Court Opinion

ID: 9477863
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:33:18.202881+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:33.169273
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in Part III of the Court’s opinion and in parts A and B of Part II. I disagree with the majority’s holding that either the District Court should have been alerted to the item unanimity issue or that it was plain error not to instruct the jury that it should be unanimous as to the particular items in the return prepared by Downing which were false and fraudulent and which Duncan did not believe to be true and correct.
The majority concludes that because the defendants had, in a pretrial motion, raised the claim that Counts III and V were duplicitous and, in support of that claim, had argued in Duncan’s brief that the jurors might convict even though the jurors were not unanimous in finding the returns were false in the same respects, that the court should have been alerted to the problem. The record reflects that the motion and brief were filed on July 28,1986. The trial began in May 1987. The motion was one of 23 pretrial motions assigned to the magistrate. The brief was never submitted to the District Court. In defendants’ 22 pages of objections to the magistrate’s Report and Recommendation on pretrial motions, defendants only mentioned this issue in one sentence. A vague reference at trial to a memorandum filed a year earlier before a different judicial officer cannot be expected to alert anyone to anything.
While I agree that jurors’ questions should alert the trial judge to possible problems, here the jurors’ question, rather than suggesting a lack of unanimity as to items, indicates that the jurors were unanimous on one of the items.
In Count Two, two sums are discussed relative to the 1981 tax return. If we agree that one was known and one probably was not when the return was filed, how, if possible, do we apply your instructions to this dilemma? Must both be accepted before a guilty verdict on this Count can be determined? Is the exact wording in the Indictment or the paraphrasing in the Judge’s Charge to take precedence? 1
The colloquy between the court and counsel indicates their attention was focused on whether the government had to prove the return was false in both respects. It is interesting that the issue of unanimity as to the falsity of a specific item was not even raised by appellants until Downing’s reply brief.
The jury was polled and each responded that the verdicts were their individual verdicts. The trial judge instructed the jury that their verdict must be unanimous. This I believe was sufficient. Accordingly, I would affirm Downing’s conviction.

. Count Two had charged that Duncan knew and believed $11,600 in salary and $200,000 in short-term capital gain should have been reported as income.