860380, at *3. The
        district court similarly acted within its discretion in determining
        that Dr. Fuller’s testimony included an explanation of “contextual
        factors of political speech” that might confuse the jury as to what
        law it was supposed to apply. Id. at *4. Given the “talismanic
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        12                      Opinion of the Court                  23-11423

        signiﬁcance” that jurors may assign to expert testimony, the district
        court did not abuse its discretion in excluding all of Dr. Fuller’s tes-
        timony, including the historical testimony Kaye explicitly chal-
        lenges on appeal. See Frazier, 387 F.3d at 1263. And that is especially
        so because Dr. Fuller’s proposed testimony included impermissible
        legal conclusions. Kaye, 2022 WL 860380, at *2–3, *5 (“Whether or
        not a true threat existed is central to the ﬁrst element of 875(c) and
        remains solely within the jury’s province.”).
                                          III.
               We next consider Kaye’s challenges to the district court’s rul-
        ings on jury instructions.
                “We review the legal correctness of jury instructions de novo,
        but the district court has ‘wide discretion as to the style and word-
        ing employed.’” United States v. Caldwell, 81 F.4th 1160, 1175 (11th
        Cir. 2023). In other words, so long as the instruction is not inaccu-
        rate or misleading, “[w]e apply a deferential standard of review to
        a trial court’s jury instructions.” United States v. Puche, 350 F.3d
        1137, 1148 (11th Cir. 2003).
               We review “a district court’s refusal to give a proposed jury
        instruction” for abuse of discretion, United States v. Watkins, 42 F.4th
        1278, 1282 (11th Cir. 2022), cert. denied, 143 S. Ct. 1754 (2023), and
        we “defer on questions of phrasing absent an abuse of discretion,”
        United States v. Prather, 205 F.3d 1265, 1270 (11th Cir. 2000). A dis-
        trict court’s failure to give an instruction is reversible error only
        where the requested instruction “(1) was correct, (2) was not sub-
        stantially covered by the charge actually given, and (3) dealt with
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        23-11423               Opinion of the Court                         13

        some point in the trial so important that failure to give the re-
        quested instruction seriously impaired the defendant's ability to
        conduct his defense.” United States v. Eckhardt, 466 F.3d 938, 947–48
        (11th Cir. 2006). “Under this standard, we will only reverse if we
        are left with a substantial and eradicable doubt as to whether the
        jury was properly guided in its deliberations.” Id. at 947–48.
               The district court did not abuse its discretion in instructing
        the jury.
                                          A.
                We begin with the district court’s decision not to give Kaye’s
        proposed oﬀense instruction instead of the pattern instruction and
        not to provide the entirety of Kaye’s proposed defense-theory in-
        struction. At the ﬁrst consideration, Kaye’s proposed instructions
        fail because her proﬀered “true threat” instructions were not com-
        plete. Although they included the subjective mens rea requirement
        (that the person transmitted the communication for the purpose
        of issuing a threat, or with knowledge that the communication
        would be viewed as a threat), they omitted the objective part of the
        oﬀense: that is, that a reasonable person would regard the commu-
        nication as a threat. Elonis, 575 U.S. at 726, 740; 11th Cir. Crim.
        Pattern Instr. O30.3 at 216 (Mar. 10, 2022) (“The Court’s opinion
        [in Elonis] did not foreclose the possibility that both an objective
        and a subjective standard be used in determining whether the de-
        fendant knowingly sent a threat. . . . Thus, . . . the objective person
        standard remains useful in the determination of whether the de-
        fendant’s statement actually constitutes a ‘true threat[.]’”). Kaye’s
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        14                     Opinion of the Court                  23-11423

        instructions about “true threats” were not correct because they
        eliminated this objective component.
               Not only were Kaye’s proposed “true threat” instructions in-
        complete, but the instructions the district court gave covered the
        substance of Kaye’s requested instructions: that the jury could con-
        vict Kaye “only if ” it found a true threat, that political speech is
        protected by the First Amendment, and that the jury should con-
        sider the political-speech exception in this case. And while Kaye
        may have preferred her proposed version of the instructions, “we
        aﬀord district courts ‘wide discretion to decide on the style and
        wording of [an] instruction’ so long as it ‘accurately reﬂect[s] the
        law.’” United States v. Fleury, 20 F.4th 1353, 1373 (11th Cir. 2021).
        The purpose of jury instructions “is to give the jury a clear and
        concise statement of the law applicable to the facts of the case,”
        and that is what the district court did here. Pesaplastic, C.A. v. Cin-
        cinnati Milacron Co., 750 F.2d 1516, 1525 (11th Cir. 1985).
               The district court’s decision not to give Kaye’s proposed in-
        structions also did not “substantially impair” Kaye’s ability to pre-
        sent an eﬀective defense that her speech was political and protected
        by the First Amendment. Eckhardt, 466 F.3d at 947–48. Kaye her-
        self testiﬁed that her statements were not true threats, but “par-
        ody” for “shock value.” And in closing, her counsel argued exten-
        sively that her speech was political and protected by the First
        Amendment. See Booth v. Pasco Cnty., 757 F.3d 1198, 1209 (11th Cir.
        2014) (ﬁnding no prejudicial harm where the district court refused
        to give a jury instruction but permitted the plaintiﬀ to make the
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        23-11423               Opinion of the Court                        15

