United States v. Maslenjak

• Decision Date: 07 April 2016
• Docket Number: No. 14–3864.,14–3864.
• Citation: 821 F.3d 675
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Divna MASLENJAK, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

821 F.3d 675

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee

v.Divna MASLENJAK, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 14–3864.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: Oct. 8, 2015.

Decided and Filed: April 7, 2016.

Rehearing En Banc Denied May 27, 2016.

ARGUED: Patrick Haney, Kirkland & Ellis, LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Daniel R. Ranke, United States Attorney's Office, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Gregory L. Skidmore, Jeff D. Nye, Kirkland & Ellis, LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Daniel R. Ranke, United States Attorney's Office, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee.

Before GIBBONS and McKEAGUE Circuit Judges; ANDERSON, District Judge.^*

ANDERSON, D.J., delivered the opinion of the court in which GIBBONS

and McKEAGUE, JJ., joined. GIBBONS, J. (pg. 697), delivered a separate concurring opinion.

OPINION

S. THOMAS ANDERSON, District Judge.

Divna Maslenjak appeals her conviction for knowingly procuring her naturalization contrary to law in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a)

. Maslenjak, an ethnic Serb and native of Bosnia, came to the United States in 2000 as a refugee fleeing the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Maslenjak claimed she and her family feared persecution in Bosnia because her husband had evaded conscription into the Serbian army during the war. In fact, Maslenjak's husband had not only been in the Serbian militia during the war but had served as an officer in a unit implicated in war crimes. Maslenjak was granted refugee status and ultimately obtained her naturalization. Based on her misrepresentations during the immigration process, a jury found Maslenjak guilty of knowingly procuring her naturalization contrary to law in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a) and of knowingly using an unlawfully issued certificate of naturalization in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1423.

On appeal, Maslenjak argues that the district court improperly instructed the jury that her false statements need not be material in order to convict Maslenjak of procuring her naturalization contrary to law. In the alternative, Maslenjak argues that the the district court erroneously instructed the jury that it could also convict Maslenjak if the jury found that she lacked good moral character. We reject both arguments and AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

I.

Maslenjak is a native of what is today the nation of Bosnia. Although Maslenjak was born in a predominantly-Serbian village, Muslims made up the majority of the population in the surrounding region and clashed with ethnic Serbs like Maslenjak and her family. Maslenjak briefly moved with her family from her home village in Bosnia to the Serbian city of Belgrade in 1992 and then returned to Bosnia soon thereafter. As the break-up of the former Yugoslavia accelerated in the 1990s and conditions in Bosnia deteriorated, the United States dispatched immigration officials to Belgrade to assist refugees fleeing Bosnia and the ethnic cleansing taking place there during the war. In April 1998, Maslenjak and her family met with Monia Rahmeyer, an officer with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service in Belgrade, to seek refugee status based on their fear of persecution in their home region of Bosnia. The interview was conducted with a translator.

No writing or recording of the interview exists to show what questions Rahmeyer asked Maslenjak or what responses Maslenjak provided to the questions. The proof at trial showed that Maslenjak acted as the primary applicant on her family's asylum application. Maslenjak stated under oath during the interview that her family feared persecution back in Bosnia owing to the fact that her husband did not serve in the military during the war. Maslenjak explained that when she returned to Bosnia with her children in 1992, her husband remained in Jagodina, Serbia, to avoid conscription into the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian civil war. According to Maslenjak, she and her husband had lived apart from 1992 to 1997. Based on these representations, Maslenjak and her family were granted refugee status in 1999 and immigrated to the United States in September 2000 where they settled in Ohio. Maslenjak subsequently obtained lawful permanent resident status in 2004.

On December 5, 2006, special agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement questioned Maslenjak's husband, Ratko Maslenjak, at the family home as part of an investigation into whether Mr. Maslenjak had failed to disclose his military service in Serbia in his immigration application. Divna Maslenjak was present in the home during the interview. Ratko Maslenjak was subsequently charged with two counts of making a false statement on a government document in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1546(a)

. Specifically, Ratko Maslenjak was accused of failing to report his military service in the Bratunac Brigade of the Army of the Republic Srpska (also known as the VRS), a unit that participated in the genocide of 7,000 to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in 1995. The government alleged that according to military records, Ratko Maslenjak served as an officer in the Bratunac Brigade at the time of the genocide, though there was no evidence Mr. Maslenjak had personally participated in war crimes. Ratko Maslenjak was arrested on the charges on December 13, 2006.

