Court Opinion

ID: 9475932
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:42:58.145681+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:02.003135
License: Public Domain

POOLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I must respectfully dissent.
Although the law of this circuit construing the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(2), unambiguously holds that when a public official, “under color of official right,” obtains property or money to which she is not entitled, no showing of “inducement” is required, United States v. McClelland, 731 F.2d 1438, 1440 (9th Cir.1984), the majority in this case has reached a contrary result, holding that there must be a substantial equivalent of inducement, a “demand” by the recipient, in order to make out the *1424offense. This constitutes a rejection of the rule of this circuit and of every other circuit but one. By purporting to “distinguish” the above authorities, the majority has in fact overruled our circuit law.
In my judgment the majority is in error both as to the elements of extortion, and in disregarding our circuit rules regulating how we go about changing our law.
I.
The defendant, Katherine Bordallo Aguon, one-time Director of the Department of Education of Guam, was convicted by a jury of extortion under the Hobbs Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, 18 U.S.C. § 371, and of making false declarations to the United States Grand Jury. On this appeal, the majority has reversed all convictions. The formulation of an incorrect legal principle has caused the majority to strike down all verdicts and judgments and to topple the entire trial like a stack of dominoes.

Majority’s Reason for Reversal

Before opening statements or any evidence had been offered, and in an attempt to give the jury some “feel” of the case, the trial judge discussed extortion under the Hobbs Act. Initially he told the jury there had to be proof that the defendant “induced another under color of official right to part with property.” That was incorrect. The Hobbs Act deals with interference with commerce — a term of art — when done or attempted by robbery, extortion, violence or threats thereof. Section 1951(b)(1) defines “robbery” as used in the Act. Section 1951(b)(2) defines “extortion” in these words: “(2) [t]he term ‘extortion’ means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.” As set forth more fully below, the statutory definitions differentiate between extortion consisting of the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, “induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear,” from extortion “under color of official right.” This last phrase is disjunctively placed in the definition. The word, “induced,” refers to the “consent” brought about by force or fear.
This is the reading which we adopted in United States v. McClelland. Therefore, the initial instruction of the trial judge was incorrect. However, the misstatement was immediately corrected by an instruction that “extortion [under color of official right] does not require inducement,” and that “the wrongful use of otherwise valid official power converts dutiful action into extortion.”
The majority held that this conflict in instruction created such confusion in the minds of the jury that it was reversible error. This conclusion has no warrant. The first remarks would have imposed upon the government proof of an element not at all required. The jury might well have thought the government had a greater burden than it really had. Nonetheless it found that the defendant committed the offense. Thus, there could be no prejudice to the defendant; the potential harm, if any, was to the government’s case.
The majority further complains that the instructions failed to tell the jury that the charge of conspiracy was invalid unless its object was to commit some kind of extortion involving “inducement” — that conspiracy under color of official right was conspiracy of a different breed than general conspiracy. Further, the majority said that the trial judge inadequately defined criminal intent, or mens rea, since he made no distinction between the obtaining of property “under color of official right” and the receipt of legitimate political contributions. Again, the majority erroneously has held that there must be inducement. The majority ended up drafting for trial judges, somewhat presumptuously, in my view, its version of “model” instructions for their use in future case. These instructions are wrong and experienced trial judges are unlikely to accept them.
Finally, the majority held that a juror who, two months after trial, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge under the laws of Guam, and who was asked no question which fairly required him to answer that *1425such charge was pending, was nonetheless disqualified as a matter of law, and that his presence on the jury was another ground for reversal. Again, the majority links the claimed juror disqualification to its general premise that the case was already so fatally flawed by the trial court’s treatment that reversal was mandated.

