Court Opinion

ID: 9843314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:33:03.645174+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:38.189255
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the result:
Because the evidence in this case justified a wilful blindness instruction, and the instruction’s form (to which no objection was made below) was not plainly erroneous, I would affirm Heredia’s conviction. But the majority errs in concluding that motivation to avoid criminal responsibility need not be an element of a wilful blindness instruction.
Suppose Heredia were a witness rather than defendant, perhaps because the gov*925ernment had charged her aunt who owned the car instead of her. If Heredia were asked “was there marijuana in the car,” counsel would have objected for lack of foundation, and the objection would have been sustained.1 Heredia’s suspicion would not be enough to let her testify to knowledge.2 Yet she can be convicted under a statute that requires her to have knowledge. This is not impossible, but it is a troubling paradox for criminal knowledge to require less than evidentiary knowledge. To avoid injustice, the jury needs to be instructed that they must find a motivation to avoid criminal responsibility to be the reason for lack of knowledge.3
In our en banc decision in United States v. Jewell, a man offered to sell marijuana to the defendant and his friend in a Tijuana bar, and then to pay defendant $100 to drive a car across the border.4 The friend refused, saying that “it didn’t sound right,” and he “wanted no part of driving the vehicle.”5 But the defendant accepted the offer, even though he “thought there was probably something illegal in the vehicle.”6 The defendant determined that there was no contraband in the glove compartment, under the front seat, or in the trunk, so he concluded that “the people at the border wouldn’t find anything either.”7 He admitted to seeing a secret compartment in the trunk (where 110 pounds of marijuana was later found), but did not attempt to open it.8
We held that, in these circumstances, the knowledge element in the applicable drug statutes9 could be satisfied without positive, confirmed personal knowledge that the marijuana was in the trunk.10 We took particular note of the motive in such deliberate avoidance of knowledge cases “to avoid responsibility in the event of discovery”:
[T]he jury could conclude that ... although appellant knew of the presence of the secret compartment and had knowledge of facts indicating that it contained marijuana, he deliberately avoided positive knowledge of the presence of the contraband to avoid responsibility in the event of discovery. If ... positive knowledge is required to convict, the jury would have no choice consistent with its oath but to find appellant not guilty even though he deliberately contrived his lack of positive knowledge.11
We described such blindness as “wilful” and not merely negligence, foolishness or recklessness,12 differing from positive *926knowledge “only so far as necessary to encompass a calculated effort to avoid the sanctions of the statute while violating its substance.”13
A court can properly find wilful blindness only where it can almost be said that the defendant actually knew. He suspected the fact; he realized its probability; but he refrained from obtaining the final confirmation because he wanted in the event to be able to deny knowledge. This, and this alone, is wilful blindness. It requires in effect a finding that the defendant intended to cheat the administration of justice. Any wider definition would make the doctrine of wilful blindness indistinguishable from the civil doctrine of negligence in not obtaining knowledge.14
Then-judge Kennedy, joined by Judges Ely, Hufstedler and Wallace, vigorously dissented. They presciently warned that the majority opened the door too wide to suspicion as a substitute for scienter..
“Wilfulness” requires a “purpose of violating a known legal duty,”15 or, at the very least, “a bad purpose.”16 That is why wilful blindness is “equally culpable” to, and may be substituted for, positive knowledge.17 But to allow conviction without positive knowledge or wilful avoidance of such knowledge is to erase the scienter requirement from the statute. And we do not have the authority to do this: “The definition of the elements of a criminal offense is entrusted to the legislature, particularly in the case of federal crimes, which are solely creatures of statute.”18 The statute made it a crime for Heredia to “knowingly or intentionally” possess the marijuana in the trunk of her aunt’s car with an intent to distribute it (that is, give the car back to her aunt or to someone else).19 If she did not act “knowingly or intentionally,” then she did not commit the crime.