One week after her husband's arrest, Maslenjak filed an N–400 Application for Naturalization on December 20, 2006. One of the questions on the application asked whether she had ever “knowingly given false or misleading information to any U.S. government official while applying for any immigration benefit or to avoid deportation, exclusion, or removal.” A separate question asked whether Maslenjak had ever “lied to any U.S. government official to gain entry or admission into the United States.” Maslenjak answered “no” to both questions on her written application. Maslenjak was also interviewed under oath about the written answers on her application and declined to make any changes to the answers when given the opportunity to do so. On August 3, 2007, Maslenjak was naturalized as a citizen of the United States.

On October 7, 2007, Ratko Maslenjak was found guilty in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on both counts of making false statements on a government document under 18 U.S.C. § 1546(a)

. The district court sentenced Mr. Maslenjak to 24 months probation on January 8, 2008. Because his criminal conviction made him subject to removal, Ratko Maslenjak was taken into ICE custody on January 13, 2009. In order to avoid removal, Ratko Maslenjak filed a petition for asylum. Divna Maslenjak filed an I–130 Petition for Alien Relative and testified on her husband's behalf at his April 28, 2009, asylum hearing. During her testimony Maslenjak admitted that her husband had served in the Republic Srpska military, that they had in fact lived together in Bosnia after 1992, and that she had lied to the immigration officer about these facts during the refugee application interview in 1998.

On March 5, 2013, a federal grand jury indicted Maslenjak with one count of knowingly procuring her naturalization contrary to law in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a)

. The indictment alleged that Maslenjak “made material false statements” on her Form N–400 Application for Naturalization by answering “no” to the questions about “knowingly giv[ing] false or misleading information to any U.S. government official while applying for any immigration benefit” and “[lying] to any U.S. government official to gain entry or admission into the United States” and then giving the same false answers during her interview for naturalization. The second count of the indictment charged Maslenjak with knowingly misusing her unlawfully issued certificate of naturalization to file a Form I–130 Petition for Alien Relative on February 6, 2009, to obtain lawful permanent resident status for her husband, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1423. On April 17, 2014, a jury found Maslenjak guilty of both charges. Upon her conviction, the district court sentenced Maslenjak to two years' probation and granted the government's motion to have Maslenjak's naturalization revoked under 8 U.S.C. § 1451(e). Maslenjak's timely appeal followed.

II.

This court reviews challenges to jury instructions for abuse of discretion. United States v. Richardson, 793 F.3d 612, 629 (6th Cir.2015)

. A district court enjoys broad discretion “in crafting jury instructions and does not abuse its discretion unless the jury charge fails accurately to reflect the law.” United States v. Ross, 502 F.3d 521, 527 (6th Cir.2007). “When jury instructions are claimed to be erroneous, we review the instructions as a whole, in order to determine whether they adequately informed the jury of the relevant considerations and provided a basis in law for aiding the jury in reaching its decision.” United States v. Kuehne, 547 F.3d 667, 679 (6th Cir.2008) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). An improper jury instruction requires reversal “only where the instructions, when viewed as a whole, are found to be confusing, misleading, or prejudicial.” Richardson, 793 F.3d at 629

(citation omitted).

A.

The first issue presented is whether 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a)

contains an implied materiality requirement where a naturalized citizen like Maslenjak faces mandatory denaturalization following a conviction under § 1425(a). The issue is one of first impression in this Circuit.¹ Based on the plain language of the statute as well as the overall statutory scheme for denaturalization, we hold that proof of a material false statement is not required to sustain a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a).

“The starting point for any question of statutory interpretation is the language of the statute itself.” United States v. Coss, 677 F.3d 278, 283 (6th Cir.2012)

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Section 1425(a) makes it a crime to “knowingly procure[ ] or attempt[ ] to procure, contrary to law, the naturalization of any person, or...