The Evidence

Co-defendant Pyong Hok Han, a Korean citizen, was principal of a company, Hando Enterprises, which was engaged actively in selling supplies to the department of which Aguon was Director. He testified that over a substantial period of time he gave Aguon numerous things of value, including clothing, a washer, a gas dryer, a microwave oven, a refrigerator and other household goods. He did so “to make her happy,” and because “I don’t want the people don’t like my, don’t like company to do business with DOE.” He paid for a carpet which Aguon herself selected in Los Angeles and arranged for its shipment and installation in her house in Guam so that he would have “no trouble” with his maintenance contract with the Department. His testimony makes clear that Han gave these gifts to Aguon to insure her assistance, which was necessary if he was to maintain his contracts with the Department. There was absolutely no other relationship between them to explain any reason for the valuable gratuities, and the jury could reasonably find that Aguon consciously exploited Han’s anxiety about her continued help and willingly accepted the valuables from him. Whether Aguon initiated the arrangement with Han, (that is affirmatively and demonstrably “induced” or solicited the gifts) is logically irrelevant, so long as she, a public officer, knowingly accepted the things of value from a contractor with her department and, indeed, participated in implementing the bargain. See also United States v. Hathaway, 534 F.2d 386 (1st Cir.1976). (Although the government’s witness [Graham] himself may have first brought up the subject of payments, “ * * * the jury could find that the impetus came from a reasonable apprehension that, without paying, [his company] would not be considered [for a contract award] by the Authority. [Appellant’s] exploitation of such a fear amounted to extortion notwithstanding Graham’s readiness and even eagerness to play the game.”) (citations omitted). Hathaway, 534 F.2d at 395; United States v. Gates, 616 F.2d 1103, 1105 (9th Cir.1980). Any public official knows that gratuities from one beholden to the official are not simply those of a moonstruck swain, but of one seeking official favor.
In another count, Aguon, Frank Granich (Supervisor of Buildings and Grounds for the Department), and Camacho (Business Administrator) were charged with obtaining $42,000 from Kelly Song who had painting contracts with the Department. Granich testified that Song gave him $35,-000 for getting the contract, and that he gave $5,000 or $7,000 to Aguon in two payments. He said he told her, at the time of the first payment, “this is a political contribution for you.” But there was other evidence in the record, including statements made by Aguon, Camacho and Granich during the investigation and surreptitiously recorded, from which the jury could infer that Aguon knew that the donor of this cash was a contractor. The recorded conversations showed those three trying to get their stories together for the grand jury, and that Aguon was engaged in concealing her knowledge of the identity of the donors and of the connection of the gifts to their contractual positions.
The majority attacks the value of this evidence, suggesting that only ordinary political contributions were involved and so there could be no extortion without “mens rea,” again, meaning without evidence of inducement. That is wrong; the jury could indeed find criminal intent based on Han’s statements to Aguon as she took the valuable “gifts.” Moreover, the jury received strong inferences of guilty knowledge in Aguon’s recorded conversations with Camacho and Granich. The existence of a guilty state of mind was certainly a question for the jury considering the recorded conversations of these officials trying to find explanations to give to a grand jury for their custom and pattern of taking ex*1426pensive items and large sums in cash from contractors doing business with their Department. The trial jury could reasonably conclude that the officials had guilty minds.
The majority opinion has not explicitly held the evidence to be insufficient to justify the jury’s findings of guilty knowledge and intent; rather it complains of the failure to instruct the jury that the element of mens rea required showing that the defendant induced the turning over of the money and property. The court gave the standard instructions on knowledge and wilfulness. Under those instructions, the jury could find that Aguon understood that these gratuities were intended as incentives to assure continued favors of her official position, and, understanding, took them again and again.
The majority’s reversal of the verdicts is simply the product of its incorrect representation of the law of this circuit.

