Griffin v. United States, No. 90-6352

• Court: United States Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and WHITE, STEVENS, O'CONNOR, KENNEDY, and SOUTER, JJ., joined. BLACKMUN
• Citation: 502 U.S. 46,112 S.Ct. 466,116 L.Ed.2d 371
• Parties: Diane GRIFFIN, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES
• Docket Number: No. 90-6352
• Decision Date: 03 December 1991

502 U.S. 46 112 S.Ct. 466 116 L.Ed.2d 371 Diane GRIFFIN, Petitioner

v.

UNITED STATES.

No. 90-6352. Argued Oct. 7, 1991. Decided Dec. 3, 1991. Syllabus

Petitioner Griffin and others were charged in a multiple-object conspiracy. The evidence introduced at trial implicated Griffin in the first object of the conspiracy but not the second. The District Court nevertheless instructed the jury in a manner that would permit it to return a verdict against Griffin if it found her to have participated in either one of the two objects. The jury returned a general verdict of guilty. The Court of Appeals upheld Griffin's conviction, rejecting the argument that the verdict could not stand because it left in doubt whether the jury had convicted her as to the first or the second object.

Held: Neither the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment nor this Court's precedents require, in a federal prosecution, that a general guilty verdict on a multiple-object conspiracy be set aside if the evidence is inadequate to support conviction as to one of the objects. Pp. 49-60.

(a) The historical practice fails to support Griffin's due process claim, since the rule of criminal procedure applied by the Court of Appeals was a settled feature of the common law. Pp. 49-51.

(b) The precedent governing this case is not Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298, 77 S.Ct. 1064, 1 L.Ed.2d 1356, which invalidated a general verdict when one of the possible bases of conviction was legally inadequate, but Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 420, 90 S.Ct. 642, 654, 24 L.Ed.2d 610, which upheld a general verdict when one of the possible bases of conviction was supported by inadequate evidence. The line between Yates and Turner makes good sense: jurors are not generally equipped to determine whether a particular theory of conviction is contrary to law, but are well equipped to determine whether the theory is supported by the facts. Although it would generally be preferable to give an instruction removing from the jury's consideration an alternative basis of liability that does not have adequate evidentiary support, the refusal to do so does not provide an independent basis for reversing an otherwise valid conviction. Pp. 51-60.

913 F.2d 337 (CA7 1990), affirmed.

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and WHITE, STEVENS, O'CONNOR, KENNEDY, and SOUTER, JJ., joined. BLACKMUN, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.

Page 47

THOMAS, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Michael G. Logan, Chicago, Ill., for petitioner.

William C. Bryson, Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question whether, in a federal prosecution, a general guilty verdict on a multiple-object conspiracy charge must be set aside if the evidence is inadequate to support conviction as to one of the objects.

I

A federal grand jury returned a 23-count indictment against petitioner Diane Griffin and others. Count 20, the only count in which Griffin was named, charged her, Alex Beverly, and Betty McNulty with conspiring to defraud an agency of the Federal Government in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, which reads, in pertinent part, as follows:

"If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be [guilty of a crime]."

The unlawful conspiracy was alleged to have had two objects: (1) impairing the efforts of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to ascertain income taxes; and (2) impairing the efforts of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to ascertain forfeitable assets.

The evidence introduced at trial implicated Beverly and McNulty in both conspiratorial objects, and petitioner in the

Page 48

IRS object. However, because testimony anticipated by the Government from one of its witnesses did not materialize, the evidence did not connect petitioner to the DEA object. On that basis, petitioner moved for a severance, but her motion was denied. At the close of trial, she proposed instructions to the effect that she could be convicted only if the jury found she was aware of the IRS object of the conspiracy. She also proposed special interrogatories asking the jury to identify the object or objects of the conspiracy of which petitioner had knowledge. Both requests were denied. The court instructed the jury in a manner that would permit it to return a guilty verdict against petitioner on Count 20 if it found her to have participated in either one of the two objects of the conspiracy. The jury returned a general verdict of guilty on Count 20 against Beverly, McNulty, and petitioner.

