Court Opinion

ID: 9490901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:58:07.044321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:23.121452
License: Public Domain

ALITO, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I concur in the affirmance of the defendant’s conspiracy conviction, but I respectfully dissent from the reversal of his conviction for conducting a continuing criminal enterprise (CCE) in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 848. The majority reverses that conviction because of an error in the CCE jury instruction, viz., the omission of an instruction specifically advising, as our court held in United States v. Edmonds, 80 F.3d 810 (3d Cir.1996) (in banc), that the jurors were required to agree unanimously on the three CCE predicates that the defendant committed. Unlike the majority, I do not think that the defendant’s trial counsel objected to this omission, as Rule 30 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure demands. I therefore believe that the question before us in this appeal is whether the challenged omission constituted “plain error” (Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b)), and I do not think that the demanding test for “plain error” is met here.
1. Before discussing defense counsel’s failure to object to the instruction in question, I think that it may be helpful to provide some background regarding the unanimity requirement that is involved in this appeal. In order to be convicted under 21 U.S.C. § 848 for conducting a continuing criminal enterprise, a defendant must have committed a felony violation of the federal drug laws, and this violation must be “a part of a con*185tinuing series” of such violations. In United States v. Echeverri, 854 F.2d 638, 642 (3d Cir.1988), a panel of our court held that a “series” in this context means at least three violations. Id. The panel further held that the jury must agree unanimously on the three violations that are used to support a CCE conviction and that a trial judge must, on request, give a jury instruction specifically setting out this unanimity instruction. Id. at 642-43.
In Edmonds, a later CCE prosecution, the district court refused to give such an instruction, and a panel of our court held that this refusal required reversal. In a concurring opinion, Judge Hutchinson observed that, if the panel had not been bound by Echeverri he would have been “inclined to follow the reasoning of the Seventh Circuit in United States v. Canino, 949 F.2d 928, 947-948 (7th Cir.1991), cert. denied, [503 U.S. 996, 112 S.Ct. 1701, 118 L.Ed.2d 410 and cert. denied, 504 U.S. 910, 112 S.Ct. 1940, 118 L.Ed.2d 546 (1992) ],” which held that the jurors in a CCE case need not agree unanimously on the particular CCE predicates. Slip op. at 26 (Hutchinson, J., concurring). Similarly, Judge Garth, in concurrence, stated that he “shar[ed] Judge Hutchinson’s concerns regarding the Echeverri doctrine.” Slip op. at 28 (Garth, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). He added that he perceived “conceptual tension” between Echeverri and our court’s decision in United States v. Jackson, 879 F.2d 85 (3d Cir.1989), in which we held that jurors need not agree unanimously on the identities of the five or more persons that a CCE defendant organized, supervised, or managed. Slip op. at 28 (Garth, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Judge Garth suggested that this tension “eall[ed] for further resolution.” Id.
The panel opinion in United States v. Edmonds, 52 F.3d 1236, was filed on April 18, 1995, and Russell’s trial commenced a few weeks later, on June 5, 1995. On June 29, 1995, during the course of that trial, the government’s petition for rehearing in banc in Edmonds was granted and the panel opinion was vacated. Russell's jury was instructed on July 12, 1995 — after Edmonds was listed for rehearing in banc and well before that case was reargued (October 25, 1995) and the in banc decision was handed down (April 4,1996).
In Edmonds, the full court held, by a narrow vote, that the CCE statute requires that jurors agree unanimously on the particular CCE predicates. The court further held that the district court’s refusal to give a specific unanimity instruction was erroneous but that the error was harmless. For the reasons set out in my concurring opinion and Judge Garth’s concurring opinion in Ed-monds, I continue to believe that the CCE statute does not contain any such special unanimity instruction, but I recognize that we are bound to follow that holding here.
2. With this background in mind, I turn to the question of whether defense counsel in this case adequately objected to the instruction on which the majority relies. Rule 30 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provides in pertinent part as follows:
No party may assign as error any portion of the charge or omission therefrom unless that party objects thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict, stating distinctly the matter to which that party objects and the grounds of the objection.
This is a vitally important rule. It promotes judicial economy by eliminating unnecessary appeals and retrials. More important, because appellate reversals and retrials produce delay, and because delay often results in the loss or impairment of evidence, Rule 30 serves to promote accuracy in jury verdicts. As the majority points out, a lawyer is not required to use any special language to satisfy Rule 30; the lawyer must simply use words that are reasonably calculated to get the message across. In this case, however, defense counsel did not do so.
After the district court judge completed his charge, he asked whether counsel had any objections. Supp.App. at 6.9 Defense counsel then objected to the trial judge’s failure to cover two instructions requested by the defense, i.e., number 51 and number 43. Id. at 7-8. Neither of these requested instructions had anything to do with the issue of jury unanimity regarding particular CCE *186predicates. After the district court ruled on these two matters, the following exchange occurred:
THE COURT: Do you have anything else?