Our cases subsequent to Jewell have generally hewed closely to its restrictiveness (though, as the majority notes, some appear to deviate on the wilfulness requirement20). In our en banc decision in *927United States v. Aguilar,21 we held that a “high probability of awareness of [a] circumstance” is not equivalent to knowledge in absence of “wilful blindness.”22 We adopted Judge Kennedy’s language from United States v. Pacific Hide & Fur Depot, Inc.,23 that mistake, negligent failure to inquire, and even reckless disregard of the truth, did not amount to knowledge.24 Instead, the government had to prove that the defendant “purposely contrived” to avoid positive knowledge “in order to have a defense:”
A Jewell instruction is properly given only when defendant claims a lack of guilty knowledge and the proof at trial supports an inference of deliberate ignorance. It is not enough that defendant was mistaken, recklessly disregarded the truth, or negligently failed to inquire. Instead, the government must present evidence indicating that defendant purposely contrived to avoid learning all of the facts in order to have a defense in the event of subsequent prosecution. Absent such evidence, the jury might impermissibly infer guilty knowledge on the basis of mere negligence without proof of deliberate avoidance.25
We have repeatedly emphasized this wilfulness requirement, as in United States v. Alvarado, United States v. Baron, United States v. Beckett, United States v. Garzon, United States v. Kelm, and United States v. Mapelli.26
The majority deviates from this long line of precedent by discarding the requirement of a motive to avoid criminal responsibility. I concede that our precedents have not been clear on whether motive must be an element of the instruction, or just an element for the judge to consider in determining whether to give a Jewell instruction.27 The cure for this, however, *928is not to bless the Jewell instruction given in this case, but to make clear that a Jewell instruction should include a motive to avoid criminal responsibility element.
The majority converts the statutory element that the possession be “knowing” into something much less — a requirement that the defendant be suspicious and deliberately avoid investigating. The imposition on people who intend no crime of a duty to investigate has no statutory basis. The majority says that its requirement is enough to protect defendants who cannot investigate because of “coercion, exigent circumstances or lack of meaningful choice.”28 I am not sure what the latter two novelties mean (especially the term “meaningful” choice) or how a jury would be instructed to give them concrete meaning. The majority’s statement that “[a]n innocent motive for being deliberately ignorant does not bar conviction under its rule”29 seems to contradict its proposition that coercion or exigent circumstances excuse failure to investigate. The majority seems to mean that if someone can investigate, they must. A criminal duty to investigate the wrongdoing of others to avoid wrongdoing of one’s own is a novelty in the criminal law.
The majority’s “coercion, exigent circumstances or lack of meaningful choice” justifications for failure to investigate are too few. The government has not conscripted the citizenry as investigators, and the statute does not impose that unpleasant and sometimes risky obligation on people. Shall someone who thinks his mother is carrying a stash of marijuana in her suitcase be obligated, when he helps her with it, to rummage through her things? Should Heredia have carried tools with her, so that (if her story was true) she could open the trunk for which she had no key? Shall all of us who give a ride to child’s friend search her purse or his backpack?
No “coercion, exigent circumstances, or lack of meaningful choice” prevents FedEx from opening packages before accepting them, or prevents bus companies from going through the luggage of suspicious looking passengers. But these businesses are not “knowingly” transporting drugs in any particular package, even though they know that in a volume business in all likelihood they sometimes must be. They forego inspection to save time, or money, or offense to customers, not to avoid criminal responsibility. But these reasons for not inspecting are not the ones acceptable to the majority (“coercion, exigent circumstances, or lack of meaningful choice”). The majority opinion apparently makes these businesses felons despite the fact that Congress did not. For that matter, someone driving his mother, a child of the sixties, to Thanksgiving weekend, and putting her suitcase in the trunk, should not have to open it and go through her clothes.
