United States v. Kay

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit

FILED
October 24, 2007

Nos. 05-20604 Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Plaintiff-Appellee
v.

DAVID KAY; DOUGLAS MURPHY

Defendants-Appellants

Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Texas
USDC No. 4:01-CR-914

Before HIGGINBOTHAM, BARKSDALE, and CLEMENT, Circuit Judges.
PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

David Kay and Douglas Murphy, executives at an American company that

exported rice to Haiti in the 1990’s, paid Haitian officials to reduce duties and

taxes on their rice. Kay disclosed this activity to the attorney for his employer,

the SEC investigated, and Murphy and Kay were prosecuted for violating the

Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA” or “the Act”). The district court

dismissed the indictment, concluding that the FCPA did not cover bribes to
reduce duties and taxes. We reversed the dismissal of the indictment and

remanded to the district court, finding that no prior law clearly controlled the

issue but that the indictment fell within the scope of the FCPA. On remand, a

jury convicted both Defendants of the counts charged in the indictment. We now

affirm the FCPA and obstruction of justice convictions.

I

American Rice, Inc. (“ARI”) is a publicly-held company incorporated in

Texas and based in Houston that exports rice to various parts of the world. It

exported rice to Haiti in the 1990’s, a time of political chaos and rampant

corruption in that country, through Rice Corporation of Haiti (“RCH”), a

subsidiary incorporated in Haiti. During that time, Murphy was ARI’s

President and Kay was its Vice President for Caribbean Operations.

Haiti levied both duties and taxes on rice importers. ARI, through Murphy

and Kay, took various steps to reduce those costs: purchasing from government

officials licenses, called “franchises,” permitting charities to import food without

duty; paying for a “service corporation” designation for RCH, which allowed the

company to avoid paying sales and income taxes by claiming that it did not

actually own the products it was importing; underreporting imports to reduce

duties and taxes and paying officials to accept the underreporting; and paying

officials to resolve another tax issue. While these payments, if made

domestically, would surely pose serious issues of criminal liability, the standard

2
practice of Haitian government officials was to routinely press companies like

RCH to pay for local service, and almost all companies, including RCH’s

competitors, paid. In short, paying officials for government service and escape

from obstacles to business including taxes was “business as usual” in Haiti

during the 1990’s.

In 1999, ARI retained a prominent Houston law firm to represent it in a

civil suit. Preparing for this suit, the lawyers asked Kay for background

information on ARI’s rice business in Haiti. Kay volunteered that he had taken

the actions mentioned above, explaining that doing so was part of doing business

in Haiti. Those lawyers informed ARI’s directors. The directors self-reported

these activities to government regulators.

The SEC launched an investigation into ARI, Murphy, and Kay. Murphy

and Kay were eventually indicted on twelve counts of violating the FCPA, 15

U.S.C. §§ 78dd-2, 78ff, which makes it a crime to (1) “willfully;” (2) “make use of

the mails or any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce;” (3)

“corruptly;” (4) “in furtherance of an offer, payment, promise to pay, or

authorization of the payment of any money, or offer, gift, promise to give, or

authorization of the giving of anything of value to;” (5) “any foreign official;” (6)

“for purposes of [either] influencing any act or decision of such foreign official in

his official capacity [or] inducing such foreign official to do or omit to do any act

3
in violation of the lawful duty of such official [or] securing any improper

advantage;” (7) “in order to assist such [corporation] in obtaining or retaining

business for or with, or directing business to, any person.” The Government

never charged ARI, or Defendants civilly, under the FCPA.

In 2002, the district court granted a motion to dismiss the indictment,

concluding that “payments to foreign government officials made for the purpose

of reducing customs duties and taxes [do not] fall under the scope of ‘obtaining

or retaining business’ pursuant to the text of the FCPA”1 (Kay I). This court

reversed on appeal (Kay II). After a rigorous analysis of the FCPA and its

legislative history, we concluded that “in diametric opposition to the district

court . . . [,] that bribes paid to foreign officials in consideration for unlawful

evasion of customs duties and sales taxes could fall within the purview of the

FCPA’s proscription,” but “[i]t still must be shown that the bribery was intended

to produce an effect - here, through tax savings - that would ‘assist in obtaining

or retaining business.’”2 The panel left to the district court on remand whether

further prosecution of this case would deny Defendants due process for want of

fair warning.

