Court Opinion

ID: 9495466
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:03:37.795105+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:02.199684
License: Public Domain

SACK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Because I think that the district court’s jury instruction regarding the “corruptly” element of the bribery statute was incorrect, and because I think that payment of an illegal gratuity is not an offense necessarily included in the offense of bribery under the “elements” test that the Supreme Court requires us to apply under Rule 31(c), I respectfully dissent.1
I. The “Corruptly” Element of Bribery
The first question challenging the Court is whether, as the majority holds, a defendant acts “corruptly” so as to violate the bribery statute if he intends his payment to influence a public official in any manner, or, as I think, only if he intends the public official to do what the official should not do, or to refrain from doing what he should. I thus do not disagree with the majority that a bribe payer is looking for a quid pro quo; unlike the majority, however, I think that the nature of the quid pro quo the payer is looking for matters. The “corruptly” element indicates that the bribe payer seeks not any manner of benefit, but seeks, rather, to corrupt.
To obtain relief based on a challenge to a jury instruction, a defendant must show both that the charges he requested “accurately represented the law in every re-specte,] and that, viewing as a whole the charge actually given, he was prejudiced.” United States v. Pujancu-Mena, 949 F.2d 24, 27 (2d Cir.1991) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). I address these requirements in turn.
Bribery under 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(1)(A) requires the jury to find that the defendant “directly or indirectly, corruptly g[a]ve[ ], offer[ed] or promised [something of value to [a] public official ... with intent ... to influence any official act performed or to be performed.” Id. (emphasis added). As the majority explains, “[Alfisi] argued that [USDA inspector] Cashin and other USDA officials at the [Hunts Point Market] were operating an extortion scheme and that Alfisi was coerced into paying Cashin solely to ensure that Cashin would do his job properly.” Ante at 148. Alfisi contended in the district court that because he paid Cashin to do his job properly, the payment was not made “corruptly”; a person acts “corruptly” only if he intends to cause an *155official to breach a public duty. Thus, Alfisi argued, if an official threatens to abuse his position in a way that will harm an individual, and that individual then makes a payment to avoid the abuse, the individual does not act “corruptly” because his intent is not to corrupt, but only to avoid the effects of corruption. Accordingly, Alfisi requested an instruction providing that “to act ‘corruptly’ is to act with the specific intent to secure an unlawful advantage or benefit.” Appellant’s Letter to the District Court dated Oct. 23, 2000, at 2 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted).
Alfisi’s requested instruction accurately reflects the law as I understand it. The mere presence of lawlessness or corruption in the circumstances of a payment to an official is not enough to make it “corrupt” and therefore a bribe. Bather, an unlawful or corrupt result must be that which the payer specifically seeks to achieve.
Bribery is a crime of specific intent. United States v. Barash, 365 F.2d 395, 402 (2d Cir.1966). A person therefore does not commit bribery unless he intends to bring about “the evil sought to be prevented” by the bribery statute, United States v. Jacobs, 431 F.2d 754, 759 (2d Cir.1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 950, 91 S.Ct. 1613, 29 L.Ed.2d 120 (1971). The evil of bribery that the criminal law seeks to prevent, we have said, is
the aftermath suffered by the public when an official is corrupted and thereby perfidiously fails to perform, his public service and duty. Thus the purpose of the statute is to discourage one from seeking an advantage by attempting to influence an official to depart from conduct deemed essential to the public interest.
Id. (emphasis added). Jacobs thus stands for the proposition that a bribe payer seeks advantage or benefit by attempting to influence an official to breach a public duty. We have repeatedly reaffirmed this principle. “As is evident in many of our cases dealing with bribery, a fundamental concept of a ‘corrupt’ act is a breach of some official duty owed to the government or the public at large.” United States v. Rooney, 37 F.3d 847, 852 (2d Cir.1994); accord United States v. Zacher, 586 F.2d 912, 915 (2d Cir.1978) (“The common thread that runs through common law and statutory formulations of the crime of bribery is the element of corruption, breach of trust, or violation of duty.”); United States ex rel. Sollazzo v. Esperdy, 285 F.2d 341, 342 (2d Cir.1961) (“Bribery in essence is an attempt to influence another to disregard his duty while continuing to appear devoted to it or to repay trust with disloyalty.”).
