Court Opinion

ID: 9489041
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:03:39.20301+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:16.537559
License: Public Domain

GARTH, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While I agree that Edmonds’ conviction must be sustained, I cannot agree that any error was committed by the district court. Because there was no error, it is a needless exercise to address whether that error was harmless.
Congress has never required a unanimous finding for each and every component of the Continuing Criminal Enterprise (“CCE”) statute, 21 U.S.C. § 848(c). Therefore, in my opinion, the jury was not required to unanimously agree on which three predicate acts constituted the “continuing series of violations” for purposes of the CCE statute, as Echeverri required, and which the majority of the Court now reaffirms.
I.
In this case, we have been asked to decide whether the identities of the predicate acts constituting the “continuing series of violations” prong of the CCE statute are so essential to proof of the CCE offense that the identity of each predicate act must be agreed upon unanimously by the jury; or whether the identities of the predicate acts are merely alternative means of committing the same CCE offense or preliminary facts required to establish the offense, such that unanimity is not required under the Supreme Court’s decision in Schad v. Arizona, 501 U.S. 624, 111 S.Ct. 2491, 115 L.Ed.2d 555 (1991).
*837The plain reading and meaning of the CCE statute does not require the identification of the particular predicate acts as an element of the CCE offense. Therefore, the jury need not have unanimously agreed on the same three predicate acts constituting the “continuing series” in convicting Edmonds of CCE. Accordingly, the district court did not err in failing to give such a specific unanimity instruction.
A.
In order for the government to make out the offense of conducting a continuing criminal enterprise, as defined by 21 U.S.C. § 848(e), it must show that:
(1) the defendant committed a drug-related felony, 21 U.S.C. § 848(c)(1);
(2) the felony was “a part of a continuing series of violations ” of the drug laws; 21 U.S.C. § 848(c)(2) (emphasis added);
(3) the defendant undertook that drug-related felony “in concert with five or more other persons with respect to whom [the defendant] occupied a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management,” 21 U.S.C. § 848(c)(2)(A); and
(4) the defendant obtained substantial income or resources from these violations. 21 U.S.C. § 848(e)(2)(B).
The district court had instructed the jury that “[a] continuing series of violations requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that three or more violations occurred and that they, those three or more, were related to each other.” App. 577. The district court also instructed the jury that “[y]ou are asked to deliberate with a view towards reaching a unanimous decision with respect to each count and each defendant charged here in this indictment.” App. 581. The only issue before us on appeal is whether the district court erred in failing to instruct the jury that in order to convict Edmonds of engaging in a CCE, it must unanimously agree as to which three predicate acts constituted the “continuing series of violations” under the CCE statute.
Nowhere in the language or legislative history of the CCE statute does Congress evince a concern regarding the particular nature or identity of the predicate acts constituting the “continuing series of violations.” Aside from requiring that the “violations” be drug-related offenses, Congress has not imposed limits on what predicate acts constitute a “violation.” The courts, at liberty to define this statute, have generally held that “violations” refer broadly to offenses, including unindicted offenses, whether or not they led to convictions. See United States v. Rosenthal, 793 F.2d 1214, 1226-27 (11th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 919, 107 S.Ct. 1377, 94 L.Ed.2d 692 (1987); United States v. Mar-kowski, 772 F.2d 358, 361-62 (7th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1018, 106 S.Ct. 1202, 89 L.Ed.2d 316 (1986). Congress has not even defined the number of predicate acts required to form a “series.” Thus, while some courts of appeal have required three predicate acts, see United States v. Echeverri, 854 F.2d 638, 642 (3d Cir.1988); United States v. Rosenthal, 793 F.2d 1214, 1226 (11th Cir. 1986), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 919, 107 S.Ct. 1377, 94 L.Ed.2d 692 (1987), another court has required only two. See United States v. Canino, 949 F.2d 928, 947 (7th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 910, 112 S.Ct. 1940, 118 L.Ed.2d 546 (1992).
Indeed, the statute itself does not require that the violations be “related,” although the courts have uniformly read such a “relatedness” requirement into the definition of “continuing series.” See e.g. United States v. Rodriguez-Aguirre, 73 F.3d 1023, 1025 n. 3 (10th Cir.1996).
B.