A Jewell instruction ought to incorporate what our case law has developed, that the wilful blindness doctrine is meant to punish a defendant who “all but knew”30 the truth — a defendant who “suspects a fact, realizes its [high] probability, but refrains from obtaining final confirmation in order to be able to deny knowledge if apprehended.”31 “This, and this alone, is wilful blindness.”32 The jury instruction in this case told the jury that Heredia had *929“knowing” possession of the marijuana in the trunk if she “was aware of a high probability” that drugs were in the car and “deliberately avoided learning the truth.”33 That mental state would fit FedEx and the child of an aging hippy, as well as a drug mule. A Jewell instruction' ought to require (1) a belief that drugs are present,34 (2) avoidance of confirmation of the belief,35 and (3) wilfulness in that avoidance— that is, choosing not to confirm the belief in order to “be able to deny knowledge if apprehended.”36 The instruction should expressly exclude recklessness, negligence and mistake (the one given only excluded “simpl[e] careless[ness]” and an “aetual[] belie[f] that no drugs were in the vehicle”).37 Anything less supports convictions of persons whom Congress excluded from statutory coverage with the word “knowingly.” People who possess drugs, but do not do so “knowingly,” are what we traditionally refer to as “innocent.”
The reason that I concur instead of dissenting is that defendant did not object to these deficiencies in the instruction, and the deficiencies were not “plain.”38 To constitute plain error, “[a]n error ... must be ... obvious or readily apparent.”39 “At a minimum, court of appeals cannot correct an error pursuant to Rule 52(b) unless the error is clear under current torn”40
Our previous cases did not make clear that the instruction had to say these things (they only made clear that the judge must decide there was some evidence of wilfulness before giving the instruction).41 For that reason, it is not surprising that the instruction given tracked the language of our own form.42
*930Defendant’s objection was to giving a Jewell instruction at all, rather than to the language in the Jewell instruction. She argued that “the instruction is not appropriate in this particular case” because “there is no evidence that she did anything ... to deliberately avoid [learning the truth].... ” She did not argue in the district court, as she now does on appeal, that the wilful blindness instruction, if given, should include a requirement that a defendant’s wilful blindness be motivated by a desire to avoid criminal responsibility.43
Defendant’s argument was that the evidence showed that Heredia could not have discovered the marijuana because the key she had been given would not open the trunk (it seems to have been a valet key— the DEA had to break the trunk lock with a screwdriver), and that by the time she began suspecting the presence of drugs, there was no freeway exit before the checkpoint. As we held in Mapelli, a wilful blindness instruction is “inappropriate where the evidence could justify one of two conclusions, either that the defendant had knowledge, or that the defendant did not, but not a third conclusion, that the defendant deliberately shut her eyes to avoid confirming the existence of a fact she all but knew.”44 In this case, though, the district court correctly concluded that the evidence allowed the jury properly to conclude that there was wilful avoidance of positive knowledge.
I agree with the majority that our review of whether the instruction was justified is for abuse of discretion, not de novo.45 The jury did not have to believe everything Heredia said. It could believe all, part, or none of her testimony and the testimony of others. The district court reasonably exercised its discretion to give a Jewell instruction, because (1) there was testimony that Heredia’s husband opened the trunk at Heredia’s aunt’s house while Heredia was present and could look if she wanted to, (2) the car smelled of fabric softener, (3) Heredia thought her mother and her mother’s boyfriend were involved with drugs, (4) Heredia was suspicious because her mother and aunt were visibly “nervous,” (5) Heredia knew she would be driving through a border patrol checkpoint, and (6) Heredia despite her suspicions avoided asking her mother and aunt if there were drugs in the car. Together, this evidence justified a jury inference of wilful avoidance of positive knowledge to avoid criminal responsibility if apprehended.