Our cases thus provide that a payment made in the course of a shakedown where the public official demands payment as a quid pro quo for proper execution of his duty is not a bribe. A person who makes a payment pursuant to such extortion intends not to cultivate corruption, but only to avoid the tendrils of a corruption already sprouted. Such a person does not act “corruptly” within the meaning of the statute because he does not seek the lawlessness that the bribery statute aims to prevent.
We recognized this principle in Barash, a case in which we dismissed an argument that economic coercion is merely an affirmative defense to the bribery statute:
We think that if a government officer threatens serious economic loss unless paid for giving a citizen his due, the latter is entitled to have the jury consider this, not as a complete defense like duress but as bearing on the specific intent required for the commission of bribery.
*156Barash, 365 F.2d at 401-02. If a person could violate the bribery statute even if he hoped only to influence a public official to give him “his due,” then the fact that the person was under pressure to pay for “his due” would not bear on the question of specific intent. But Barash holds the opposite, and thus supports Alfisi’s position. To act corruptly and therefore to commit bribery, a person must do more than merely seek to secure some benefit or quid pro quo. Rather, the benefit sought must entail a breach of duty or trust. I therefore conclude that the jury instruction that Alfisi requested was correct as a matter of law.
The jury instructions submitted by the district court, on the other hand, not only seem to me to be at odds with our caselaw, they also appear to me to violate principles of statutory construction. The district court’s instructions defined “corruptly” as “specific intent to influence ... official acts.... ” Trial Tr. of Oct. 24, 2000, at 942 (emphasis added). Inserting this definition of “corruptly” into the terms of the bribery statute, the district court effectively instructed the jury that Alfisi committed bribery if he “directly or indirectly, with specific intent to influence official acts [the court’s definition of “corruptly”], [gave], offer[ed] or promise[d] [some]thing of value to [a] public official with intent to influence any official act.” (emphasis added; ellipses omitted). The district court merely used the statute’s other terms to define “corruptly,” thus effectively reading “corruptly” out of the statute. I think that this was clearly an error. It is a “well-settled rule of statutory construction that all parts of a statute, if at all possible, are to be given effect.” Weinberger v. Hynson, Westcott & Dunning, Inc., 412 U.S. 609, 638, 93 S.Ct. 2469, 37 L.Ed.2d 207 (1973) (citing Jarecki v. G.D. Searle & Co., 367 U.S. 303, 307, 81 S.Ct. 1579, 6 L.Ed.2d 859 (1961), and D. Ginsberg & Sons, Inc. v. Popkin, 285 U.S. 204, 208, 52 S.Ct. 322, 76 L.Ed. 704 (1932)). Alfisi’s definition of “corruptly,” unlike the district court’s, gives separate meaning to each of the terms of the statute.2
I find unpersuasive the majority’s attempts to correct the district court’s error and its reasons for dismissing Alfisi’s interpretation of the statute. As indicated, it seems to me that the district court’s definition of “corruptly” rendered that term surplusage. The majority attempts to salvage the district court’s instructions by holding that they gave meaning to the term “corruptly” by defining it as connoting a “quid pro quo.” Ante at 149-50. As noted, I agree that bribery involves the seeking of a quid pro quo, that is, an advantage in exchange for a payment. But attributing the quid pro quo element to the word “corruptly” does not avoid the surplusage because the words of the statute indicate that the quid pro quo element is established not by the term “corruptly,” but rather by the other terms, i.e., a payment “with intent ... to influence any official act.” That seems to me to be the import of United States v. Sun-Diamond *157Growers of Cal., 526 U.S. 398, 119 S.Ct. 1402, 143 L.Ed.2d 576 (1999), upon which the majority relies for the proposition that a bribe payer seeks a quid pro quo. In comparing a bribe with an illegal gratuity, Sun-Diamond does not address the fact that the bribery statute contains the term “corruptly” while the illegal gratuity statute does not; it addresses instead the fact that the bribery statute requires intent “to influence an official act” while the illegal gratuity statute does not. 426 U.S. at 404, 96 S.Ct. 2119. Sun-Diamond then holds what plain meaning suggests: The quid pro quo element arises not from the term “corruptly,” but rather from the term “to influence”:
The distinguishing feature of each crime is its intent element. Bribery requires intent “to influence” an official act or “to be influenced” in an official act, while illegal gratuity requires only that the gratuity be given or accepted “for or because of’ an official act. In other words, for bribery there must be a quid pro quo — a specific intent to give or receive something in exchange for an official act. An illegal gratuity, on the other hand, may constitute merely a reward for some future act that the public official will take (and may already have determined to take), or for a past act that he has already taken.
