Court Opinion

ID: 9480318
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:44:39.661225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:36.756653
License: Public Domain

McKAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Regrettably I must dissent from the court’s judgment in this case. I do not disagree with any of the court’s opinion except Section IV dealing with the trial court’s refusal to give defendant’s requested instruction concerning separate transactions. It clearly was defendant’s central theory of the case in the conspiracy count. I consider it controlling because, in my view, the failure to give the instruction when requested in this case is reversible error.
As I understand the court’s opinion, it does not deny that the law in this circuit recognizes that a legitimate defense to a conspiracy charge is that the relationship consisted of a series of independent transactions lacking agreement to engage in the overall conduct comprising the elements of a unified conspiracy. United States v. McIntyre, 836 F.2d 467, 471 (10th Cir.1987); United States v. Kendall, 766 F.2d 1426 (10th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1081, 106 S.Ct. 848, 88 L.Ed.2d 889 (1986); United States v. Watson, 594 F.2d 1330, 1337 (10th Cir.1979). Nor do I understand the court to reject defendant’s claim that the evidence in this case would support such a theory and corresponding instruction. The court merely concludes that the instructions given were adequate because they are a correct statement of the law of conspiracy.
I do not quarrel with the notion that the instructions on conspiracy were correct so far as they went. However, in the complex area of conspiracy law, the defendant was entitled to more. He was entitled to one of the many subsets of conspiracy instructions more clearly informing the jury of his theory. Indeed, as the court notes, even in this case the trial court gave one subset of instruction concerning “similarity of conduct,” “association,” and “assembling together” as a way of contrasting it for clarity’s sake with the general positive statement of what conspiracy is. Majority opinion at 1517 (discussing Instruction 20). For the same reasons that defendant was entitled to that instruction (cited with approval by the court), I believe it was error not to give a requested instruction on a “series of transactions.” Indeed, I consider it more compelling than the merely “associating together” or “similarity of conduct” instructions because the “series of transactions” are more likely to be confused with a true conspiracy in the minds of the jury — because they are, in fact, “deals.” I believe the court has tacitly acknowledged that giving the instruction would not have been error; I believe refusing it was error. I would reverse.