1
United States v. Kay, 200 F. Supp. 2d 681, 682 (S.D. Tex. 2002).
2
United States v. Kay, 359 F.3d 738, 756 (5th Cir. 2004).

4
 Back in district court, the Defendants moved to dismiss for lack of fair

warning. The district court denied the motion. The Government then filed a

superseding indictment repeating the first twelve counts but also charging both

Defendants with conspiracy to violate the FCPA and Murphy with obstruction

of justice for making false statements to the SEC during its investigation. A

jury in Houston found Defendants guilty on all counts. Defendants renewed

their lack of fair warning argument in post-trial motions to dismiss and arrest

judgment, which the court denied. Murphy and Kay appeal, asserting several

grounds, including lack of fair warning.

II

Defendants argue that the statute failed to give fair notice that their

conduct was illegal and that proceeding to trial with the late arriving

clarification of the Act violated their due process rights. The district court

denied Defendants’ motion to dismiss the indictment and the jury convicted Kay

and Murphy. This court reviews de novo the district court’s denial of a motion

to dismiss an indictment.3 We also review de novo the underlying substantive

3
United States v. Wilson, 249 F.3d 366, 371 (5th Cir. 2001).

5
issue of whether application of this court’s last opinion in this case violates the

Due Process Clause.4

Bouie provides the appropriate standard of fair notice in the present case.

The Supreme Court in Bouie recognized two fair notice concerns in criminal

statutes, including the vagueness of the statute’s language and courts’

retroactive enlargement of the scope of a statute, whether the statutory

language underlying that enlargement is clear on its face or vague.5 The Court

only applied the latter principle of retroactive enlargement to the facts in Bouie,

however, since the terms of the statute were clear.6 Lanier expanded upon these

standards, in a manner consistent with Bouie, and summarized two additional

tests for fair notice: the rule of lenity, and a “touchstone principle” of fair notice,

which combines the standards of statutory vagueness and judicial enlargement

to determine fair notice.7

4
Cf. De Zavala v. Ashcroft, 385 F.3d 879, 893 (5th Cir. 2004) (“We review due process
challenges de novo.”)
5
Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 352 (1964).
6
Id. at 351.
7
United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 266-67 (1997).

6
 Kay and Murphy address all four of the Lanier standards of fair notice in

their appeal8: 1) enforcement of a vague statute, 2) the rule of lenity, 3)

retroactive application of a “novel” interpretation of a statute, and 4) whether

the statute, “standing alone or as construed,” made the law reasonably clear

when the criminal conduct occurred.9 Under the fair notice principle of

vagueness, they argue that this court’s “finding that the statute was ambiguous

as a matter of law . . . should have led the Court to dismiss this prosecution

under the vagueness doctrine . . . .”10 Although Defendants argue, and we agreed

in Kay II, that the business nexus standard is ambiguous,11 it does not follow

that the standard requires guesswork or that the statutory language itself is

vague.

The Court in Lanier defines a vague statute as one “which either forbids

or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common

intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its

application.”12 The FCPA delineates seven standards that may lead to a

8
Each defendant has adopted the other’s arguments.
9
Lanier, 520 U.S. at 266-67.
10
Kay Br. at 53.
11
Kay II, 359 F.3d at 746-47.
12
Lanier, 520 U.S. at 266.

7
conviction. All are phrased in terms that are reasonably clear so as to allow the

common interpreter to understand their meaning. Defendants have, rather than

showing vagueness, raised a technical interpretive question as to the exact

meaning of “obtaining or retaining” business. Whether “obtaining or retaining”

business covers the general activities that an entity undertakes to ensure

continued success of a business or Defendants’ more limited definition of

contractual business is an ambiguity but not one that rises to the level of

vagueness and unfair notice.