Id. at 404-05, 119 S.Ct. 1402 (emphasis in original). In holding that the “ ‘corrupt’ intent necessary to a bribery conviction is in the nature of a quid pro quo requirement,” ante at 149, the majority’s construction of the statute seems not only at odds with Sun-Diamond, but also renders the term “to influence” surplusage by attributing its meaning to the term “corruptly.”
The majority also argues that Alfisi’s position, i.e., that “the term ‘corruptly’ requires evidence of an intent to procure a violation of the public official’s duty,” both “does not rest comfortably with the statutory language” and creates a “danger of underinclusion.” Ante at 149-50. I think that Alfisi’s construction is consistent with our case law, but even if it were not, I would find the majority’s criticisms of it unpersuasive.
First, as I have indicated, it is the majority’s suggested reading of the statute, and not Alfisi’s, that I think rests uncomfortably with the statutory language because only Alflsi’s gives separate meaning to each of the statute’s terms — including “corruptly” and “intent ... to influence any official act.”
Second, an argument similar to the majority’s “underinclusion” argument was rejected by the Supreme Court in Sun-Diamond. There the government sought to define the crime of paying an illegal gratuity broadly to cover gifts not associated with a specific official act. Sun-Diamond, 526 U.S. at 403, 119 S.Ct. 1402. The Supreme Court rejected that argument in part because:
[A] narrow, rather than a sweeping, prohibition is more compatible with the fact that [the illegal gratuity- statute] is merely one strand of an intricate web of regulations,- both administrative' and criminal, governing the acceptance of gifts and other self-enriching actions by public officials.... [T]his is an area where precisely targeted prohibitions are commonplace, and where more general prohibitions have been qualified by numerous exceptions. Given that reality, a statute in this field that can linguistically be interpreted to be either a meat axe or a scalpel should reasonably be taken to be the latter.
Id. at 409, 412, 119 S.Ct. 1402. The top strand in the “intricate web” is the bribery statute, and so defendants loosed by a narrow construction of it will not fall far *158without tangling on other provisions. Specifically, individuals who pay public officials to avoid a threatened abuse rather than to engage in abuse will still be guilty of paying an illegal gratuity, a felony.
Finally, the majority argues that “if a party to litigation were to pay a judge money in exchange for a favorable decision, that conduct would — and should— constitute bribery, even if a trier of fact might conclude ex post that the judgment was on the merits legally proper.” Ante at 151. But such a payment would constitute bribery even under Alfisi’s construction of the statute because the hypothetical payer specifically intends to influence the judge to breach his duties by deciding the case based on the identity of the parties rather than the merits. The majority rightly notes that “[t]he legal merits, or lack thereof, of the judgment rendered is not an element of the offense.” Id. But I do not understand Alfisi to argue otherwise. He asserts that “to act ‘corruptly’ is to act with the specific intent to secure an unlawful advantage or benefit.” Under both the majority’s and Alfisi’s construction, all that matters is the payer’s intent, which can be decided based upon the circumstances of the payment and need not depend on the payment’s effect. A jury following Alfisi’s statutory construction in the hypothetical case would no more need to decide whether a judgment was actually meritorious than would a jury following the majority’s approach.
