Court Opinion

ID: 9487226
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:11:23.227581+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:09.546653
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur generally in Judge Guy’s very thorough opinion. I write separately, however, to express my understanding of the scope of the quid pro quo requirement in extortion cases that do not involve campaign contributions and to discuss the adequacy of the district court’s instructions to the jury in this respect.
As I read Justice Stevens’ plurality opinion in Evans v. United States, — U.S.-, 112 S.Ct. 1881, 119 L.Ed.2d 57 (1992), it leaves little room for doubt that the quid pro quo requirement of McCormick v. United States, 500 U.S. 257, 111 S.Ct. 1807, 114 L.Ed.2d 307 (1991), is' not limited to cases where all of the questionable funds go into the defendant’s campaign coffers and none go into the defendant’s own pocket. That was certainly Justice Kennedy’s understanding: “Readers of today’s opinion should have little difficulty in understanding that the rationale underlying the Court’s holding applies not only in campaign contribution cases, but all § 1951 prosecutions.” Id. — U.S. at-, 112 S.Ct. at 1894, Kennedy, J., concurring. If this interpretation is correct, we must consider how sharply focused the quid pro quo require*713ment is in a case where, as here, all of the money has gone into the defendant’s own pocket. (In Evans, it appears, a $1,000 check went to the defendant’s campaign fund, and $7,000 given in cash was retained for the defendant’s personal use.)
Justice Stevens concluded that the jury instruction at issue in Evans satisfied the quid pro quo requirement “because the offense is completed at the time when the public official receives a payment in return for his agreement to perform specific official acts; fulfillment of the quid pro quo is not an element of the offense.” Evans, — U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1889 (emphasis supplied). Summing up, Justice Stevens explained that “[w]e hold today that the Government need only show that a public official has obtained a payment to which he was not entitled, knowing that the payment was made in return for official acts.” Id. I see no reason to doubt that the “official acts” referred to in the last sentence were the “specific official acts” referred to earlier.
Even outside the campaign contribution context, I take it, the quid pro quo requirement can be satisfied only where the payment has been accepted in exchange for a “specific” official act or a “specific” requested exercise of official power. That is what the district court told the jury in Evans (“if a public official demands or accepts money in exchange for [a] specific requested exercise of his or her official power, such a demand or acceptance ... constitute^] a violation of the Hobbs Act regardless of whether the payment is made in the form of a campaign contribution,” id. — U.S. at-, 112 S.Ct. at 1884), that is what the Eleventh Circuit held in affirming Mr. Evans’ conviction “passive acceptance of a benefit by a public official is sufficient to form the basis of a Hobbs Act violation if the official knows that he is being offered the payment in exchange for a specific requested exercise of his official power,” id., quoting 910 F.2d 790, 796 (11th Cir.1990), and that is what Justice Stevens clearly had in mind when he wrote that “the offense is completed at the time when the public official receives a payment in return for his agreement to perform specific official acts_” Id. — U.S. at-, 112 S.Ct. at 1889 (emphasis supplied).
In the ease at bar, the defendant tendered a proposed jury instruction stating, among other things, that “[a]s used in these instructions ‘wrongfully obtaining property from another ... under color of official right’ means that Mr. Blandford knowingly and deliberately agreed to accept property from Mr. McBee or others ... in return for Mr. Blandford’s promise to perform or not perform specific official acts or actions regarding proposed breed to breed legislation.” (Emphasis supplied.) The instructions ultimately given by the district court omitted the word “specific.” I believe it would have been preferable to include that term.
When given an opportunity to comment on the instructions drafted by the court, however, counsel for defendant Blandford did not make an issue of the court’s omission of the word “specific” Counsel argued that McCormick and Evans require the government “to prove as a part of its case that mon[ey] or property ... was given in exchange for an agreement or promise to perform or refrain from performing some official act” (emphasis supplied), but in this context I see no meaningful difference between “some official act” and “an official act,” the formulation adopted by the court. It was not plain error to omit the word “specific,” and viewed in the context of the trial as a whole I am satisfied that any error was harmless.
I am strengthened in my conclusion on the latter point by the government’s closing argument, given immediately after the court’s delivery of its instructions to the jury. The government argued that money had been given to Mr. Blandford in connection with a specific piece of legislation affecting the harness industry — House Bill 749, as proposed by the Governor — and that defendant Bland-ford had to know that the money was being given to him in exchange for the absence of a breed-to-breed provision in that particular piece of legislation. (At the time the last payment was accepted, the record indicates, it would still technically have been possible for the thoroughbred interests to procure an amendment to the Governor’s bill adding the *714kind of breed-to-breed provision feared by the harness racing interests.)
In its opening statement to the jury, moreover, the government had explained that “[ejxtortion, as it is used in this trial, occurs when a public official, Mr. Blandford, accepts money to which he’s not entitled, knowing that it is being given to him in exchange for a specific piece of legislation or a specific influence he can have.” (Emphasis supplied.) The jury was told at the very outset that “this is what the United States is going to prove: Extortion, accepting a payment, knowing it’s in return for a specific act.” (Emphasis supplied.)
The government returned to this theme in the rebuttal that followed the defendant’s closing argument. The government argued in rebuttal that Mr. Blandford received the money for a piece of legislation — House Bill 749 — that potentially could have included a breed-to-breed provision, but did not in fact have such a provision. “And,” the government told the jury, “he acknowledge[d] I took that money and I knew it was for the governor’s bill.”
I am satisfied that the jury was not misled, and I believe that keeping a breed-to-breed provision out of the Governor’s bill, or ostensibly standing ready to try to do so, would be specific enough to satisfy the requirements of McCormick and Evans. Although I think that the omission of the word “specific” from the jury charge was unfortunate, I concur in the court’s conclusion that a new trial is not required.