Ninth Circuit Law

No single panel of this court is free to reject the authority of United States v. McClelland, 731 F.2d 1438 (9th Cir.1984). In that case, the trial judge had instructed the jury that “it is not necessary for the Government to show that the defendant induced the extortionate payment.” On appeal after conviction, the defendant challenged the instruction, arguing, as does the majority here, that the Government had to prove that the defendant acted in some manner to “induce” the payment in question. We disagreed and said:
Every circuit which has considered whether inducement is an essential element of a section 1951 violation has ruled that is not. See e.g., United States v. Jannotti, 673 F.2d 578, 594-96 (3d Cir.1982) (en banc), cert. denied, 457 U.S. 1106, 102 S.Ct. 2906, 73 L.Ed.2d 1315 (1982); United States v. Butler, 618 F.2d 411, 417-20 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 927, 100 S.Ct. 3024, 65 L.Ed.2d 1121 (1980); United States v. Hall, 536 F.2d 313, 320-21 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 919, 97 S.Ct. 313, 50 L.Ed.2d 285 (1976); United States v. Hathaway, 534 F.2d 386, 393 (1st Cir.) cert. denied, 429 U.S. 819, 97 S.Ct. 64, 50 L.Ed.2d 79 (1976); United States v. Braasch, 505 F.2d 139, 151 n. 8 (7th Cir.1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 910, 95 S.Ct. 1561, 43 L.Ed.2d 775 (1975).
The statute is clearly phrased in the disjunctive: “The term ‘extortion’ means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.” § 1951(b)(2) (Emphasis supplied). Further, a disjunctive reading comports with the historical development of the crime of extortion. The “under color of official right” language reflects the common law definition of extortion, which could be committed only by a public official’s corrupt taking of a fee under color of his office and did not require proof of threat, fear, or duress * * * * The misuse of public office is said to supply the element of coercion * * * * Threats, fear and duress became express elements only when the crime was later broadened to include actions by private individuals, who had no official power to wield over their victims.
Hathaway, 534 F.2d at 393. Thus, we hold that where the defendant is a public official, the government need not show inducement and extortion may be proved by demonstrating nothing more than that the payment in question was obtained “under color of official right.”
McClelland, 731 F.2d at 1439-40 (footnote omitted).
The statutory definition of extortion supports McClelland:
(2) “The term ‘extortion’ means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.
18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(2). Correctly read, the statute is in the disjunctive, thus:
“The term ‘extortion means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent,
(i) induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or
*1427(ii) under color of official right.
The source of the majority’s confusion, the trigger responsible for its departure from the authority of this circuit, is its confusion about the proper application of the word “induced” in the definition of “extortion” in section 1951(b)(2). My Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition, 1979, puts it this way:
Induce v.t., -duced. 1. to influence or persuade, as to some action, state of mind, etc.; Induce him to stay.
2. to bring about or cause; sleep induced by drugs. Syn. 1. actuate, prompt, incite, urge, spur. See persuade. Ant. 1. dissuade.
Apparently convinced that a “better rule” was that of a Second Circuit decision and a Third Circuit Dissent, the majority reads “induced” as referring to some invitation by the official under his color of official right, that is, that the official affirmatively or overtly does something to “bring about or cause” the offer of gratuity. Not so. “Induced” qualifies and refers to words which follow it — “by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence or fear.” The word “induced” does not relate to the clause following the word “fear.”