The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld petitioner's conviction, rejecting the argument that the general verdict could not stand because it left in doubt whether the jury had convicted her of conspiring to defraud the IRS, for which there was sufficient proof, or of conspiring to defraud the DEA, for which (as the Government concedes) there was not. United States v. Beverly, 913 F.2d 337 (CA7 1990). We granted certiorari, 498 U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 766, 112 L.Ed.2d 786 (1991).

The question presented for review, as set forth in the petition, is simply whether a general verdict of guilty under circumstances such as existed here "is reversible." The body of the petition, however, sets forth the Due

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Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Jury Trial provision of the Sixth Amendment as bases for the relief requested. Only the former has been discussed (and that briefly) in the written and oral argument before us. For that reason, and also because the alleged defect here is not that a jury determination was denied but rather that a jury determination was permitted, we find it unnecessary to say anything more about the Sixth Amendment. We address below the Due Process Clause, and also the various case precedents relied upon by petitioner.

II

The rule of criminal procedure applied by the Seventh Circuit here is not an innovation. It was settled law in England before the Declaration of Independence, and in this country long afterwards, that a general jury verdict was valid so long as it was legally supportable on one of the submitted grounds—even though that gave no assurance that a valid ground, rather than an invalid one, was actually the basis for the jury's action. As Wharton wrote in 1889:

"For years it was the prevailing practice in England and this country, where there was a general verdict of guilty on an indictment containing several counts, some bad and some good, to pass judgment on the counts that were good, on the presumption that it was to them that the verdict of the jury attached, and upon the withdrawal by the prosecution of the bad counts. . . . [I]n the United States, with but few exceptions, the courts have united in sustaining general judgments on an indictment in which there are several counts stating cognate offences, irrespective of the question whether one of these counts is bad." F. Wharton, Criminal Pleading and Practice § 771, pp. 533-536 (9th ed. 1889) (footnotes omitted).

And as this Court has observed:

"In criminal cases, the general rule, as stated by Lord Mansfield before the Declaration of Independence, is 'that if there is any one count to support the verdict, it shall stand good, notwithstanding all the rest are bad.' And it is settled law in this court, and in this country generally, that in any criminal case a general verdict and judgment on an indictment or information containing several counts cannot be reversed on error, if any one of the counts is good and warrants the judgment, because,

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in the absence of anything in the record to show the contrary, the presumption of law is that the court awarded sentence on the good count only." Claassen v. United States, 142 U.S. 140, 146 [12 S.Ct. 169, 170, 35 L.Ed. 966] (1891) (quoting Peake v. Oldham, 1 Cowper 275, 276, 98 Eng.Rep. 1083 (K.B.1775)) (other citations omitted).

See also Snyder v. United States, 112 U.S. 216, 217, 5 S.Ct. 118, 119, 28 L.Ed. 697 (1884); Clifton v. United States, 4 How. 242, 250, 11 L.Ed. 957 (1846); 1 J. Bishop on Criminal Procedure § 1015, p. 631 (2d ed. 1872).

This common-law rule applied in a variety of contexts. It validated general verdicts returned on multicount indictments where some of the counts were legally defective ("bad"), see, e.g., Clifton, supra, at 250; State v. Shelledy, 8 Iowa 477, 511 (1859); State v. Burke, 38 Me. 574, 575-576 (1854); Commonwealth v. Holmes, 17 Mass. *336, *337 (1821), and general verdicts returned on multicount indictments where some of the counts were unsupported by the evidence, see, e.g., State v. Long, 52 N.C. 24, 26 (1859); State v. Bugbee, 22 Vt. 32, 35 (1849); 1 J. Bishop, supra, § 1014, p. 630. It also applied to the analogous situation at issue here: a general jury verdict under a single count charging the commission of an offense by two or more means. For example, in reviewing a count charging defendants with composing, printing, and publishing a libel, Lord Ellenborough stated:

"It is enough to prove publication. If an indictment charges that the defendant did and caused to be done a particular act, it is enough to prove either. The distinction runs through the whole criminal law, and it is invariably enough to prove so much of the indictment as shows that the defendant has committed a substantive crime therein specified." King v. Hunt, 2 Camp. 583, 584-585, 170 Eng.Rep. 1260 (N.P. 1811).

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The latter application of the rule made it a regular practice for prosecutors to charge conjunctively, in one count, the various means of committing a statutory offense, in order to avoid the pitfalls of duplicitous pleading.

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