The broadness with which Congress defined a “continuing series of violations” indicates that the exact identities of the predicate offenses necessary for a jury to find a “continuing series” for purposes of the CCE statute are not essential facts constituting an element of the offense. Bather, the predicate offenses are no more than alternative means of, or preliminary facts, establishing the element of-“continuing series.” In Schad v. Arizona, 501 U.S. 624, 633, 111 S.Ct. 2491, 2497-98, 115 L.Ed.2d 555 (1991), the Supreme Court held that facts that constitute merely alternative means of, or preliminary *838facts to, proving a single offense need not receive the unanimous agreement of the jury.
In Schad, a plurality of the Supreme Court held that the jury was not required to unanimously agree on whether the defendant Schad had committed premeditated murder or felony-murder in order to convict him under the Arizona first-degree murder statute. That statute provided that first-degree murder was only one crime, regardless of whether it occurred as a premeditated murder or a felony murder. The Supreme Court stated that:
Our cases reflect a long-established rule of the criminal law that an indictment need not specify which overt act, among several named, was the means by which a crime was committed.... We have never suggested that in returning general verdicts in such cases the jurors should be required to agree upon a single means of commission, any more than the indictment were required to specify one alone. In these cases, as in litigation generally, “different jurors may be persuaded by different pieces of evidence, even when they agree upon the bottom line. Plainly there is no general requirement that the jury reach agreement on the preliminary factual issues which underlie the verdict.”
Id. at 631-32, 111 S.Ct. at 2496-97 (quotation omitted). Thus the Court rejected requiring jury unanimity on the “mere means of satisfying a single element of an offense,” noting that such a requirement would lead to “absurd results.” Id. at 636 n. 6, 111 S.Ct. at 2499 n. 6.
The Schad Court recognized that there were due process limits to the state’s authority to define what facts constitute merely alternative means of committing a single offense. The Court stated that:
[Nothing in our history suggests that the Due Process Clause would permit a State to convict anyone under a charge of “Crime” so generic that any combination of jury findings of embezzlement, reckless driving, murder, burglary, tax evasion, or littering, for example, would suffice for conviction.
Schad, 501 U.S. at 633, 111 S.Ct. at 2498. There comes a point, the Court recognized, when “differences between means become so important that they may not reasonably be viewed as alternatives to a common end, but must be treated as differentiating what the Constitution requires to be treated as separate offenses.” Schad, 501 U.S. at 633, 111 S.Ct. at 2497-98. In the case of the Arizona murder statute, the Court held that due process was not violated because the state legislature had determined that premeditated murder was “morally equivalent” to felony murder. Id. at 644, 111 S.Ct. at 2503-04.
In the present case, the CCE statute clearly provides for conviction for engaging in a CCE regardless of the identity, level of seriousness, or differing penalties of the predicate acts constituting the “continuing series of violations.” Because any grouping of multiple related drug offenses will satisfy this element of the statute, and because different groupings of predicate acts do not define separate crimes, the identities of the specific predicate acts constituting the “continuing series” do not rise to facts so “indispensable to proof of a given offense,” Schad, 501 U.S. at 633, 111 S.Ct. at 2497-98, that they must be agreed to unanimously by the jury. If we were to hold otherwise, we would in effect be establishing a rule requiring jury unanimity as' to every predicate fact underlying the second prong of the CCE statute. Indeed, the majority opinion has furnished us with no explanation as to how its analysis can result in a conclusion that Congress intended just this one prong of a four-prong statute to require jury unanimity as to the identity of the three predicate acts and not require jury unanimity as to the factual underpinnings of the other components of the CCE.
Certainly, the majority opinion has furnished us with no clue as to why just this requirement of the CCE statute (“continuing series of violations”) must be distinguished from the other three requirements of the statute.
While the first CCE prong (commission of a drug-related felony) requires only a single determination, the other three CCE prongs cannot be satisfied by a single determination and they therefore potentially raise unanimity issues. If the majority’s analysis is cor*839rect, then it would inexorably follow that all five or more individuals — the subject of the third CCE prong — must likewise be identified and agreed upon by each member of the jury. Yet we have held, and the majority apparently agrees with that holding, (Maj. Op. at 821-22), that this is not required. See United States v. Jackson, 879 F.2d 85 (3d Cir.1989) (unanimity on five or more supervised individuals not required).
Similarly, and just as illogically under the majority’s analysis, with respect to the CCE requirement that a defendant must have derived “substantial income or resources” from his drug violations, it would appear that the majority would also require unanimity as to the factual findings and identities of such income or resources. Would the jury have to identify the cash, property, airplanes, automobiles (Mercedes, Lexus, BMW), yachts, etc. and agree unanimously on the particular resource which the defendant received?