There is an obvious conceptual difference between extortion (which I have set up as a subordinate subsection (i)) and that in my supposed subsection (ii). All extortion involves property “obtained with consent;” analytically that is what differentiates extortion from “robbery” set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b). But in subsection (b) “(i)” the “consent” comes about because of, is “induced” by, the “wrongful use of [actual or threatened] force, violence or fear.” “Consent” in the latter situation requires the extortionist (or someone on his behalf) to do something affirmatively to instill in the donor the state of mind wherein he ostensibly “consents.” The “consent” is the yielding to the compulsion of force, etc., to avoid physical or other harm. The hope of avoiding that harm “induces” the victim to yield.
But in my subsection (b) “(2)” — extortion “under color of official right” — the donor’s “consent” to give to the official is real, unfeigned. All the recipient-official has to do is to be willing to take, knowing the donor’s expectation; that is shown by his taking, and pocketing, with a reasonable understanding that the deal implicates official action. What “bring[s] about or cause[s]” the donor’s disposing mind is his hope to keep or get what the official has to give or deny. Therefore, in extortion under color of official right, the donor’s conduct is truly “voluntary,” unlike that “induced by” threat or fear. Extortion by force or fear assaults the individual; that accomplished under color of official right assaults the public office and the public trust. The element of “inducement” is essential to convert a seeming consensual delivery of property into a crime; it is not needed to make criminal the obtaining of property by a public official who knows that it is consideration for exercise of his official duty.
Other circuits agree. In the Hobbs Act case of United States v. Jannotti, 673 F.2d 578, 594 (3d Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 457 U.S. 1106, 102 S.Ct. 2906, 73 L.Ed.2d 1315 (1982), defendants argued that they had only “passive[ly]” accepted gratuities. But the Third Circuit explained that extortion under “[c]olor of official right is defined as the taking by a public official of money not due him or his office.” 673 F.2d 578, 595. (Emphasis supplied.) The court held that “the Hobbs Act covers the acceptance of bribes by public officials * * * and the further suggestion that there need be no inducement or prior request for such payments accords with the view taken by the other courts of appeals.” Id.
Similarly, in United States v. Hedman, 630 F.2d 1184 (7th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 965, 101 S.Ct. 1481, 67 L.Ed.2d 614 (1981), the court explicitly rejected the argument that the government must show that the officials were the “initiators” or “inducers” of the payments, holding that “in a Hobbs Act prosecution for extortion under color of official right it is unnecessary to show that the defendant induced the extortionate payment * * * * The government is merely required to prove that a public official obtained money to *1428which he was not entitled and which he obtained only because of his official position.” Id. at 1195. And in United States v. Scacchetti, 668 F.2d 643, 647 (2d Cir.1982), the court said:
So long as the motivation for the payment focuses on the office of the recipient, the conduct falls within the ambit of the Hobbs Act.
Properly understood, the statute does not contemplate that an official have initiated the transaction or have made a demand. What is required is that the official have willingly exploited the donor’s understanding that giving something of value will influence official action. That is the true vice of official extortion. See also United States v. Hall, 536 F.2d 313, 320 (10th Cir.1976).

