Court Opinion

ID: 9486350
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:45:32.361888+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:40.329980
License: Public Domain

McMILLIAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur in my colleague’s excellent and thorough opinion and write specially to note only my reservations about the discussion in *1274part IV. I agree that in the present ease the district court did not abuse its discretion in answering the jury’s question in the way that it did. Behler did not argue that the district court’s response misstated the law or was misleading to the jury. Instead, Behler argued the district court’s response undermined the effectiveness of his theory of defense, which was essentially that the government faded to prove the existence of any agreement or understanding at all, much less one between Behler, McRea and others.
My reservation involves the significant difference between elements of an offense that are charged in the conjunctive and those charged in the disjunctive. An instruction that requires the jury to find in the conjunctive rather than in the disjunctive places a far heavier burden of persuasion and production upon the government. This is because, in order to find in the conjunctive, the jury must find that both elements exist, whereas finding in the disjunctive requires the jury to find that only one of two or more elements exists. Moreover, while there must be evidence to support both findings in the conjunctive, the evidence must support only one of two or more possible findings in the disjunctive and, absent a special verdict or special interrogatory, no one can say which finding the jury made to reach its verdict.