Such a construction — singling out and selecting one of four statutory requirements and interpreting an unartieulated congressional intent requiring unanimity only with respect to that one prong of a four-prong statute — is not supported by any precedent, any logic, or any reason. Nor can the majority’s unsupported argument, that such a construction is mandated, supply that authority. In sum, “ ‘there is no general requirement that the jury reach agreement on the preliminary factual issues which underlie the verdict.’ ” Schad, 501 U.S. at 632, 111 S.Ct. at 2497 (quoting McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U.S. 433, 449, 110 S.Ct. 1227, 1236-37, 108 L.Ed.2d 369 (1990) (Blackmun, J., concurring)).
C.
Not requiring specific unanimity on the predicate acts constituting the “continuing series of violations” is consistent with our holding in United States v. Jackson, 879 F.2d 85 (3d Cir.1989), where we held that there need not be unanimous agreement among the jury as to the identities of the five or more persons making up the group of underlings supervised, organized, or managed by the defendant for purposes of the CCE statute.1
The majority attempts to distinguish Jackson by arguing that the five-person requirement, unlike the continuing series requirement, has a “historical analogue in the law of conspiracy, which generally has not required the jury to unanimously agree on the identity of the defendant’s co-conspirators.” (Maj. Op. at 822). The applicability of the law of conspiracy to substantive CCE offenses is open to question. Moreover, even if the law of conspiracy were applicable here, it is clear that the continuing series requirement enjoys as much of a “historical analogue” as does the five-person requirement. Notably, in the case of a multiple-object conspiracy, a jury need not unanimously agree as to which object of the various charged objects forms the basis for their conviction of a defendant for conspiracy. See, e.g., United States v. Linn, 31 F.3d 987, 991 (10th Cir.1994); United States v. Peral-Cota, 1993 WL 68934, *4 (9th Cir. Mar. 11, 1993).2
The majority also argues that Jackson is distinguishable because “acting in concert with one group of five people is no more or less blameworthy than acting in concert with *840another group of five.” (Maj. Op. at 822). However, as discussed infra, the CCE statute clearly provides that engaging in one group of related predicate acts is as equally blameworthy as engaging in another group of •related predicate acts. Just as the exact identities of the five supervised individuals are preliminary factual findings or mere alternative means to proving a CCE offense, the exact identities of the predicate acts constituting the “continuing series of violations” are also preliminary factual findings or mere alternative means to proving a CCE offense and thus need not be the subject of jury unanimity. See United States v. Anderson, 39 F.3d 331, 350-51 (D.C.Cir.1994) (holding that the district court’s failure to instruct the jurors that they were required to agree unanimously on the particular predicate acts committed and the identities of the five individuals managed in order to convict the defendant for violation of the CCE statute was not plain error), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 116 S.Ct. 542, 133 L.Ed.2d 445 (1995); United States v. Canino, 949 F.2d 928, 948 (7th Cir.1991) (holding that juror unanimity was not required on the identities of the predicate offenses constituting the “continuing series” because “[t]he constitutional requirement of juror unanimity in federal criminal offenses is satisfied when each juror in a CCE trial is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant charged under the CCE statute committed two predicate offenses.”), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 910, 112 S.Ct. 1940, 118 L.Ed.2d 546 (1992).3
D.
The district court’s general unanimity instruction sufficiently ensured that the jury would unanimously agree that a “continuing series of violations,” that is, three or more related drug offenses, occurred. Thus, I find that the district court committed no error when it did not provide a specific unanimity instruction.
II.
Today, the majority purports to “affirm” or “reaffirm” our decision in United States v. Echeverri, 854 F.2d 638 (3d Cir.1988). The majority, conceding that neither the language nor legislative history of the CCE statute requires specific unanimity, strains to justify its position by resorting to “background interpretive principles,” including the “tradition in criminal jurisprudence,” constitutional considerations, and the rule of lenity. In my view, these “background interpretive principles” cannot support the ambitious proposition for which they are invoked by the majority.
A.
First, the majority argues that under the “general historical tradition in criminal jurisprudence,” “[cjriminal trials have long ensured substantial jury agreement as to the facts establishing the offense.” (Maj. Op. at 818). In so arguing, the majority glosses over and fails to answer the central dilemma in the case: how we are to determine which facts require or do not require unanimous jury agreement.
