U.S. v. Madoch

• Decision Date: 08 July 1998
• Docket Number: No. 96-3754,96-3754
• Citation: 149 F.3d 596
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Janice L. MADOCH, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 596

149 F.3d 596

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Janice L. MADOCH, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 96-3754.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 26, 1997.

Decided July 8, 1998.

Lisa Huestis (argued), Barry Rand Elden, Chief of Appeals, Office of the United States Attorney, Criminal Division, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Frederick F. Cohn (argued), Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before POSNER, Chief Judge, EASTERBROOK and DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judges.

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge.

Working with her husband and co-conspirator, Lawrence J. Madoch, the defendant Janice Madoch participated in a scheme to prepare phony tax returns and receive substantial tax refunds. The couple also made several false declarations and statements under penalty of perjury in their Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings. These efforts led to indictments charging violations of 18 U.S.C. § 286 ("Conspiracy to defraud the Government with respect to claims"), § 287 ("False, fictitious or fraudulent claims"), § 152 ("Concealment of assets; false claims"), and § 2 (liability as principal). Janice was convicted after a jury trial, see United States v. Madoch, 935 F.Supp. 965 (N.D.Ill.1996), and this court has already affirmed Lawrence's sentence after he pled guilty. See United States v. Madoch, 108 F.3d 761 (7th Cir.1997). Janice now appeals, asserting that the district court erred both in its handling of the trial and in its sentencing decisions. Finding no error that significantly affected the proceedings, we affirm.

Because we have already described the Madochs' criminal scheme in Lawrence's case, id. at 762-64, and because those details have little bearing on Janice's appeal, we move straight to her arguments here. She urges first that the district court deprived her of due process when it did not adequately inform (or confusingly informed) the jury of her "battered wife" theory of duress or coercion. Because trial counsel neither objected to the instructions the court gave nor offered a different instruction on Janice's behalf, we are limited to plain error review on this point. See United States v. Maloney, 71 F.3d 645, 663-64 (7th Cir.1996) (citing Fed.R.Crim.P. 30). See also Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b). Under that standard of review, we may reverse a conviction "only when a miscarriage of justice would otherwise result ... [such as] the conviction of an innocent person or the imposition of an erroneous sentence." United States v. Lopez, 6 F.3d 1281, 1287 (7th Cir.1993).

Prior to the trial, Janice twice underwent court-ordered psychiatric examinations. She filed a pretrial notice indicating her intent to call the examining physicians to testify about her mental state around the time of the alleged offenses and to opine about whether she had the ability "to formulate the necessary specific intent required for the charged offenses." Her theory was that she was a battered wife who acted out of fear of her husband and thus lacked the requisite specific intent for each count, or alternatively, that she was a victim of duress. The court ruled she could not refer to the theories of coercion or duress at trial because she had not proffered enough evidence on those points. Cf. United States v. Toney, 27 F.3d 1245, 1248 (7th Cir.1994) (threshold evidentiary burden required before judge will instruct jury on coercion or duress). Nevertheless, at trial her expert testified on redirect that "[a]lthough Miss Madoch is capable of knowing right from wrong and understanding the criminality of [the] charged offenses, she can easily be manipulated and coerced into abandoning her own judgment." (Emphasis added.) The government promptly objected that this testimony contained an improper reference to coercion. The district court agreed after a brief sidebar and with defense counsel's acquiescence, at that time gave the jury a limiting instruction that "[c]oercion is not an issue in this case."

This exchange, and the court's earlier ruling precluding a coercion or duress defense, provided the backdrop for the following jury instruction on knowledge, coercion, and duress:

When the word "knowingly" is used in these instructions, it means that the defendant realized what she was doing and was aware of the nature of her conduct, and did not act through ignorance, mistake or accident. Knowledge may be proven by the defendant's conduct, and by all the facts and circumstances surrounding the case.

Neither coercion nor duress is a defense in this case because there is no evidence that the defendant reasonably feared that immediate, serious bodily harm or death would be inflicted on her if she did not commit the offenses charged and that she had no reasonable opportunity to avoid injury. However, you may consider evidence of threats and violence in the case on the question of whether the defendant acted knowingly and intentionally with respect to each crime charged in the indictment.

