United States v. Ring

• Decision Date: 25 January 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11–3100.,11–3100.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee v. Kevin A. RING, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

706 F.3d 460

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee

v.Kevin A. RING, Appellant.

No. 11–3100.

United States Court of Appeals,District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Nov. 15, 2012.

Decided Jan. 25, 2013.

Limitation Recognized

18 U.S.C.A. § 1346

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 1:08–cr–00274–1).

Timothy P. O'Toole, appointed by the court, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant.

Paul F. Enzinna, Jonathan Hacker, and Allen Dickerson were on the brief for amici curiae National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Inc., et al. in support of appellant.

John–Alex Romano, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Lanny A. Breuer, Assistant Attorney General, and Nathaniel B. Edmonds, Trial Attorney. Elizabeth Trosman, Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an appearance.

Before: TATEL, BROWN, and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

TATEL, Circuit Judge:

In 2004, a Department of Justice investigation into Jack Abramoff's lobbying team unearthed evidence of corruption so extensive that it ultimately implicated more than twenty public officials, staffers, and lobbyists. Appellant Kevin Ring, once a prominent Washington lobbyist, was one of them. Exposing the dark underbelly of a profession that has long played an important role in American politics, this case probes the boundary between legal lobbying and criminal conduct. Ring was convicted of honest-services fraud, paying an illegal gratuity, and conspiracy relating to his provision of meals, tickets, and other gifts to public officials. On appeal, Ring argues that the district court's instructions on the honest-services counts misstated the law, that the jury lacked sufficient evidence to find that an “official act” underlay the illegal-gratuity charge, and that the district court ran afoul of Federal Rule of Evidence 403 and the First Amendment when it admitted evidence of his lawful campaign contributions. Although each of these arguments is weighty, we ultimately affirm Ring's conviction.

I.

Lobbying has been integral to the American political system since its very inception. See 1 Robert C. Byrd, The Senate 1789–1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate 491–92 (Mary Sharon Hall, ed., 1988). As some have put it more cynically, “[l]obbyists have besieged the U.S. government for as long as it has had lobbies.” Peter Grier, “The Lobbyist Through History: Villainy and Virtue,” The Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 28, 2009, http:// www. csmonitor. com/ USA/ Politics/ 2009/ 0928/ the- lobbyist- through- history- villainy- and- virtue. By 2008, the year Ring was indicted, corporations, unions, and other organizations employed more than 14,000 registered Washington lobbyists and spent more than $3 billion lobbying Congress and federal agencies. See Lobbying Database, Center for Responsive Politics, http:// www. opensecrets. org/ lobby/ index. php (compiling data from the Senate Office of Public Records).

The interaction between lobbyists and public officials produces important benefits for our representative form of government. Lobbyists serve as a line of communication between citizens and their representatives, safeguard minority interests, and help ensure that elected officials have the information necessary to evaluate proposed legislation. Indeed, Senator Robert Byrd once suggested that Congress “could not adequately consider [its] workload without them.” 1 Byrd, The Senate 1789–1989, at 508.

In order to more effectively communicate their clients' policy goals, lobbyists often seek to cultivate personal relationships with public officials. This involves not only making campaign contributions, but sometimes also hosting events or providing gifts of value such as drinks, meals, and tickets to sporting events and concerts. Such practices have a long and storied history of use—and misuse. During the very First Congress, Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay complained that “New York merchants employed ‘treats, dinners, attentions' to delay passage of a tariff bill.” Id. at 492. Sixty years later, lobbyists working to pass a bill that would benefit munitions magnate Samuel Colt “stage[d] lavish entertainments for wavering senators.” Id. at 493. Then, in the 1870s, congressmen came to rely on railroad lobbyists for free travel. See id. at 494. Indeed, one railroad tycoon complained that he was “averag[ing] six letters per day from Senators and Members of Congress asking for passes over the road.” Id.