“Ambiguity” in United States v. McClelland

The majority suggests that McClelland is of questionable authority because of a “weakness” in that opinion; that is that neither McClelland nor other authority of this circuit “has * * * spelled out what is meant by the term, ‘under color of official right,’ ” and that “McClelland did not advert to the ambiguity created when the court said that the payment had not been ‘induced’ but that it must be obtained ‘under color of official right.’ ” Maj.Op. at 1416. In view of this perceived invalidity, the majority has felt free to set forth its own restatement of the law:
According to the standard meaning of the latter phrase, a demand on the grounds of office is required for an act to be under color of official right. No threat and no specific inducement need be made. But a demand (which some people might think to be a form of inducement) is necessary. The confusion and ambiguity of the trial court’s instructions fairly reflect the unresolved ambiguity of McClelland.
Maj.Op. at 1416. (Emphasis supplied.)
Thus revealed, the majority opinion has embarked on a didactic cruise in time, culling bits of historic lore, unraveling mysteries of the common law heretofore uncollated. Completely forgetting, or whimsically oblivious of the force of circuit precedent, the majority’s voyage has ranged over the English Reports of Common Pleas (1550), and through selective commentaries of Blackstone (1765), garnering rare gems of the Boston Municipal Court Reports (1827) eventually to come to rest on the rock-ribbed anchorage of a law review assertion that “common law extortion consisted of ‘corruptly demanding ’ ”. (Emphasis supplied.) Inspired by its excursion through history, the majority opinion bestows its new-found wisdom, telling us that, since extortion required a demand at common law, and since Congress is not shown to have eliminated the common law requirement, that element must still be part of section 1951(b)(2). For further support, the majority cites to Judge Gibbons’ dissent in United States v. Mazzei, 521 F.2d 639 (3d Cir.) (en banc) (Gibbons, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1014, 96 S.Ct. 446, 46 L.Ed.2d 385 (1975). In Mazzei, the Third Circuit, en banc, held that where the defendant acted under color of official right, any “coercion” is supplied by the misuse of official power, but that no coercive use of office need be proved. Judge Gibbons, however, reaching back into the common law to justify a narrow construction of section 1951, complained that were the “common law core” concept to be abandoned, the statute would be “set * * * adrift upon a sea of prosecutorial discretion” and become unconstitutionally vague. Mazzei, 521 F.2d at 655 (Gibbons, J. dissenting), cited in Maj.Op. at 1417. Enthusiastically, the majority adopts Judge Gibbons' rejected analysis.
The majority contends that the McClelland-Hathaway rules in effect equate section 1951 with the federal bribery of public officials statutes, particularly 18 U.S.C. § 201(g), punishing a public official who “directly or indirectly asks, demands, exacts, solicits, seeks, accepts, receives, or agrees to receive anything of value for himself for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by him.” Violations of section 201(g) are punishable by fines up to $10,000 and imprisonment up to two years, or both. By enacting this *1429statute in 1962, the majority says (endorsing some of the Second Circuit’s several opinions in United States v. O’Grady, 742 F.2d 682, 691 (2d Cir.1984), that Congress gave a “clear indication” that it did not believe that the Hobbs Act already reached the same conduct and “that Congress did not intend to eliminate the common law core [i.e., necessity for a ‘demand’] when, in the Hobbs Act, it employed the common law phrase ‘under color of official right.’ ” Maj.Op. at 1417. The Second Circuit appears to be alone in this position. In fact, Congress could, and often has, enacted several discrete statutory treatments of related conduct. We are not really engaged in some abstract teaching of the “better view.” We are bound by standing circuit precedent. A decent appreciation of our rule is sometimes hard to accept; but that is our commitment.
Thus, the majority has rejected standing precedent, declaring that henceforth the new law of this circuit will be that “this offense requires the jury to find that the public official did something, under color of his office, to cause the giving of benefits.” Maj.Op. at 1418 (quoting O’Grady, 742 F.2d at 693). The majority seems unconcerned that O’Grady is (1) a minority view, and (2) that the dissent of Judge Gibbons is the law of neither the Third nor of the Ninth Circuit.
The claim that McClelland is “ambiguous” in that it did not enlarge upon the term “under color of official right,” is an unacceptable reason for attempting to rewrite its holding. The facts of McClelland are not ambiguous. The appellant, a city councilman, was approached by an undercover agent who claimed to be representative of a fictitious organization of doctors interested in investments. After a number of meetings and discussions, in consideration for his promised vote of approval for construction of a bank in which the payors were interested, the defendant accepted a check written to a corporation which he owned. United States v. McClelland, 571 F.Supp. 759, 770 (D.Nev.1983), affirmed 731 F.2d 1438 (9th Cir.1984). There was no coercive demand, not even the most subtle. But the statute was held violated.
Whether or not extortion usually connoted some form of “demand” at common law, we and most other courts have already clearly said that the common law element of demand forms no part of the Hobbs Act prohibition involving extortion “under color of official right.” We are not free, as may be the writers of scholarly notes, to say otherwise. Only the Supreme Court, or this court en banc, may create new law. Nor may such precedential authority be eroded by the device of “distinguishing” or “reinterpreting,” by a panel which believes it has devised a “better view,” or has reached a sounder historical view of “original intent.”

