United States v. Oliver

• Decision Date: 01 December 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20-1654,20-1654
• Citation: 19 F.4th 512
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Matthew OLIVER, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

19 F.4th 512

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Matthew OLIVER, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 20-1654

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

December 1, 2021

Zainabu Rumala, Assistant Federal Public Defender, on brief for appellant.

John J. Farley, Acting United States Attorney, and Seth R. Aframe, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.

Before Howard, Chief Judge, Selya and Barron, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

A bit of doggerel, popular with past generations of children, suggests that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me." Under certain circumstances, though, words threatening physical harm may violate federal criminal law; provided, however, that the speaker knows well enough how his words are likely to affect his target audience. This case illustrates the point: defendant-appellant Matthew Oliver was indicted by a federal grand jury sitting in the District of New Hampshire on two counts of mailing threatening communications through the United States Postal Service, see 18 U.S.C. § 876(c), and convicted on both counts following a trial. He now appeals, arguing that no rational jury could have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. After careful consideration, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

We rehearse the relevant facts, recounting them in the light most hospitable to the jury's verdict. See United States v. Fuentes-Lopez, 994 F.3d 66, 71 (1st Cir. 2021). We then sketch the travel of the case.

In January of 2017, the defendant — while jailed in New York on a cluster of unrelated state charges — wrote a letter to his stepmother, Linda George, and mailed it to her at her address in New Hampshire. For ease in exposition, we refer to both Linda George and her adult daughter, Ryan George, by their first names.

The letter surprised Linda when it arrived: both she and Ryan had renounced their relationships with the defendant several years earlier (after they had developed concerns about his mental health). The contents of the letter reinforced these concerns. Although much of the letter rambled, its more lucid segments laid out a series of grievances against Linda. These grievances ranged from complaints about what the defendant perceived to be his property rights to complaints about his health insurance. Of particular pertinence for present purposes, the defendant wove his grievances within a web of threatening language. In addition, the letter contained some bizarre references, such as an allusion to the defendant's self-proclaimed transition from his previous identity to "Satan, [i]n the form of Lucifer."

The letter upset Linda and left her concerned for both her safety and the safety of her daughter. Linda's fear — amplified by her prior experience with what she described as the defendant's "disturbing behavior" — impelled her to take the letter to her local police department in Seabrook, New Hampshire. She spoke with Officer Golden Tyre, who (after a preliminary inquiry) advised her that the defendant remained in custody in New York and did not appear to pose an immediate threat to her safety. Although this news partially allayed Linda's anxiety, she later secured a protective order against the defendant from a local court.

In April of 2017, another letter from the defendant arrived in Linda's mail. This letter was addressed to Ryan. Much like its predecessor, the second letter was rife with hostile language and weird satanic invocations. It also conveyed a sexually explicit threat that left Ryan worried about her physical safety. Finding the defendant's second letter "very disturbing," Linda delivered a copy to Officer Tyre and told him about the restraining order she had obtained.

In due course, the Seabrook police department sent copies of both letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Following an investigation by the FBI, the grand jury indicted the defendant on the charges described above.

The travel of the case can be succinctly summarized. The defendant pleaded not guilty and did not seek to interpose any defenses based on either insanity or diminished mental capacity. A jury was empaneled and a one-day trial ensued. After the government presented its case in chief, the defendant moved for judgment of acquittal. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(a). He argued that the government had failed to produce sufficient evidence to establish the elements of the charged crimes. The government opposed the motion, and the district court reserved decision.

The defendant then indicated that he intended to waive his right to testify. As part of its inquiry into whether the defendant's proffered waiver was knowing, voluntary, and intelligent, see Lema v. United States, 987 F.2d 48, 52-53 (1st Cir. 1993), the district court sought clarification surrounding the defendant's mental health. The defendant informed the court that he took an antipsychotic medication to treat bipolar depression and that he had been committed to institutions three times, but that he presently had full control of his mental faculties. Along the same line, his attorney unequivocally assured the court that he harbored no doubts as to the defendant's competency either to stand trial or to waive his right to testify.¹ Satisfied with the fruits of this exchange, the district court accepted the defendant's waiver.

