United States v. Shabani

• Citation: 130 L.Ed.2d 225,115 S.Ct. 382,513 U.S. 10
• Decision Date: 01 November 1994
• Docket Number: 93981
• Parties: UNITED STATES, Petitioner v. Reshat SHABANI
• Court: United States Supreme Court

513 U.S. 10

115 S.Ct. 382

130 L.Ed.2d 225

UNITED STATES, Petitioner

v Reshat SHABANI.

No. 93-981.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Oct. 3, 1994.

Decided Nov. 1, 1994.

Syllabus ^*

Respondent Shabani was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 after the District Court refused to instruct the jury that proof of an overt act in furtherance of a narcotics conspiracy is required for conviction under § 846. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that, under its precedent, the Government must prove at trial that a defendant has committed such an overt act.

Held: In order to establish a violation of § 846, the Government need not prove the commission of any overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. The statute's plain language does not require an overt act, and such a requirement has not been inferred from congressional silence in other conspiracy statutes, see, e.g., Nash v. United States, 229 U.S. 373, 33 S.Ct. 780, 57 L.Ed. 1232. Thus, absent contrary indications, it is presumed that Congress intended to adopt the common law definition of conspiracy, which "does not make the doing of any act other than the act of conspiring a condition of liability," id., at 378, 33 S.Ct., at 782. Moreover, since the general conspiracy statute and the conspiracy provision of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 both require an overt act, it appears that Congress' choice in § 846 was quite deliberate. United States v. Felix, 503 U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 1377, 118 L.Ed.2d 25, distinguished. While Shabani correctly asserts that the law does not punish criminal thoughts, in a criminal conspiracy the criminal agreement itself is the actus reus. The rule of lenity cannot be invoked here, since the statute is not ambiguous. Pp. ___-___.

993 F.2d 1419 (CA9 1993) reversed.

O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Richard H. Seamon, Washington, DC, for petitioner.

Dennis P. Riordan, San Francisco, CA, for respondent.

Justice O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case asks us to consider whether 21 U.S.C. § 846, the drug conspiracy statute, requires the Government to prove that a conspirator committed an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. We conclude that it does not.

I

According to the grand jury indictment, Reshat Shabani participated in a narcotics distribution scheme in Anchorage, Alaska, with his girlfriend, her family, and other associates. Shabani was allegedly the supplier of drugs, which he arranged to be smuggled from California. In an undercover operation, federal agents purchased cocaine from distributors involved in the conspiracy.

Shabani was charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846. He moved to dismiss the indictment because it did not allege the commission of an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, which act, he argued, was an essential element of the offense. The United States District Court for the District of Alaska, Hon. H. Russel Holland, denied the motion, and the case proceeded to trial. At the close of evidence, Shabani again raised the issue and asked the court to instruct the jury that proof of an overt act was required for conviction. The District Court noted that Circuit precedent did not require the allegation of an overt act in the indictment but did require proof of such an act at trial in order to state a violation of § 846. Recognizing that such a result was "totally illogical," App. 29, and contrary to the language of the statute, Judge Holland rejected Shabani's proposed jury instruction, id., at 36. The jury returned a guilty verdict, and the court sentenced Shabani to 160 months imprisonment.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. 993 F.2d 1419 (1993). The court acknowledged an inconsistency between its cases holding that an indictment under § 846 need not allege an overt act and those requiring proof of such an act at trial, and it noted that the latter cases "stand on weak ground." 993 F.2d, at 1420. Nevertheless, the court felt bound by precedent and attempted to reconcile the two lines of cases. The Court of Appeals reasoned that, although the Government must prove at trial that the defendant has committed an overt act in furtherance of a narcotics conspiracy, the act need not be alleged in the indictment because " '[c]ourts do not require as detailed a statement of an offense's elements under a conspiracy count as under a substantive count.' " Id., at 1422, quoting United States v. Tavelman, 650 F.2d 1133, 1137 (CA9 1981).

