United States v. Maynes

• Decision Date: 18 January 2018
• Docket Number: No. 16-4732,16-4732
• Citation: 880 F.3d 110
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Michael Lawrence MAYNES, Jr., a/k/a Kamile Jones, a/k/a Mac Mill, a/k/a Horseblock, Jr., Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

880 F.3d 110

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Michael Lawrence MAYNES, Jr., a/k/a Kamile Jones, a/k/a Mac Mill, a/k/a Horseblock, Jr., Defendant–Appellant.

No. 16-4732

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: December 7, 2017

Decided: January 18, 2018

ARGUED: Mark Bodner, Fairfax, Virginia, for Appellant. Michael John Frank, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Dana J. Boente, United States Attorney, Patricia T. Giles, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellee.

Before WILKINSON, SHEDD, and DIAZ, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Shedd and Judge Diaz joined.

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

Michael Maynes raises various assignments of error arising from his trial and convictions for four counts of sex trafficking by use of force, fraud, or coercion in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a) and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1591(a) and 1594(c). For the reasons that follow, we affirm the convictions.

I.

Michael Maynes was a pimp. He worked with several others in running his prostitution business, including his girlfriend and two male relatives. His sex trafficking convictions relate to four women whom he prostituted.

The first woman gave her child to Maynes's girlfriend to care for while she engaged in commercial sex work, and has not seen her child since. When she asked to see her son, she was told that Maynes would decide when she could take time off from prostitution to see her child. She later received a text threatening that her son would be taken to Child Protective Services if she did not send more money to Maynes's girlfriend.

The second woman initially met Maynes in Houston, where he told her that he worked in construction and expressed romantic interest in her. Maynes suggested moving together to Virginia to be closer to his family, and she agreed. Once there, she was surprised to learn that Maynes wanted to prostitute her. He then refused to let her return home from the motel where she worked, and thus refused to allow her to see her infant daughter, unless she met her $1,500 daily earnings quota. While she opened a savings account to hide some of her earnings from Maynes, he later learned of the account and required her to give him nearly all of the funds.

The third woman was convinced by Maynes to perform commercial sex work when he told her that she would receive a home as well as 50 percent of her prostitution proceeds. She believed this income and a stable home would help her regain custody of her children. Maynes did not provide her with a home, and did not allow her to keep 50 percent of the prostitution proceeds. He did, however, provide her with cocaine, which she was addicted to.

The fourth woman was performing commercial sex work in Orlando, Florida, when Maynes contacted her through an internet site advertising her services. Maynes invited her to come to Virginia to work as an escort, and promised to help her obtain a home and a car and provide her a share of the prostitution earnings. Maynes did not follow through on these promises after she arrived in Virginia and began working for him.

In November 2015, Maynes was indicted for conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1591(a) and 1594(c), five counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a), and one count of kidnapping/aiding and abetting kidnapping in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1201(a)(1), (d), and (2). After a trial, the district court acquitted Maynes as to one count of sex trafficking, and the jury returned a not guilty verdict on the kidnapping charge. The jury convicted Maynes of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and four counts of sex trafficking. Maynes was sentenced to concurrent sentences of 420 months on each count, a special assessment of $100 on each count, and 5 years of supervised release. The district court also imposed an order of restitution for the victims in the amount of $405,400.

Maynes appeals all of his convictions. He asserts that the district court erred in its jury instructions and erred in entering a judgment of conviction, because there was insufficient evidence. He also asserts that he should receive a new trial because the district court abused its discretion in excluding certain evidence.¹ As explained below, we are not persuaded by any of these arguments, and we affirm his convictions.

II.

Maynes first contends that the district court's instruction defining force, fraud, and coercion was insufficient because the district court did not include Maynes's proffered materiality instruction.

The federal sex trafficking statute on which Maynes's convictions rest is violated by anyone who "knowingly ... recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains, advertises, maintains, patronizes, or solicits by any means a person" knowing "that means of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion described in subsection (e)(2), or any combination of such means will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act." 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a). To clarify the meaning of "fraud" in the statute, Maynes sought an instruction informing the jury that fraud is an "act of trickery or deceit especially when involving misrepresentation; such specific act of fraud must have been material to cause a person to engage in a commercial sex act." J.A. 50. The district court rejected this proposed instruction, and instead instructed the jury that fraud is "any act of deception or misrepresentation." J.A. 718–19. Maynes argues that this instruction erroneously allowed the jury to convict him based on even immaterial misrepresentations. He asserts that this is an impermissible broadening of the statute, because the term "fraud" implies an element of materiality.

We agree with Maynes that only material misrepresentations could contribute to a violation of the statute by means of fraud. Indeed, the Government does not dispute this point, and the Supreme Court has acknowledged that "fraud" has long "had a well-settled meaning at common law," and that this meaning "require[s] a misrepresentation or concealment of material fact." Neder v. United States , 527 U.S. 1, 22, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 144 L.Ed.2d 35 (1999). Nonetheless, we remain unconvinced of both the purported deficiencies of the instruction given and the supposed superiority of Maynes's proffered instruction. The district court's instructions tracked the language of the statute and adequately conveyed the required elements. By contrast, Maynes's instruction is, at best, a misleading statement of the law.

The definition of fraud given to the jury cannot be evaluated in isolation, and must be considered in the context of the surrounding instructions. Shortly before defining fraud, the district court informed the jury that an element of 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a) was "that the defendant [acted] knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that means of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion, or any combination of such means would be used to cause that person to engage in a commercial sex act." J.A. 718. Thus, for any fraud to be relevant to the question of guilt, it must have been fraud that "would be used to cause that person to engage in a commercial sex act." Using the district court's definition of fraud, the complete element thus was that "any act of deception or misrepresentation" would be "used to cause that person to engage in a commercial sex act." By definition, only material misrepresentations could be used to cause a person to engage in such acts. The concept of materiality was therefore contained in the instructions given to the jury.

Any additional meaning that Maynes's proffered instruction would have conveyed would likely have been a misrepresentation of the law. First, his instruction might have led a jury to believe that the fraud must in fact have caused a commercial sex act. But there is no such requirement in the statute; the crime is complete when the defendant recruits, entices, harbors, etc., the victim with knowledge that the prohibited means will be used in the future to cause them to engage in commercial sex acts. See, e.g., United States v. Willoughby , 742 F.3d 229, 241 (6th Cir. 2014) ; United States v. Garcia–Gonzalez , 714 F.3d 306, 312 (5th Cir. 2013) ; United States v. Brooks , 610 F.3d 1186, 1197 n.4 (9th Cir. 2010). There is no requirement that a commercial sex act actually occurred, much less that fraud in fact caused the commercial sex act. To the extent Maynes's proffered instruction implied otherwise, it was incorrect. Further, by including causation in the definition of fraud, Maynes's instruction obscures the statute's clear statement that any one of the prohibited means is sufficient for conviction, alone or in any combination. See 18 U.S.C. 1591(a).

In the end, Maynes is simply wrong in claiming that the district court's instruction permitted conviction for ordinary prostitution. And in any event, Maynes did not simply facilitate prostitution for women who freely chose that profession. Instead, the evidence showed that he convinced women to work for him through a variety of material misrepresentations, such as false promises to provide the women with homes and incomes. And once the women were working for him, he used a variety of coercive means, such as controlling access to their children, to prevent them from leaving.

Maynes's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence therefore must also fail. We "may set aside the...