Because I conclude that Alfisi’s requested jury instruction, unlike the one the district court gave, was legally correct, I turn to the second Pujanco-Mena prong: prejudice. Alfisi objected to the instructions submitted, and, since they were erroneous, he is entitled to a new trial unless the error was harmless. Anderson v. Branen, 17 F.3d 552, 556 (2d Cir.1994). As indicated, Alfisi admitted at trial that he made payments to a government inspector (something he would have been hard put to deny in the face of the evidence), but argued that he did so only because the inspector threatened to breach his duty to provide critical inspection services in a timely manner if Alfisi did not pay. Alfisi supported this argument at trial with testimony by one government inspector that other inspectors were extorting and shaking down wholesalers and evidence that some of Cashin’s inspections were accurate. If the jury had been properly instructed and had agreed with Alfisi on this point, it could not, in my view, have decided that the payments constituted bribes because Alfisi would not have acted “corruptly.” The district court defined the “corruptly” element, however, as requiring only a finding that Alfisi sought to influence the inspector. Intent to influence was, of course, stipulated: Alfisi admits that he sought to influence the inspector not to abuse his official position in a way that harmed Alfisi. He was thus prejudiced by the district court’s instructions because, under them, the jury could have credited the evidence that Alfisi was merely submitting to extortion but still convicted him of bribery. I therefore conclude that Alfisi’s bribery convictions should be overturned.
II. Necessarily Included Offenses under Rule 31(c)
I also disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the payment of an illegal gratuity, 18 U.S.C. § 201(c)(1)(A), is “necessarily included” in bribery, 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(1)(A), and therefore was properly submitted to the jury under Rule 31(c) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Although the majority holds that it is well-established that payment of an illegal gratuity is a lesser included offense of bribery, ante at 152, I do not think that this is the relevant question. The issue is whether *159payment of an illegal gratuity is a necessarily included offense of bribery under Rule 31(c). The Supreme Court in Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705, 719, 109 S.Ct. 1443, 103 L.Ed.2d 734 (1989), concluded that “necessarily included” offenses are a subset of “lesser included” offenses, and so the cases cited by the majority, which hold that payment of illegal gratuity is a lesser included offense of bribery, do not resolve the issue. Morever, the majority’s opinion does not apply the “elements test” (of which more in a moment), although the Supreme Court in Schmuck, 489 U.S. at 716, 109 S.Ct. 1443, and Carter v. United States, 530 U.S. 255, 260-63, 120 S.Ct. 2159, 147 L.Ed.2d 203 (2000), held that it is the standard to be employed in resolving questions under Rule 31(c). I think that, under the elements test, payment of an illegal gratuity is not necessarily included in the offense of bribery because the former requires an element that the latter does not. I therefore respectfully dissent, from that portion of the majority’s opinion, too.
The issue of “necessarily included” offenses arises from Rule 31(c):
Conviction of Less [sic] Offense. The defendant may be found guilty of an offense necessarily included in the offense charged or of an attempt to commit either the offense charged or an offense necessarily included therein if the attempt is an offense.
Fed.R.Crim.P. 31(c) (emphasis added). Under this rule, a jury may receive an instruction on an offense “necessarily included” in an offense contained in the indictment at the request of either the prosecution or the defense even though the necessarily included offense is not itself charged in the indictment. The prosecution may want the instruction for fear that it has not proven all the elements of the offense charged in the indictment; the defense in order to give the jury an option to convict the defendant on a less serious charge. The theory, it would appear, is that since the offense is “necessarily included” in the offense of indictment, in prosecuting or defending the case both parties necessarily had the opportunity and motivation to address the elements of the lesser charge.
Schmuck is the central authority on the meaning of “necessarily included offense.” Before the Supreme Court’s decision in that case, courts were using at least two different tests to determine whether one offense was necessarily included in another under Rule 31(c). Under one, the “inherent relationship” formula, a party could
invoke Rule 31(c) when a lesser offense is established by the evidence adduced at trial in proof of the greater offense, with the caveat that there must also be an “inherent” relationship between the greater and lesser offenses, i.e., they must relate to the protection of the same interests, and-must be so related that in the general nature of these crimes, though not necessarily invariably, proof of the lesser offense is necessarily presented as part of the showing of the commission of the greater offense.
Schmuck, 489 U.S. at 715-16, 109 S.Ct. 1443 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The other test was the “traditional” or “elements” test. Id. at 716, 109 S.Ct. 1443. Under that test, “one offence is not ‘necessarily included’ in another unless the elements of the lesser offense are a subset of the elements of the charged offense. Where the lesser offense requires an element not required for the greater offense, no instruction is to be given under Rule 31(c).” Id.