Although, as we noted, trial counsel did not object to this instruction, Janice now argues that it confused or prejudiced the jury and relieved the government of its burden to prove her specific intent to commit the crimes charged. By telling the jury that neither coercion nor duress was a permissible defense, and even highlighting the absence of evidence of a fear of immediate and serious bodily harm, she claims that the court "emasculated" the portion of the instruction on intent and knowledge. What it should have done, in her view, was to have refrained from any comment at all on the coercion and duress issues, rather than go out of its way to tell the jury that those matters were not on the table.

Even accepting the defendant's proposition that a "negative issue spotting" jury instruction can sometimes obfuscate rather than elucidate matters, cf. United States v. Allen, 798 F.2d 985, 1005 (7th Cir.1986); United States v. Dray, 901 F.2d 1132, 1141 (1st Cir.1990), the instruction tendered here does not present any such difficulties. Our review of jury instructions is always limited, whether we look at the instructions through the lens of plain error review or not. Reversal is proper only if the instructions as a whole are insufficient to inform the jury correctly of the applicable law and the jury is thereby misled. United States v. Macey, 8 F.3d 462, 468 (7th Cir.1993). Although we realize there is a fine distinction between coercion or duress as a substantive defense, cf. Toney, 27 F.3d at 1250-52, and the notion that a person may not have been capable of forming the requisite specific intent (e.g., acting knowingly or intentionally), cf. United States v. Fazzini, 871 F.2d 635, 641 (7th Cir.1989), the trial court properly distinguished between these two concepts in its instructions. In the former case, the defendant essentially says that she understood what she was doing, but that her actions were compelled by a well-grounded, unavoidable, and immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury, see Toney, 27 F.3d at 1250-52; in the latter case, the defendant argues that because of a diminished capacity she had no knowledge or intent to take the actions she did, see Fazzini, 871 F.2d at 641. Admittedly, the trial court's instructions were not as clear as they could have been, but they nonetheless correctly reflected the difference between the two theories. Since it is likely the district court gave its "negative issue spotting" instruction on coercion because the defendant's own expert first improperly raised that issue in her testimony, and because we generally presume that juries understand and follow the instructions they are given, United States v. Butler, 71 F.3d 243, 252 (7th Cir.1995), we cannot on this record find plain error in the court's instructions.

We also decline Janice's invitation to expand the law relating to battered women's syndrome in this case. We do not mean to minimize the significance of battered women's syndrome, or to exclude as a matter of law the possibility that some battered women may be able to prove either coercion, duress, or inability to form a specific intent. But see United States v. Willis, 38 F.3d 170, 175-77 (5th Cir.1994) (holding that evidence of "battered woman's syndrome," which is based on subjective standards, is irrelevant to the common law defense of duress, which is based on objective standards); United States v. Sixty Acres in Etowah County, 930 F.2d 857, 860-61 (11th Cir.1991) (although battered wife's generalized fear was "genuine and profound," the traditional requirement of "immediacy" is central to the duress defense). But without proper development of the record below and preservation of these points, we cannot find plain error in the district court's decision not to break new ground. We therefore express no opinion on whether the pattern of abusive behavior to which Janice testified could ever support a different instruction on intent or coercion, because anything we said would necessarily be speculative.

Next, Janice makes two arguments with respect to her Miranda rights. First, she argues the district court erred in concluding she was not "in custody" for Miranda purposes at the time federal agents executed a search warrant for her home. Based on this pre-trial ruling, the court below found that Janice had no right to Miranda warnings at all, and thus it denied her motion to suppress statements she made to law enforcement agents shortly after they executed the search warrant. Although Janice failed to renew an objection to the admission of these statements at the time the government introduced them at trial, the district court's clear ruling on Janice's motion in limine is sufficient to preserve the issue for appeal. See Favala v. Cumberland Eng'g Co., 17 F.3d 987, 991 (7th Cir.1994) (civil case); United States v. Pirovolos, 844 F.2d 415, 424 n. 8 (7th Cir.1988) (criminal case). See also 3A Charles Alan Wright, Federal Practice & Procedure § 842 n. 14 (2d...