U.S. v. Schneider

• Decision Date: 24 August 1990
• Docket Number: No. 88-3175,88-3175
• Citation: 910 F.2d 1569
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Andrew SCHNEIDER, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1569

910 F.2d 1569

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Andrew SCHNEIDER, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 88-3175.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Submitted June 28, 1990.

Decided Aug. 24, 1990.

Hilary W. Frooman, Asst. U.S. Atty., Springfield, Ill., for plaintiff-appellee.

Andrew J. Schneider, Springfield, Mo., for defendant-appellant.

Before POSNER, MANION, and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

Andrew Schneider was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted by a jury of making a threat by mail in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 876. The threat was against a judge of the Illinois circuit court who had entered a default judgment against Schneider in a lawsuit arising out of a zoning dispute. The letter, sent certified mail to the justices of the Supreme Court of Illinois, whom the letter describes as "Dear Public Serpents" and "high and mighty yo-yo's," contains the following language alleged to be threatening: "I remind you again, that this 'Idiota Persona Non Grata' [the circuit court judge] is of your problem and if is allowed to continue to be mine, he will be executed as the pending [warning?] to others as enemies of the Constitution and Nation by his act of War.... You had better nuffify [nullify] and countermand any of his demented orders or he will be nullified for his criminal activities."

The appeal raises a number of issues but only three require consideration. The first is the claim, ripe for us because based entirely on the trial record, that Schneider was denied effective assistance of counsel because, despite irreconcilable differences between him and his lawyer, the lawyer was not allowed to withdraw from the case. The differences came down to this. Schneider wanted to present as his sole defense the contention that he is a free, sovereign citizen and as such not subject to the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Since that defense has no conceivable validity in American law, the judge would not have permitted it to be presented to the jury and no reputable lawyer could have been found to attempt to persuade the judge otherwise. Schneider would therefore have had the same irreconcilable differences with any ethical and competent lawyer, and so could not have been harmed, in any legally relevant sense, by the judge's refusing to allow his lawyer to withdraw. If Schneider had made a timely request to be allowed to represent himself, the judge would have been obliged to grant it, Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975), but Schneider never asked to be permitted to defend himself. He wanted a lawyer who does not, or at least should not, exist.

Could a reasonable jury find that the language we have quoted from Schneider's letter was a threat upon the life of the circuit judge? We believe so. The fact that the threat was conditional--to be carried out only if the "public serpents" to whom it was addressed failed to correct the circuit judge's conduct and nullify his orders, presumably including the default judgment--is immaterial. United States v. Hoffman, 806 F.2d 703, 711 (7th Cir.1986). Most threats are conditional; they are designed to accomplish something; the threatener hopes that they will accomplish it, so that he won't have to carry out the threats. United States v. Velasquez, 772 F.2d 1348, 1357 (7th Cir.1985). They are threats nonetheless. "Your money or your life" is a threat punishable under the statute--expressly so, since the statute separately punishes extortionate threats, indeed more severely than simple ones.

The threat in this case was ambiguous, but the task of interpretation was for the jury, United States v. Khorrami, 895 F.2d 1186, 1192 (7th Cir.1990); Martin v. United States, 691 F.2d 1235, 1240 (8th Cir.1982), which did not take leave of its senses in concluding that it really was a threat to kill the circuit judge if his superiors did not rein him in and nullify his orders; that it was not just the rhetoric of...