. See F.R.E. 602 ("A witness may not testify to a matter unless evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that the witness has personal knowledge of the matter.”).

. See id., Advisory Committee Note (“The rule requiring that a witness who testifies to a fact which can be perceived by the senses must have had an opportunity to observe, and must have actually observed the fact is a most pervasive manifestation of the common law insistence upon the most reliable sources of information.") (quotation omitted).

. See United States v. Jewell, 532 F.2d 697, 700 (9th Cir.1976) (en banc) (“The substantive justification for the rule [that wilful blindness is equivalent to knowledge] is that deliberate ignorance and positive knowledge are equally culpable.”) (quotation omitted).

. Id. at 699 n. 1.

. Id.

. Id.

. Id.

. Id.

. 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), 952(a).

. See United States v. Jewell, 532 F.2d 697, 700, 704 (9th Cir.1976) (en banc).

. Id. at 699 (emphasis added).

. Id. at 700 & n. 7.

. Id. at 704. The majority justifies its own deliberate avoidance of this language by noting that Jewell did not explicitly say that a wilful blindness instruction must contain a motivation to avoid criminal responsibility element. Majority at 919 n. 9. But the appellant in Jewell did not argue, in district court or on appeal, that the wilful blindness instruction was erroneous because it lacked the motivation element. Moreover, the Jewell court did not lay out a specific, inclusive wilful blindness instruction. It simply concluded that the one given was not plainly erroneous. See id. at 704 n. 21. Justice and respect for the statutory language require that we clarify Jewell to require all three elements, awareness of high probability, deliberate avoidance of confirmation, and motivation to avoid criminal responsibility, both for giving the instruction and for the content of the instruction.

. Id. at 700 n. 7 (quoting G. Williams, Criminal Law: The General Part, § 57 at 159 (2d ed. 1961)) (emphasis added).

. United States v. Sehnal, 930 F.2d 1420, 1427 (9th Cir.1991) (citing Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192, 199, 111 S.Ct. 604, 112 L.Ed.2d 617 (1991)).

. United States v. Murdock, 290 U.S. 389, 394, 54 S.Ct. 223, 78 L.Ed. 381 (1933), overruled on other grounds by Murphy v. Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, 378 U.S. 52, 70, 84 S.Ct. 1594, 12 L.Ed.2d 678 (1964).

. United States v. Jewell, 532 F.2d 697, 700 (9th Cir.1976) (en banc).

. Liparota v. United States, 471 U.S. 419, 424, 105 S.Ct. 2084, 85 L.Ed.2d 434 (1985).

. 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1).

. Majority at 919-20 (citing United States v. Shannon, 137 F.3d 1112, 1117 & n. 1 (9th Cir.1998) (per curiam), United States v. McAllister, 747 F.2d 1273, 1275 (9th Cir.1984), United States v. Henderson, 721 F.2d 276, 278 (9th Cir.1983), and United States v. Suttiswad, 696 F.2d 645, 650 (9th Cir.1982)).

. United States v. Aguilar, 80 F.3d 329, 332 (9th Cir.1996) (en banc).

. Id.

. United States v. Pacific Hide & Fur Depot, Inc., 768 F.2d 1096 (9th Cir.1985).

. United States v. Aguilar, 80 F.3d 329, 332 (9th Cir.1996) (en banc) (quoting United States v. Pacific Hide & Fur Depot, Inc., 768 F.2d 1096, 1098-99 (9th Cir.1985)).

. United States v. Aguilar, 80 F.3d 329, 332 (9th Cir.1996) (en banc) (quoting United States v. Pacific Hide & Fur Depot, Inc., 768 F.2d 1096, 1098-99 (9th Cir.1985)); see also United States v. Murrieta-Bejarano, 552 F.2d 1323, 1326 (9th Cir.1977) (Kennedy, J., dissenting) ("The Jewell instruction should not be given unless the evidence can sustain a finding, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant purposely contrived to avoid learning all of the facts in order to have a defense in the event of being arrested and charged.”).