Clearly, not all of the facts underlying a verdict-require jury unanimity. See Schad, supra. In failing to define what “facts” require jury unanimity or not, the majority’s argument does not supply a satisfactory, authoritative, or logical answer as to whether the identities of the three predicate acts constituting a “continuing series of violations” for purposes of CCE require jury unanimity.
B.
Next, the majority argues that “[tjhere is a real possibility that the CCE statute would *841violate the Due Process Clause absent a specific unanimity requirement.” (Maj. Op. at 819-20). The majority, however, cannot find a principled way to argue that due process was violated in this case when it was not violated in Schad.
In Schad, the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause was not violated when the defendant was convicted of first-degree murder despite the lack of assurance that the jury unanimously agreed as to whether the defendant had committed premeditated murder or felony murder. The majority argues that this result was defensible in Schad only because premeditated murder and felony murder are of “equivalent blameworthiness or culpability” (Maj. Op. at 820 (quoting Schad, 501 U.S. at 643, 111 S.Ct. at 2503)); and that in the present case, the three predicate offenses may vary greatly in degrees of seriousness which would cause them to not be equivalently blameworthy.
This argument lacks any basis in logic. To the extent that the CCE statute allows conviction for the same offense based on any grouping of multiple related predicate acts, despite the fact that each act may carry very different penalties, this is a decision that has already been made by Congress. In other words, Congress has already determined that regardless of the exact identity or seriousness of the predicate acts constituting the “continuing series,” a defendant is equally blameworthy so long as he has engaged in multiple related drug-related offenses. As the Supreme Court noted in Schad, “ ‘the ... legislature’s definition of the elements of the offense is usually dispositive.’ ” Schad, 501 U.S. at 639, 111 S.Ct. at 2500-01.
A legislature’s definition of the elements of an crime does not offend constitutional strictures where such definition is supported by “history” and “shared practice.” See Schad, 501 U.S. at 640, 111 S.Ct. at 2501-02. As discussed earlier, Congress’s decision not to require unanimity on the identities of the predicate acts for a CCE offense finds a historical analogue in the well established law that where an indictment alleges multiple acts charged in the conjunctive, the jury need only be given a general unanimity jury instruction, and a general guilty verdict suffices to convict the defendant. See, e.g., United States v. Linn, 31 F.3d 987, 991 (10th Cir.1994); United States v. Peral-Cota, 1993 WL 68934, *4 (9th Cir. Mar. 11, 1993).
Moreover, a specific unanimity instruction to the jury would do nothing to change the fact that a defendant could be convicted for CCE regardless of whether the jury found that he engaged in a series of first-time simple possession offenses or whether the jury found that he engaged in a series of more serious crimes such as distributing large quantities of drugs.4
Accordingly, because Congress has already determined that any “continuing series of [drug] violations,” regardless of the identity or seriousness of those drug violations, is equally blameworthy for purposes of CCE, we defer to Congress’s determination as the Court deferred to the Arizona legislature’s intent in Schad. The majority’s argument that the predicate acts making up such a “continuing series” may vary in degrees of seriousness is irrelevant, and Edmonds’ conviction for CCE, even if based on less than unanimous jury agreement as to which three predicate acts constituted the “series,” does not violate due process.5
C.
Finally, the majority also argues that requiring specific unanimity is “counseled” by the rule of lenity.
*842First and foremost, the rule of lenity applies only when a statute is ambiguous and, in light of the traditional view that unanimity is required only as to the general verdict, the CCE statute cannot be deemed ambiguous.
Moreover, as the majority acknowledges, there is no authority for applying the rule of lenity to the issue posed in the present case. Nevertheless, the majority argues that the rule of lenity should apply here because it has been applied to the “conceptually analogous situation: whether a single criminal act constitutes one or more violations of a statute.” (Maj. Op. at 820-21). I fail to see, however, how the issue of whether a single criminal act constitutes one or more violations of a statute is at all analogous to the present issue of whether the facts sought to be proven at trial are or are not so essential to proof of an element of the offense such that jury unanimity is or is not required.
The majority also invokes a number of cases for the proposition that the rule of lenity requires fair warning as to the harshness of criminal penalties for a given offense. From there, the majority makes the tenuous connection that because procedural protections affect the likelihood that a penalty will be imposed, that “[a]t some point, differences in procedural protections become as significant as different penalties, and the need for fair warning just as critical.” (Maj. Op. at 821-22).6 This argument is forced and fails to persuade. The “procedural protections” at trial may affect the likelihood that a defendant will be convicted at trial (a jury question), but this is a separate issue from what penalties will be imposed (a statutory and/or judicial matter).