“Confusion” in the Jury Instructions

Because our circuit law is clear, there was no fatal “confusion” in jury instructions as the majority asserts. The majority asks “[d]id it matter whether the payments were induced or not induced?” The short answer here is “no.” Since no inducement was required, any “confusion” in the jury’s minds could only have been whether the government had a higher burden of proof than it really did; that could only have benefited Aguon. A jury trial is not a game of technicalities where each foot fault may lose the point. The claimed error would “logically [be] harmless to defendant beyond any reasonable doubt.” United States v. Rea, 532 F.2d 147, 149 (9th Cir.1976). See also Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a).
Equally without merit is the further contention that the lack of an explicit instruction on mens rea compounded some plain error in the jury instructions. The majority’s real argument is that an essential element of the offense is a demand, without which there is no criminal intent. Although the trial court did not specify any particular requirement of criminal intent in its instructions, that interest was nevertheless clearly implicit in the advice to the jury.
Aguon was charged with having “knowingly and wilfully” committed extortion under color of official right. The court did *1430give sufficient instructions on the meaning of “knowingly.” The court instructed on the meaning of these terms. The majority itself agrees that the terms “knowingly” and “wilfully” adequately convey the sense of mens rea in a charge of conspiracy. What those terms do not tell the triers of fact is that there must be some inducement. Nor need they do so.
The majority reversed the conviction of conspiracy in count 3 because it held that mens rea, meaning inducement, had to be proved if the receipt of political contributions is charged as extortion. In defining “under color of official right,” the court instructed that the “wrongful use of otherwise valid official power converts dutiful action into extortion * * and that extortion under color of official right was “the wrongful taking by a public officer of money or property not due him or his office.” (RT 1270). The use of the term “wrongful” in both instances, in the context of this case, was adequate to advise the jury of the only intent requirement — the intent to take money or property under color of official right. See United States v. Scacchetti, 668 F.2d 643, 649 (2nd Cir.1982). Of course, it is not “wrongful” to accept campaign contributions where the donee has no reason to understand that the donor is giving in order to influence action (or inaction) by the official. The majority’s “homely example” in which one judge mistakenly picks up another’s robe is fanciful.
With respect to the conspiracy charge of count 1, the majority is simply confused. Conspiracy can be understood simply as an agreement to commit an unlawful act. Without doubt, the statements and demean- or of the defendants, particularly as revealed in the testimony and on the tape recordings, show that they fully understood that the contractors were “buying” official action. Nor is the fact that different sentence maxima may apply for conviction of conspiracy to commit two different crimes relevant to the jury’s understanding of the issues.