The ubiquity of these practices perhaps explains why in Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln a lobbyist declared, “It is not illegal to bribe congressmen—they'd starve otherwise.” Although public officials certainly benefit from lobbyists' campaign contributions and other gifts, that quip, of course, is not precisely accurate. To be sure, bribing congressmen is illegal, but gifts given by lobbyists to curry political favor do not always amount to bribes. At least prior to legislation enacted in the wake of the Abramoff scandal, see Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, Pub.L. No. 110–81, 121 Stat. 735, there was nothing criminal about giving gifts to an official in an attempt “to build a reservoir of goodwill that might ultimately affect one or more of a multitude of unspecified acts, now and in the future.” United States v. Sun–Diamond Growers of California, 526 U.S. 398, 405, 119 S.Ct. 1402, 143 L.Ed.2d 576 (1999). The line between legal lobbying and criminal conduct is crossed, however, when a gift possesses a particular link to official acts. See id. at 405–08, 119 S.Ct. 1402 (“link” or “connection” between gift and official act distinguishes lawful from unlawful gifts). Specifically, when the gift is given with an “intent ‘to influence’ an official act” by way of a corrupt exchange—i.e., a quid pro quo—a defendant has committed bribery or honest-services fraud. See id. at 404, 119 S.Ct. 1402 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(1)). When a gift is intended as a “reward” for a specific past or future official act, a defendant has paid an illegal gratuity. See id. at 405, 119 S.Ct. 1402; 18 U.S.C. § 201(c)(1)(A). The distinction between legal lobbying and criminal conduct may be subtle, but, as this case demonstrates, it spells the difference between honest politics and criminal corruption.

Appellant Kevin Ring, after stints working for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, a U.S. Senate committee, and the House Republican caucus, joined Jack Abramoff's lobbying team in 1999. Until its fall from grace, Abramoff's group maintained a successful and wide-ranging lobbying practice in Washington, D.C. Playing a role some characterized as the team's “chief operating officer,” Ring managed some of Abramoff's most important clients and maintained close relationships with several public officials.

Ring and the other Abramoff lobbyists relied heavily on campaign contributions to maintain relationships with elected officials and promote their clients' political interests. But it was Ring's other lobbying tactics that got him in trouble. These tactics chiefly included treating congressional and executive branch officials to dinners, drinks, travel, concerts, and sporting events. Ring referred to officials with whom he had the closest ties and with whom his lobbying efforts were most successful as his “champions.” As regular beneficiaries of Ring's largesse, these “champions” often took actions that were favorable to Ring's clients.

In 2004, a targeted federal investigation of a kickback scheme masterminded by Abramoff and another of his associates, Michael Scanlon, spawned the broader investigation that ultimately ensnared Ring. Discovering that meals, tickets, and travel Ring provided to public officials were impermissibly linked to official acts that benefitted Ring and his clients, the government indicted him on six counts of honest-services fraud, one count of paying an illegal gratuity, and one count of conspiracy to pay illegal gratuities and commit honest-services fraud. After his first trial resulted in a hung jury, the district court postponed retrial to await the Supreme Court's decision in Skilling v. United States, ––– U.S. ––––, 130 S.Ct. 2896, 177 L.Ed.2d 619 (2010), its landmark honest-services case. Then, following a two-week trial, a jury convicted Ring on three of the six honest-services counts, the illegal gratuity count, and the conspiracy count. Ring was sentenced to twenty months' incarceration, but the district court, observing that his case “presented challenging and novel questions of law,” stayed that sentence pending appeal.

Ring now challenges the district court's instructions on the honest-services counts, the sufficiency of the evidence on the illegal-gratuity count, and the admission of evidence of his lawful campaign contributions. We consider each argument in turn.

II.

The honest-services fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1346, extends the general mail- and wire-fraud statute to include not only schemes to defraud another of money or property, but also “scheme[s] or artifice[s] to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” In Skilling, the Supreme Court adopted a limiting construction of the statute in order to save it from unconstitutional vagueness. Specifically, the Court held that the honest-services fraud statute “covers only bribery and kickback schemes.” 130 S.Ct. at 2907. Consistent with Skilling, the government prosecuted Ring on a bribery theory of honest-services fraud. As both parties agree, this means that the government had to prove the major elements of bribery in order to convict Ring of honest-services fraud. As relevant to the issue here, the government had to show that Ring gave gifts with an “intent ‘to influence’ an official act” by way of a corrupt quid pro quo. See Sun–Diamond, 526 U.S. at 404, 119 S.Ct. 1402 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(1)).

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