In short order, the defendant rested without presenting any evidence. He proceeded to renew his motion for judgment of acquittal. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(c). The district court again reserved decision and submitted the case to the jury, which found the defendant guilty on both counts.

The defendant again moved for judgment of acquittal, see id., and also moved to dismiss the charges against him based on allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. The district court denied both motions.² With respect to the defendant's Rule 29(c) motion, it concluded that the evidence sufficed to permit a rational jury to find the defendant guilty on both of the charged counts. The court subsequently imposed a fifteen-month term of immurement on each count, to run concurrently, followed by a two-year supervised release term. This timely appeal ensued.

II. ANALYSIS

We review the district court's denial of the defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal de novo. See United States v. Kilmartin, 944 F.3d 315, 325 (1st Cir. 2019). The prism through which we review sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenges is familiar: we scrutinize the evidence in the light most hospitable to the jury's verdict, draw all reasonable inferences to the government's benefit, "and ask whether a rational jury could find that the government proved all the elements of the offense[s] beyond a reasonable doubt." Fuentes-Lopez, 994 F.3d at 71. In making this determination, we place "no premium ... upon direct as opposed to circumstantial evidence; both types of proof can adequately ground a conviction." United States v. Ortiz, 966 F.2d 707, 711 (1st Cir. 1992).

Under this standard of review, it is not our prerogative to make independent assessments of witness credibility. See United States v. Andújar, 49 F.3d 16, 20 (1st Cir. 1995). Rather, we must "resolve[ ] all credibility issues in favor of the verdict." Id. To uphold a conviction, we need only ascertain that the verdict "finds support in ‘a plausible rendition of the record.’ " United States v. Echeverri, 982 F.2d 675, 677 (1st Cir. 1993) (quoting Ortiz, 966 F.2d at 711 ).

Here, both counts of conviction are premised on the same statute. See 18 U.S.C. § 876(c). The elements of the charged crimes chart the course of our journey through the trial record.

The statute makes it a crime for a person "knowingly" to mail a communication by means of the United States Postal Service "addressed to any other person and containing ... any threat to injure the person of the addressee or of another." Id. As the district court explained in its jury instructions, the government had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt — with respect to each count — that the defendant "knowingly caused the [United States] Postal Service to deliver" the letter in question; that the letter "contained a true threat to injure another person"; and that the defendant sent it either "with the purpose of issuing a true threat to injure another person or ... with the knowledge that the communication would reasonably be viewed as a true threat to injure another person." Because the defendant neither objected to the district court's instructions below nor assigns error to them on appeal, we treat the instructions as the law of the case. See Kilmartin, 944 F.3d at 328-29.³

As to each count of conviction, the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence only with respect to the third element of the offense. The defendant's chief contention is that the letters only "made clear his intent to wage psychological warfare," not to inflict physical harm. Therefore, he contends, no rational jury could find that he knew (let alone intended) that either Linda or Ryan would understand his letters to contain true threats of bodily harm. The government demurs: it submits that the "evidence was ample to support the jury's conclusion that the defendant knew that his letters would be perceived by a reasonable person as a true threat." We examine each letter separately to determine whether a rational jury could have found that the defendant knew that his statements would be interpreted as true threats of physical harm.

A. Count One.

The first count of conviction (count one) derives from the defendant's letter to Linda. That letter included an ominous message: "If I were you I'd tread carefully around town ... and when I am done with you, you wont [sic] be able to walk let alone breathe until you die a moments [sic] notice from the day of my choice ...." In the same letter, the defendant wrote that Linda would "die a thousand deaths or more in a land far, far away + in a time you do not follow" (emphasis in original). Whether these statements...