Jury Prejudice

The Aguon jury of which San Nicholas was a member returned its verdict in August 1985. On October 3, 1985 San Nicholas pleaded guilty to a Guam (not federal) misdemeanor of taking kickbacks in connection with paving contracts. On this voir dire he did not volunteer that such charges were pending. The majority contends that he was bound to volunteer that information and that his failure to do so violated Aguon’s Sixth Amendment right to trial by an impartial jury. I find this a make-weight argument.
In McDonough Power Equipment Inc. v. Greenwood, 464 U.S. 548, 104 S.Ct. 845, 78 L.Ed.2d 663 (1984) the Supreme Court considered when a juror’s response or failure of response at voir dire rises to constitutional prejudice and necessitates a new trial. A McDonough juror gave a “mistaken though honest response” to a question on voir dire, and that omission was held not enough to invalidate the verdict in a products liability action. To be entitled to a new trial, the Court ruled a party must “first demonstrate that a juror failed to answer honestly a material question on voir dire, and then further show that a correct response would have provided a valid basis for a challenge for cause.” Id. at 556, 104 S.Ct. at 850. (Emphasis supplied.)
The first prong of this test is absent here. San Nicholas was not asked if he was under investigation or if he had ever been under investigation. Nor was he asked whether he had ever been involved in a situation like this case, or was related to anyone who had been. The jury was asked only the general question whether anyone knew of any reason why he or she might not be able to be fair to both sides. Giving the fullest significance to this very general question, nothing indicates probable bias by San Nicholas against Aguon. There was nothing dishonest in San Nicholas’ silence when no response was called for, and the “silence” does not conceal animus. Of course the prosecution or the defense might have exercised a peremptory challenge had they been informed of his activities. We do not know that Aguon would have done so. Except insofar as pending charges might be adversarial to the prose*1431cution, no basis for challenge for cause is implicated.
There is no evidence of prejudice against Aguon. The majority attempts a challenge based on no record whatsoever, except that San Nicholas joined in the verdict. Had he been asked the relevant question and answered incorrectly, bias would be established — also probably contempt of court. But the purpose of juror voir dire is to determine the existence of bias which supports a challenge for cause; its purpose is not to elicit answers which might form a basis for a peremptory challenge. To the questions actually asked of San Nicholas on voir dire, his answers were neither incorrect or incomplete. This issue has no merit. It is not to be presumed that anyone who has been charged with a crime is probably disposed to vote to convict a defendant.
United States v. Perkins, 748 F.2d 1519 (11th Cir.1984), cited by the majority, is inapposite. In that case, the suspect juror was specifically asked on voir dire whether he knew the defendant and whether he had been involved in prior civil or criminal litigation. He answered “no” to both questions. It turned out, as the result of a post-trial hearing, that the juror’s answers were wrong: he had served on a committee with the defendant. He had been involved as a civil defendant charged with misappropriation of Union funds; and he had “testified as a Government witness in [another case] and his credibility [in the latter case had been] impeached by two character witnesses. Yet [he] claimed that he forgot about both of the cases during voir dire.” Perkins, 748 F.2d at 1530. The court con-eluded from the surrounding facts that although the answers were not, in their entirety, intentionally false, the intentional concealment justified an inference of bias. The court relied most heavily on the juror’s dishonest answer as “strong indication that he was not impartial,” Id. at 1532. The answers of juror San Nicholas to the questions put to him here provide no basis for a finding of intentional concealment or of any inference of bias. The majority’s rational rests on thin air.
Nor does United States v. Eubanks, 591 F.2d 513 (9th Cir.1979) (per curiam) help the majority. It is incorrectly cited as authority that “[prejudice exists in a juror who is open to prosecution for an offense similar to that for which the defendant is on trial.” That case involved a conspiracy to distribute and to possess heroin. Juror Collins had indicated on a juror qualification form that he had no children. At voir dire examination the judge asked if he or any members of his immediate family had ever been “personally interested in the defense of a criminal case or a witness for the defense in a criminal case.” Collins did not respond. In fact, Collins had two sons, both of whom were heroin users and were serving long prison terms for heroin-related crimes of murder and robbery. We remanded on the premise that his sons’ “tragic involvement with heroin bars the inference that Collins served as an impartial juror” and that bias may be presumed from the “potential for substantial emotional involvement” inherent in certain relationships. Id. 591 F.2d at 517, citing United States v. Allsup, 566 F.2d 68, 71-72 (9th Cir.1977).1
*1432The majority has not established that juror San Nicholas’ subsequent plea of guilty to a misdemeanor of a state crime justified any presumption against his impartiality. We accord the trial judge broad discretion in considering claims of juror misconduct precisely because he is in the best position to determine their effect on the outcome of a trial. The attempt here to establish a fixed presumption that one charged with a crime similar to that in which he is summonsed as juror is necessarily hostile to the defendant is unfounded.
In sum, the majority’s misinterpretation of circuit law, and its efforts to tailor many subordinate issues to its fundamentally flawed vision, has led to an incorrect decision and cannot stand. I would reject the majority’s departure from governing precedent, and would affirm the convictions.

. This court expanded on the situation in two footnotes:
(1) It is ironic that the only question juror Collins responded to during voir dire was the following: "Have any members of the panel during their current jury service or during any prior service had occasion to serve in any case involving drug or narcotic offenses?" Collins responded, “I was on a case here a couple of months ago for narcotics, but it wouldn’t affect me.” The judge replied: "Thank you, sir,” and did. not pursue the inquiry.
(2) The problem with juror Collins might have been avoided had the trial judge permitted a more extensive voir dire. Among the additional voir dire questions posed by the defense was Question 22: "Does any member of the panel have any friends or relatives who have been involved with heroin? If so, would the fact prevent anyone from rendering a fair and impartial verdict?" The trial judge refused to ask prospective jurors this question.
The hazards of the trial court’s reluctance to permit additional voir dire became apparent at trial. On the second day of the trial, the Government moved to strike juror Edward Sharrar, Jr. from the jury panel, after it was learned that he had a son awaiting trial on a federal criminal charge. Sharrar, who had not *1432revealed this information during voir dire, was replaced by one of the alternate jurors.
591 F.2d at 516 nn. 1 and 2.