Court Opinion

ID: 9481464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:19:42.297681+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:20.015415
License: Public Domain

COX, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent. Some people completing the form in question could be confused by the configuration of the questions, but it is not “entirely unreasonable to expect that the defendant understood the question posed.” See United States v. Slawik, 548 F.2d 75, 86 (3d Cir.1977). Phrasing the test as other courts have, the questions have a meaning about which people of ordinary intellect can agree. See United States v. Lighte, 782 F.2d 367, 374 (2d Cir.1986). The questions are not, therefore, fundamentally ambiguous.
*1106The defendant Manapat is alleged to have knowingly and willfully answered that she had no record of convictions when in truth she had been convicted of perjury, conspiracy to distribute marijuana and possession of cocaine. This court has held, as the majority notes, that when a question is “arguably ambiguous,” “the defendant’s understanding of the question is a matter for the jury to decide.” United States v. Bell, 623 F.2d 1132, 1136 (5th Cir.1980). These questions are “arguably ambiguous” only because of where they are placed on the form. Notwithstanding their placement, however, this form appears to be far less confusing than, for example, a federal income tax form, a financial statement in support of an application for a loan from a federal agency, and a variety of other federal forms that have been the basis of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 prosecutions sanctioned by the courts.
The defendant in this case makes a purely facial, attack on this form. Her motion to dismiss, filed under Fed.R.Crim.P. 12(b), does not allege that she was confused either by the questions or by the configuration of the questions; instead, she alleges that these questions on this form are so inherently ambiguous that false answers to the questions cannot support a criminal conviction. In such a posture, the majority’s observation in footnote 4 — that the government had proffered no evidence on the knowing and willful nature of the defendant’s answers — is irrelevant.1 Because the defendant did not allege that she was confused, the government did not need to proffer evidence that she was not confused (in other words, that her answers were knowing and willful).
To conclude, because I believe that this form is not fundamentally ambiguous, I would hold that a facial challenge to it cannot succeed. I would therefore allow the government to attempt to prove that
Manapat knowingly and willfully made false statements on the form.

. Rule 12(b) motions are limited to defenses or objections "capable of determination without the trial of the general issue” (emphasis added). I should observe, in fairness to the district court, that the district court did not ask the government to proffer what its evidence at trial would be.