. See United States v. Baron, 94 F.3d 1312, 1317 (9th Cir.1996) (collecting cases); United States v. Mapelli, 971 F.2d 284, 286 (9th Cir.1992) ("The instruction enables the jury to deal with wilful blindness, where a person suspects a fact, realizes its probability, but refrains from obtaining final confirmation in order to be able to deny knowledge if apprehended.”); United States v. Alvarado, 838 F.2d 311, 314 (9th Cir.1987) (“[T]he facts must support the inference that the defendant ... purposely contrived to avoid learning all of the facts in order to have a defense in the event of subsequent prosecution.”); United States v. Kelm, 827 F.2d 1319, 1324 (9th Cir.1987) ("There must be evidence that the defendant purposely avoided learning all of the facts in order to have a defense in the event of being arrested and charged”); United States v. Beckett, 724 F.2d 855 856 (9th Cir.1984) (similar); United States v. Garzon, 688 F.2d 607, 609 (9th Cir.1982) (similar).

. See e.g., United States v. Shannon, 137 F.3d 1112, 1117 & n. 1 (9th Cir.1998) (per curiam) (implying approval of a Jewell instruction without a motive element); United States v. Baron, 94 F.3d 1312, 1317 (9th Cir.1996) ("In this case, Baron argues that the government presented insufficient evidence establishing that he (1) suspected that the car contained drugs, (2) deliberately avoided taking steps to confirm or deny those suspicions, and (3) did so in order to provide himself with a defense in the event of prosecution. We agree.... Accordingly, ... the district court erred by giving the Jewell instruction.”).

. Majority at 920-21.

. Majority at 920 n. 10.

. United States v. Mapelli, 971 F.2d 284, 286 (9th Cir.1992).

. Id.

. United States v. Jewell, 532 F.2d 697, 700 n. 7 (9th Cir.1976) (en banc), (quoting G. Williams, Criminal Law: The General Part, § 57 at 157 (2d ed. 1961)).

. The instruction reads: “You may find that the defendant acted knowingly if you find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was aware of a high probability that drugs were in the vehicle driven by the defendant and deliberately avoided learning the truth. You may not find such knowledge, however, if you find that the defendant actually believed that there were no drugs in the vehicle driven by the defendant, or if you find that the defendant was simply careless.”

. See United States v. Jewell, 532 F.2d 697, 700 (9th Cir.1976) (en banc); United States v. Baron, 94 F.3d 1312, 1318 n. 3 (9th Cir.1996).

. See id.

. United States v. Mapelli, 971 F.2d 284, 286 (9th Cir.1992).

. See United States v. Aguilar, 80 F.3d 329, 332 (9th Cir.1996) (en banc) (quoting United States v. Pacific Hide & Fur Depot, Inc., 768 F.2d 1096, 1098-99 (9th Cir.1985)) ("It is not enough that the defendant was mistaken, recklessly disregarded the truth, or negligently failed to inquire.”).

. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(b); United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 734, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993).

. United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 16, n. 14, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985).

. United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 734, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993) (emphasis added).

. See supra note 27.

. See Ninth Circuit Model Criminal Jury Instruction 5.7 (2003) (“You may find that the defendant acted knowingly if you find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was aware of a high probability that [e.g., drugs were in the defendant's automobile] and deliberately avoided learning the truth. You may not find such knowledge, however, if you find that the defendant actually believed that [e.g., no drugs were in the defendant's automobile], or if you find that the defendant was simply careless.”). But see McDowell v. Calderon, 130 F.3d 833, 840 (9th Cir.1997) (model jury instructions are not a substitute for individual research and drafting); United States v. Hegwood, 977 F.2d 492, 496 (9th Cir.1992) (“Had the district court merely [given] the model jury instruction, it would have committed plain error.”).

.Similarly, Heredia did not argue below that the Jewell instruction, as a matter of law, should never be given. Omitting a Jewell instruction altogether, as the dissent would, means that if a jury asks a judge to instruct it further on the meaning of "knowing,” the court will decline. Rather than protecting defendants, that invites jury arbitrariness, because the meaning of knowledge in this context is important and non-obvious.

. United States v. Mapelli, 971 F.2d 284, 286 (9th Cir.1992).

. Majority at 921-22.