The Supreme Court adopted the “elements” test, id., holding that “[s]ince offenses are statutorily defined, th[e] comparison is appropriately conducted by *160reference to the statutory elements of the offenses in question, and not, as the inherent relationship approach would mandate, by reference to conduct proved at trial regardless of the statutory definitions.” Id. at 716-17, 109 S.Ct. 1443. The Supreme Court reaffirmed the elements test recently in Carter, 530 U.S. at 260-63, 120 S.Ct. 2159.
Returning to the case at bar, bribery under 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(1)(A) applies to
Whoever ... directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent ... to influence any official act[.]
Payment of an illegal gratuity under 18 U.S.C. § 201(c)(1)(A), the allegedly “necessarily included offense,” applies to
Whoever ... otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official duty ... directly or indirectly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official....
On its face, then, the illegal gratuity statute requires an element that the bribery statute does not. To violate the illegal gratuity statute, a person must give or promise to give something of value to a public official — the public official must be the actual or promised payee. Not so under the bribery statute. A person can violate that statute by giving or promising to give a gift to “any other person or entity” so long as the gift is made pursuant to a promise to a public official. In other words, under the bribery statute the public official need not be the payee, so long as he is the promisee. Thus, a person can violate the bribery statute without violating the illegal gratuity statute. Because the illegal gratuity statute requires that the public official be the payee, while the bribery statute does not, the “lesser offense requires an element not required for the greater offense,” Schmuck, 489 U.S. at 716, 109 S.Ct. 1443, and thus is not necessarily included for purposes of Rule 31(c). This conclusion is shared by the only other judicial decisions we have found that have directly applied the elements test to this question. See United States v. Hipkins, 756 F.Supp. 233, 238 (D.Md.1991); United States v. Passman, 460 F.Supp. 912, 917-18 (W.D.La.1978).
As the Supreme Court has indicated, the elements test is compelled not only by statute, but also by the due process “right of the defendant to [have] notice of the charge brought against him.” Schmuck, 489 U.S. at 718, 109 S.Ct. 1443 (citation omitted). Where, as here, an element is required by the lesser offense but is only one of two alternative elements in the greater offense, a jury charge on the lesser offense could deprive the defendant of the requisite notice. If a defendant were on trial for bribery under a theory that he made payments pursuant to a promise to a public official, that defendant might strategically avoid expending trial resources contesting the prosecutor’s evidence tending to show that he made payments to the official if he knew that the prosecutor had irrefutable evidence that he also made payments to someone other than the official— the official’s favorite charity, for example. The defendant might instead focus his case on the intent element of bribery. If the defendant were to refute the intent element, the prosecution might then seek an illegal gratuity charge. But if this were *161permitted, the defendant would have been effectively deprived of notice that, by rebutting the evidence that he made payments to the official, he could defeat a charge against him. In short, the defendant would have been deprived of notice of what evidence would tend to exculpate him.3
The majority holds that the view that an unlawful gratuity is not a “lesser-included offense” of bribery is “contrary to our well-established law.” Ante at 152. But the question presented to us on appeal is whether unlawful gratuity is a “necessarily included” offense under 31(c), not whether it is a “lesser-included” offense for other purposes. The Supreme Court has observed that those offenses that are “necessarily included” in a charged offense are a subset of those that are “lesser included.” See Schmuck, 489 U.S. at 719, 109 S.Ct. 1443 (Rule 31(c) limits “lesser included offenses to those ‘necessarily included in the offense charged.’ ”). For this reason, the cases relied upon by the majority are inapposite, as they mention merely that payment of an illegal gratuity is a “lesser included offense” of bribery in a general context without addressing the relevant question whether it is necessarily included under Rule 31(c). For example, in United States v. Lasanta, 978 F.2d 1300 (2d Cir.1992), abrogated on other grounds by Florida v. White, 526 U.S. 559, 563, 119 S.Ct. 1555, 143 L.Ed.2d 748 (1999), cited by the majority, we addressed a defendant’s factual assertion that the reason he offered money to detectives was not to influence them to do or omit to do something in violation of a lawful duty (bribery), but only so that they would leave him alone (unlawful gratuity). Id. at 1309. In the course of that discussion, we referred to unlawful gratuity in passing as a “lesser included offense” (not a “necessarily included offense”) of bribery. Id. In Zacher, 586 F.2d at 915, also cited by the majority, the reference to “lesser included offense” is again entirely in passing, this time while distinguishing the two crimes on the basis of the requirement of a corrupt intent in one and not the other. We did not decide that one was a necessarily included offense of the other under Rule 31(c).