MR. TRAVIS [defense counsel]: No, Your Honor.
Id. at 9.
The jury then retired to deliberate and subsequently sent out a note requesting “a limited reading of the Judge’s charge as to count one [the CCE count].” App. at 2155.10 In response, the court proposed to read virtually the entire charge concerning the CCE count, and both counsel agreed. Id. at 2156. As a result, the district court once again read to the jury the portion of the charge that the defendant now challenges on appeal. The following then occurred:
THE COURT: ... Do you have any objection to those instructions, counsel?
MR. ROCKTASHEL [the prosecutor]: No, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Do you, sir?
MR. TRAVIS [defense counsel]: No, Your Honor.
Id. at 2163-64.
Thus, defense counsel twice told the trial judge that he had no objection to the jury instruction that is challenged in this appeal. Moreover, defense counsel never mentioned or referred even obliquely to Edmonds during the colloquy devoted to objections to the instructions. Accordingly, defense counsel did not, in my view, adequately convey to the trial judge the simple message that was necessary in order to comply with Rule 30, i.e., “Judge there’s a mistake in the jury charge. It doesn’t tell the jurors that they must agree unanimously regarding the three CCE predicates.”
It is true that defense counsel did subsequently mention Edmonds, but he did so in connection with an entirely different question, i.e., whether the district court should give the jury a special verdict sheet concerning the CCE predicates. Some time after the colloquy concerning the jury instructions, the court stated:
Now, there is one other thing, and that is ... I understood you to say, Mr. Travis, that there were certain specific findings that were required under Count One.
July 12, 1995 Tr. at 70. Defense counsel then referred to the panel decision in Ed-monds (which, as previously noted, had been filed on April 18, 1995, but vacated on June 29, 1995, when rehearing in banc was granted). Defense counsel stated: “[T]he impression I had was that you had to give [the jurors] a special verdict page where they said, these are the three violations ...” App. at 2143. The court asked:
THE COURT: Well what are you asking that we do?
Id. Defense counsel responded as follows:
Well I — you asked about the form, the form of the verdict and whether I thought that there was any change that needed to be made. I was attempting to point out that my interpretation of [.Edmonds ] seems to suggest that there is a need for a special verdict page that requires the jury to fill in three blank lines of which three federal felony offenses they have unanimously agreed upon having been committed by the Defendant, if they agree on that element.
Id. (emphasis added). The district court judge said that he would read the Edmonds panel opinion, but he observed that he thought that “there’s a general reluctance on the Court of Appeals to require any special verdict forms in criminal cases.” App. at 2144. Later, the court decided not to give the jury a special verdict sheet, and the defendant does not challenge that decision on appeal.
I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that defense counsel, by requesting a special verdict sheet, adequately conveyed to the district court the message that the court’s jury instruction was inconsistent with the Edmonds panel decision. As noted, defense counsel, by this point, twice had failed to object to the challenged jury instructions, and when defense counsel finally mentioned Edmonds and the trial judge pointedly asked, ‘Well, what are you asking that we *187do,” (App. at 2143), defense counsel’s only request was that the court give the jury a special verdict sheet. Id.
In my view, the question of whether a trial judge is required to give a special instruction on jury unanimity in a CCE case is separate from the question whether a trial judge is required to use a special verdict sheet. Although the Edmonds panel and in banc decisions held that it is error to decline to give a special jury unanimity instruction when one is requested, neither the Edmonds panel opinion nor the Edmonds in banc opinion requires a special verdict sheet. On the contrary, we have held that, as a general matter, a district court “has discretion in determining whether to submit special interrogatories to the jury regarding the elements of an offense.” United States v. Console, 13 F.3d 641, 663 & n. 23 (3d Cir.1993). By obscuring the important distinction between an objection to a jury instruction and a request for a special verdict sheet, the majority, I believe, has committed a serious error.
In addition to relying on defense counsel’s request for a special verdict sheet, the majority also relies on the defendant’s proposed jury instruction number 41, which stated in pertinent part that the jury was required to “agree unanimously on the three acts which constitute the continuing series of Federal Drug Law violations.” See Maj. Op. at 180 n.7 (quoting SuppApp. 25). If defense counsel had objected to the court’s charge on the ground that it failed to cover this point, and if the district court had nevertheless declined to cover that point, then this case would be indistinguishable from Edmonds, and I would join the majority in voting to reverse. However, that is not what occurred. After the district court completed its jury instructions and asked defense counsel whether he had any objections, defense counsel referred to the 93 pages of proposed instructions that he had submitted and asked whether he could assume that any instruction that had not been given should be “deemed denied.” Supp.App. at 6. The court rejected this suggestion and instructed defense counsel to assert any objections he had to the instructions that the court had given. Id. Then, as previously noted, defense counsel argued that the court had erred in failing to cover two of the requested defense instructions, i.e., numbers 51 and 43. Id. at 7-8. Defense counsel made no reference to instruction number 41, and therefore it seems to me that, simply by including that instruction in the large packet of requested defense instructions, the defense did not fulfil its obligation under Rule 30 to assert an objection to the court’s instructions and state “distinctly the matter to which th[e] party objects and the grounds of the objection.”
