Syllabus | Opinion [ Breyer ] | Dissent [ Kennedy ] |
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The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 337.
RICHARDSON v. UNITED STATES
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT
At petitioner Richardsons trial for violating 21 U.S.C. § 848which forbids any person from engag[ing] in a continuing criminal enterprise, §848(a), and defines continuing criminal enterprise (CCE) as involving a violation of the drug statutes where such violation is part of a continuing series of violations, §848(c)the judge rejected Richardsons proposal to instruct the jury that it must unanimously agree on which three acts constituted the series of violations. Instead, the judge instructed the jurors that they must unanimously agree that the defendant committed at least three federal narcotics offenses, but did not have to agree as to the particular offenses. The jury convicted Richardson, and the Seventh Circuit upheld the trial judges instruction.
Held: A jury in a §848 case must unanimously agree not only that the defendant committed some continuing series of violations, but also about which specific violations make up that continuing series. Pp. 311.
(a) A jury in a federal criminal case cannot convict unless it unanimously finds that the Government has proved each element of the offense. However, it need not always decide unanimously which of several possible means the defendant used to commit an element. If §848(c)s phrase series of violations refers to one element, a series, in respect to which individual violations are but the means, then the jury need only agree that the defendant committed at least three underlying crimes, and need not agree about which three. Conversely, if the statute creates several elements, the several violations, then the jury must agree unanimously about which three crimes the defendant committed. Pp. 34.
(b) Considerations of language, tradition, and potential unfairness support a reading of violations as elements rather than means. The Government has not found any legal source reading any instance of the words violation or violations as means. To hold that each violation here amounts to a separate element is consistent with a tradition of requiring juror unanimity where the issue is whether a defendant has engaged in conduct that violates the law. To hold the contrary is not. The CCE statutes breadth aggravates the dangers of unfairness that treating each violation as a means would risk. The statutes word violations covers many different kinds of behavior of varying degrees of seriousness. The two chapters of the Federal Criminal Code setting forth drug crimes contain approximately 90 numbered sections, many of which proscribe various acts that may be alleged as violations for purposes of §848s series requirement. This consideration increases the likelihood that treating violations simply as alternative means, by permitting a jury to avoid discussion of the specific factual details of each violation, will cover up wide disagreement among the jurors about just what the defendant did, or did not, do. Moreover, the Government may seek to prove that a defendant has been involved in numerous underlying violations, significantly aggravating the risk that jurors will fail to focus on specific factual detail unless required to do so. Finally, this Court has indicated that the Constitution itself limits a States power to define crimes in ways that would permit juries to convict while disagreeing about means, at least where that definition risks serious unfairness and lacks support in history or tradition. Schad v. Arizona, 501 U.S. 624, 632633. Pp. 36.
(c) The Governments arguments for interpreting violations as meansthat the words continuing series focus on the drug business, not on the particular violations that constitute the business; that an analogy can be found in state courts interpretations of statutes permitting conviction upon proof of a continuous course of conduct without jury agreement on a specific underlying crime; that a jury-unanimity requirement will make the statutes crime too difficult to prove; and that other portions of the statute do not require jury unanimityare not sufficiently powerful to overcome the foregoing considerations. Pp. 711.
(d) The questions whether to engage in harmless-error analysis, and if so, whether the error was harmless in this case, are left to the Seventh Circuit on remand. P. 11.
130 F.3d 765, vacated and remanded.
Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Stevens, Scalia, Souter, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Kennedy, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which OConnor and Ginsburg, JJ., joined.