Chief Judge Wallace wrote separately to point out that in no other circumstance could the Government refrain from alleging in the indictment an element it had to prove at trial. He followed the Circuit precedent but invited the Court of Appeals to consider the question en banc because the Ninth Circuit, "contrary to every other circuit, clings to a problematic gloss on 21 U.S.C. § 846, insisting, despite a complete lack of textual support in the statute, that in order to convict under this section the government must prove the commission of an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy." 993 F.2d, at 1422 (Wallace, C.J., concurring). For reasons unknown, the Court of Appeals did not grant en banc review. We granted certiorari, 510 U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1047, 127 L.Ed.2d 370 (1994), to resolve the conflict between the Ninth Circuit and the 11 other Circuits that have addressed the question, all of which have held that § 846 does not require proof of an overt act.^*

II

Congress passed the drug conspiracy statute as § 406 of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, Pub.L. 91-513, 84 Stat. 1236. It provided: "Any person who attempts or conspires to commit any offense defined in this title is punishable by imprisonment or fine or both which may not exceed the maximum punishment prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the attempt or conspiracy." Id., at 1265. As amended by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, Pub.L. 100-690, § 6470(a), 102 Stat. 4377, the statute currently provides: "Any person who attempts or conspires to commit any offense defined in this subchapter shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the attempt or conspiracy." 21 U.S.C. § 846. The language of neither version requires that an overt act be committed to further the conspiracy, and we have not inferred such a requirement from congressional silence in other conspiracy statutes. In Nash v. United States, 229 U.S. 373, 33 S.Ct. 780, 57 L.Ed. 1232 (1913), Justice Holmes wrote, "[W]e can see no reason for reading into the Sherman Act more than we find there," id., at 378, 33 S.Ct., at 782, and the Court held that an overt act is not required for antitrust conspiracy liability. The same reasoning prompted our conclusion in Singer v. United States, 323 U.S. 338, 65 S.Ct. 282, 89 L.Ed. 285 (1945), that the Selective Service Act "does not require an overt act for the offense of conspiracy." Id., at 340, 65 S.Ct., at 283.

Nash and Singer follow the settled principle of statutory construction that, absent contrary indications, Congress intends to adopt the common law definition of statutory terms. See Molzof v. United States, 502 U.S. 301, 307-308, 112 S.Ct. 711, 716-717, 116 L.Ed.2d 731 (1992). We have consistently held that the common law understanding of conspiracy "does not make the doing of any act other than the act of conspiring a condition of liability." Nash, supra, 229 U.S., at 378, 33 S.Ct., at 782; see also Collins v. Hardyman, 341 U.S. 651, 659, 71 S.Ct. 937, 941, 95 L.Ed. 1253 (1951); Bannon v. United States, 156 U.S. 464, 468, 15 S.Ct. 467, 469, 39 L.Ed. 494 (1895) ("At common law it was neither necessary to aver nor prove an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy . . ."). Petitioner contends that these decisions were rendered in a period of unfettered expansion in the law of conspiracy, a period which allegedly ended when the Court declared that "we will view with disfavor attempts to broaden the already pervasive and wide-sweeping nets of conspiracy prosecutions." Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 404, 77 S.Ct. 963, 974, 1 L.Ed.2d 931 (1957) (citations omitted). Grunewald, however, was a statute of limitations case, and whatever exasperation with conspiracy prosecutions the opinion may have expressed in dictum says little about the views of Congress when it enacted § 846.

As to those views, we find it instructive that the general conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, contains an explicit requirement that a conspirator "do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy." In light of this additional element in the general conspiracy statute, Congress' silence in § 846 speaks volumes. After all, the general conspiracy statute preceded and presumably provided the framework for the more specific drug conspiracy statute. "Nash and Singer give Congress a formulary: by choosing a text modeled on § 371, it gets an overt-act requirement; by choosing a text modeled on the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, it dispenses with such a requirement." United States v. Sassi, 966 F.2d 283, 284 (CA7 1992). Congress appears to have made the choice quite deliberately with respect to § 846; the same Congress that passed this provision also enacted the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Pub.L. 91-452, 84 Stat. 922, § 802(a) of which contains an explicit requirement that "one or more of [the conspirators] does any act to effect the object of such a conspiracy." Id., at 936, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1511(a).

Early opinions in the Ninth Circuit dealing with the drug conspiracy statute simply relied on our precedents interpreting the general conspiracy statute and ignored the textual variations between the two provisions. See United States v. Monroe, 552 F.2d 860, 862 (CA9), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 972, 97 S.Ct. 2936, 53 L.Ed.2d...