For these reasons, I would hold that defense counsel did not adequately object at trial to the jury instruction that is now challenged on appeal. Consequently, I believe that our review is limited to determining whether the district court’s instruction constituted “plain error.” Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b).
3. As noted, the in banc court held in Edmonds that, in order to find a defendant guilty under the CCE statute, 21 U.S.C. § 848, a jury must unanimously agree that the same three related predicate offenses occurred. The court farther held that the district court in that case erred in rejecting a defense request for an instruction specifically advising the jurors that they were required to agree unanimously on which three related violations occurred.
The instruction challenged in this case did not affirmatively mistake the law, as-interpreted in Edmonds. The instruction did not advise, contrary to Edmonds, that it was unnecessary for the jurors to agree unanimously regarding the three CCE predicate offenses that occurred. In the challenged instruction, the district court stated:
The phrase, a continuing series of violations means three or more violations of the federal narcotics laws which are in some way — laws which are in some way related to each other. In order to find that this element has been established, you must unanimously agree that the Defendant, Mr. Russell, participated in some way in at least three or more violations of the federal narcotics laws which are in some way related to each other.
App. at 2094. See also App. at 2158-59. As far as it went, this instruction was entirely accurate: in order for the jury to find that Russell violated 21 U.S.C. § 848, it was nec*188essary that they “unanimously agree that ... Mr. Russell participated in some way in at least three or more violations of the federal narcotics laws which are in some way related to each other.” App. at 2094. The problem with this instruction is not that it was inaccurate but that it was incomplete: it did not go on and explain to the jurors that they were required, not only to agree unanimously that Russell committed three CCE predicates, but to agree unanimously with. respect to the three particular predicates that he committed.
In my view, this failure to provide the jury with a more complete and specific explanation of the unanimity requirement in a CCE case does not amount to “plain error.” In United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993), the Supreme Court held that, in order for an appellate court to find plain error, it must first find 1) an error 2) that is plain and 3) that affects substantial rights. Even if all three of these prerequisites are met, an appellate court may correct an error to which no objection was made “only if (4) the error ‘seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.’ ” Johnson v. United States, — U.S.-,-•, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 1549, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997) (quoting Olano, 507 U.S. at 732, 113 S.Ct. at 1776) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Here, I agree that the first of these four requirements (there was an error) was met. But I do not believe that the second requirement (the error was “plain”) was satisfied, and therefore I need not consider the third or fourth requirement.
“ ‘Plain’ is synonymous with ‘clear’ or, equivalently, ‘obvious.’” United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. at 734, 113 S.Ct. at 1777-78. As we have explained:
To find plain error, the mistake must be sufficiently obvious that “the trial judge and prosecutor were derelict in countenancing it, even absent the defendant’s timely assistance in detecting it.”
Government of Virgin Islands v. Knight, 989 F.2d 619, 632 (1993) (quoting United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 163, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 1592, 71 L.Ed.2d 816 (1982)). In my view, the omission in this case was not “sufficiently obvious that ‘the trial judge and prosecutor were derelict in countenancing it, even absent the defendant’s timely assistance in detecting it.’ ” Knight, 989 F.2d at 632 (quoting Frady, 456 U.S. at 163, 102 S.Ct. at 1592). The omission was simply a mistake, the sort of mistake that would have constituted reversible error had defense counsel called it to the trial judge’s attention as required by Rule 30, but a mistake that falls short of constituting “plain error.” “The Supreme Court has admonished courts of appeals to characterize a mistake as plain error ‘sparingly, solely in those circumstances in which a miscarriage of justice would otherwise result.’ ” Knight, 989 F.2d at 631 (quoting United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 15, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 1046, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985)). “Reviewing courts are not to use the plain-error doctrine to consider trial court errors not meriting appellate review absent timely objection.” United States v. Young, 470 U.S. at 16, 105 S.Ct. at 1046. That, in my judgment, is what the majority has done here. For that reason, I dissent from the reversal of the defendant’s CCE conviction.

. “Supp.App.” refers to the Supplemental Appendix filed by the government.

. "App.” refers to the appendix filed by the appellant.