III.
Because Congress has not required specific unanimity with respect to any of the predicate factual findings underlying the CCE statute, and because there is no basis for our requiring unanimity as to the identities of the predicate acts when we do not require unanimity as to the identities of the five supervised individuals, or as to the identities of the defendant’s income and resources; I would overrule Eckeverri. Instead, I would hold that, absent Congressional intent requiring jury unanimity as to the identity of predicate factual findings, a specific unanimity instruction on a statute’s predicate findings is not required.
Because there was no error committed by the district court, I would not reach the issue of harmless error. Although I concur in the ultimate result reached by the majority in sustaining Edmonds’ conviction, I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that requires unanimity as to the identities of the predicate acts constituting the “continuing series” prong of the CCE statute.
SLOVITER, C.J., and GREENBERG, NYGAARD, ALITO and ROTH, JJ., join in this concurring and dissenting opinion.

. At least seven other circuits have not required unanimity with respect to the identity of the five underlings in the CCE statute. See United States v. Jelinek, 57 F.3d 655, 658 (8th Cir.1995), cert. denied, - U.S. - , 116 S.Ct. 236, 133 L.Ed.2d 164 (1995); United States v. Harris, 959 F.2d 246 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 932, 113 S.Ct. 362, 121 L.Ed.2d 275 (1992); United States v. Canino, 949 F.2d 928 (7th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 910, 112 S.Ct. 1940, 118 L.Ed.2d 546 (1992); United States v. Moorman, 944 F.2d 801 (11th Cir.1991) (per curiam), cert. denied, 503 U.S. 1007, 112 S.Ct. 1766, 118 L.Ed.2d 427 (1992); United States v. English, 925 F.2d 154, 159 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1211, 111 S.Ct. 2812, 115 L.Ed.2d 984 (1991); United States v. Linn, 889 F.2d 1369, 1374 (5th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 809, 111 S.Ct. 43, 112 L.Ed.2d 19 (1990); United States v. Tarvers, 833 F.2d 1068, 1074 (1st Cir.1987).

. Indeed, as the Supreme Court has held, "[w]hen a jury returns a guilty verdict on an indictment charging several acts in the conjunctive, ... the verdict stands if the evidence is sufficient with respect to any one of the acts charged.” Griffin v. United States, 502 U.S. 46, 56-57, 112 S.Ct. 466, 472-73, 116 L.Ed.2d 371 (1991) (quoting Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 420, 90 S.Ct. 642, 654, 24 L.Ed.2d 610 (1970)).

. See also United States v. Kramer, 955 F.2d 479, 486-87 (7th Cir.1992) (rejecting defendants' contention that the jury should have been instructed that it must unanimously agree as to each of the two or more predicate offenses constituting the "continuing scries" of CCE, where the court had given a general unanimity instruction), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 998, 113 S.Ct. 595, 121 L.Ed.2d 533 (1992); United States v. Hernandez-Escarse-ga, 886 F.2d 1560 (9th Cir.1989) (specific unanimity instruction not required where the jury had convicted the defendant of two of the eleven predicate offenses alleged in the CCE count, and where there was "overwhelming” evidence at trial that the other charged predicate acts had occurred), cert. denied, 497 U.S. 1003, 110 S.Ct. 3237, 111 L.Ed.2d 748 (1990).

. I raise this point not to “suggest!] that the equivalent blameworthiness test is a pointless exercise," (Maj. Op. at 820), but to highlight the fact that the majority's criticism of the CCE statute would not be cured by the specific unanimity instruction requested on the appeal before us. Indeed, the majority’s "equal blameworthiness” argument does not provide support for a specific unanimity instruction, but instead stands as a challenge to the facial constitutionality of the CCE statute.

. The majority also notes for the first time in the harmless error section of its opinion, that the Sixth Amendment is also "implicated" by the district court’s failure to give a specific unanimity instruction in this case. (Maj. Op. at 823). However, as the majority concedes, the present inquiry turns not on Sixth Amendment concerns but Due Process concerns. (Maj. Op. at 823 n. 17).

. Presumably, the "procedural protection” that the majority has in mind is a specific unanimity instruction to the jury.