        same point during closing: “While this solution was unorthodox, it
        mitigated any prejudice that may have otherwise resulted.”).
               To the extent that Kaye argues that the court’s instructions
        as a whole were misleading or inaccurate because they did not in-
        clude a deﬁnition of “political speech,” Kaye does not cite any cases
        requiring the court to include such a deﬁnition. When a court
        properly deﬁnes “true threat,” as the district court did in this case,
        the court need not also deﬁne what a “true threat” is not. The jury
        could convict “only if ” Kaye’s speech constituted a “true threat”
        made with knowledge or intent to threaten. And if the speech sat-
        isﬁed the elements of a true threat, as the jury decided it did in
        Kaye’s case, it was not protected political speech.
                The jury reviewed the videos and heard Kaye testify. After
        doing so, it rejected the Government’s argument that Kaye’s ﬁrst
        video was a “true threat” but agreed with the Government that
        Kaye’s second, longer video—the one with the angrier tone and
        more targeted profanity—was a true threat, not a political parody.
        If anything, we think the split verdict here suggests the jury’s care-
        ful application of the jury instructions on true threats to the evi-
        dence. As we’ve noted, the videos have a diﬀerent quality to them,
        and the jury was free to reject Kaye’s contention that the second
        video was not a true threat, especially given the repeated nature of
        the threat. See United States v. Brown, 53 F.3d 312, 314 (11th Cir.
        1995) (“[W]e have said that, when a defendant chooses to testify, he
        runs the risk that if disbelieved ‘the jury might conclude the oppo-
        site of his testimony is true.’”).
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        16                      Opinion of the Court                  23-11423

               In short, the district court did not abuse its discretion in re-
        fusing to adopt Kaye’s proposed oﬀense instruction and proposed
        instruction related to true threats and political speech.
                                          B.
               Next, we address Kaye’s proposed instruction directing the
        jury that it could not convict her based on her “political views.” We
        again conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in
        declining to give the instruction as Kaye requested it.
               Instead, the district court instructed the jury that it could not
        convict Kaye based on prejudice against her: “You must not be in-
        ﬂuenced in any way by either sympathy for or prejudice against the
        Defendant or the Government.” “[P]rejudice against the Defend-
        ant” includes prejudice against Kaye for her political beliefs. And
        Kaye cannot demonstrate that her defense was impaired or that the
        jury was otherwise misguided by the instructions given.
               Indeed, both Kaye and the Government argued in closing
        that the jury could not convict Kaye for her political beliefs, with
        Kaye’s attorneys asking the jury “to step away” from their political
        “tribes” in considering the evidence, and the Government stating
        that “Ms. Kaye is not on trial . . . . because she expressed her politi-
        cal views.”
               And though not a part of the jury instructions, before trial
        began, the court asked the venire, “Is there anyone who cannot be
        fair and impartial in rendering judgment based on the evidence and
        the law that I instruct you on if you learn that any of the parties or
        the witnesses hold political beliefs either contrary to or consistent
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        23-11423               Opinion of the Court                        17

        with your own political beliefs?” No one raised their hand.
        Though not an instruction, this was nonetheless an aﬃrmative rep-
        resentation by the jurors that they would not render a judgment
        based on diﬀerences in political views.
               The court instructed the jury not to consider its personal
        prejudice, and we must presume that it followed that instruction.
        United States v. Almanzar, 634 F.3d 1214, 1222 (11th Cir. 2011). At
        bottom, we are not “left with a substantial and eradicable doubt”
        that the jury convicted Kaye based on her political beliefs. Eckhardt,
        466 F.3d at 947–48.
                                         IV.
                For the foregoing reasons, we aﬃrm the judgment of the
        district court.
              AFFIRMED.