I do agree with the majority’s conclusion that the district court properly denied Alfi-si’s motion for a charge on supplementation of the salary of an official under 18 U.S.C. § 209. I note, however, that Alfisi pursues this argument on appeal only to attempt to demonstrate the inconsistency of denying his motion while granting the government’s request for a charge on payment of an illegal gratuity. The majority’s dismissal of Alfisi’s argument seems to me to prove his point.
Finally, in addressing the salary supplementation argument, the majority cites to Campaneria v. Reid, 891 F.2d 1014 (2d Cir.1989), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 949, 111 S.Ct. 1419, 113 L.Ed.2d 471 (1991), for the proposition that “[jjuries must be instruct*162ed as to lesser-included offenses either [1] when one simply cannot commit the greater crime without committing the lesser or [2] when the evidence is such as to permit a finding that the lesser, but not the greater, offense has been committed.” Ante at 152-53 (emphasis added). The first part of this statement effectively reflects the elements test. But in Campaneria we held: “A jury should be instructed on lesser included offenses when ‘(1) it is theoretically impossible to commit the greater crime without committing the lesser and (2) a reasonable view of the evidence would permit the jury to find that the defendant had committed the lesser, but not the greater, offense.’ ” 891 F.2d at 1022 (quoting Rice v. Hoke, 846 F.2d 160, 164-65 (2d Cir.1988)) (emphasis added). Changing the “and” to an “or,” as the majority has done, creates the impression — false, I think — that a lesser offense can be charged without meeting the elements test.4 Applying Campaneria to Alfisi’s primary argument supports my conclusion, and not the majority’s, because it is theoretically possible to commit the greater crime of bribery but not the lesser crime of payment of an illegal gratuity.
For these reasons, I conclude that the jury in Alfisi’s case was improperly instructed on the charge of payment of an illegal gratuity under Rule 31(c) where the indictment only charged bribery. I therefore respectfully dissent on this issue also.

. I agree with the majority's analysis of the defendant's Sixth Amendment argument relating to the district court’s curtailment of defense counsel's summation.

. In response to a subsequent query from the jury, the district court gave an instruction defining bribery as the giving of money to a public official "for or because of an official act [and] with a corrupt intention specifically to influence the outcome of the official act.” This did little to cure the problem with the first instruction because it continued to beg the question of the meaning of the word "corrupt.” If "corrupt” means what the district court said it meant when it first instructed the jury, then, substituting that definition of "corrupt” into this new instruction, bribery consists of paying a public official "for or because of an official act [and] with specific intent to influence ... official acts ... [and the] intention specifically to influence the outcome of the official act.” The result is redundant and still gives no separate meaning to the term "corruptly.”

. My conclusion is that where the greater offense includes alternative elements, i.e., payment to the official or someone else, while the lesser offense requires one of those elements, i.e., payment to the official, then the lesser offense "requires" an element not required by the greater and thus is not necessarily included under Rule 31(c). I note that this case also presents the converse situation because bribery requires an element that is only an "alternative element” of illegal gratuity. Specifically, a bribe requires only a pres-ed or future public official, while an illegal gratuity can be paid to a present, future, or past official. Compare 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(1)(A), with id. § 201(c)(1)(A). I think it is an open question whether the elements test precludes a charge on a lesser offense that requires "A or B” when the greater offense requires merely "A.” We need not reach this question, however, because it is clear to me that the elements test precludes a charge where the lesser offense requires "A” and the greater requires "A or B."

. The majority's reliance on Campaneria is also misleading because that decision involved habeas review of a state court conviction, not Rule 31(c). Campaneria, 891 F.2d at 1016. It is nonetheless notable that, in that context, we still applied the elements test, which the majority nonetheless eschews here.