Nor is the FCPA’s business nexus test vague under McBoyle, which

originally defined the vagueness standard in the context of fair warning. Similar

to Lanier’s “common intelligence” test, the McBoyle test for vagueness requires

that “fair warning should be given to the world in language that the common

world will understand, of what the law intends to do if a certain line is passed

. . . so far as possible the line should be clear.”13 Imprecise general language in

one of seven requirements for a bribery conviction under the FCPA does not

draw a line so vague that Defendants were not reasonably aware of their

potential for engaging in illegal activity under the FCPA when they made

payments to Haitian officials to reduce tax and duty burdens through

13
McBoyle v. United States, 283 U.S. 25, 27 (1931).

8
misrepresentation. Although ARI did not make corrupt payments to guarantee

one particular contract’s success, ARI ensured, through bribery, that it could

continue to sell its rice without having to pay the full tax and customs duties

demanded of it. Trial testimony indicates that ARI believed these payments

were necessary to compete with other companies that paid lower or no taxes on

similar imports14 – in other words, in order to retain business in Haiti, the

company took measures to keep up with competitors.15 The fact that other

companies were guilty of similar bribery during the 1990’s does not excuse ARI’s

actions; multiple violations of a law do not make those violations legal or create

vagueness in the law.

A man of common intelligence would have understood that ARI, in bribing

foreign officials, was treading close to a reasonably-defined line of illegality. As

the Supreme Court in Boyce held, “no more than a reasonable degree of certainty

can be demanded [in a criminal statute]. Nor is it unfair to require that one who

14
Lawrence Henry Theriot, a consultant to ARI who provided “the eyes and ears of
what the company needed to be alert to,” discussed how “Haitian authorities were very
aggressive in trying to collect the full amount of . . . taxes from Rice Corporation” and
“‘smugglers’ were not paying the taxes on imported rice – or not paying a substantial part of
the taxes . . . So, they proved to be very tough competitors against Rice Corporation, who was
paying a substantial part of the taxes on the imported rice.”
15
We reached a similar conclusion in Kay II, finding that “[b]ribing foreign officials to
lower taxes and customs duties certainly can provide an unfair advantage over competitors and
thereby be of assistance to the payor in obtaining or retaining business.” 359 F.3d at 749.

9
deliberately goes perilously close to an area of proscribed conduct shall take the

risk that he may cross the line.”16 Defendants took this risk, and splitting hairs

as to the illegality of one type of action under the business nexus test does not

allow them to argue successfully that the FCPA’s standards were vague.

In addition to arguing that the statutory language was vague, Defendants,

although recognizing that this court must apply its own precedent established

by Kay II, alternatively assert that the district court erred in its retroactive

application of Kay II’s interpretation of the FCPA to them. They argue that “Kay

II extended criminal liability under the FCPA beyond the explicit terms of the

Act.”17 In doing so, Defendants misconstrue Lanier’s and Bouie’s test for fair

notice under retroactive application of a law. The Bouie fair notice test for

16
Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. United States, 342 U.S. 337, 340 (1952). Boyce is a void for
vagueness case but still applies in this case. The Court in Bouie clarified the distinction
between “void for vagueness” and “fair notice” and the applicability of the void for vagueness
test to fair notice questions. When a statute is void for vagueness, the language on its face is
unclear. A statute that fails to provide fair notice, on the other hand, may be clear or unclear
on its face but regardless, is applied to conduct outside of the scope of the statute, thus
retroactively punishing the defendant for an act that he could not have reasonably expected
to fall under the statute’s prohibitions. The Court found that the fair notice doctrine is broader
than the void for vagueness doctrine, since a conviction under a statute can violate the fair
notice doctrine when a statute is void for vagueness or when a defendant is retroactively
punished under an “expansion” of a clear statute. Void for vagueness analysis is, however,
therefore, still applicable to the question of vagueness in a fair notice case. See Bouie, 378 U.S.
at 351-52.
17
Kay argued: “Because Kay II extended criminal liability under the FCPA beyond the
explicit terms of the Act, defendant could not have had fair notice at the time of their conduct
that the conduct was subject to criminal punishment under Kay II.”

10
retroactive enlargement (“where construction unexpectedly broadens a statute

which on its face had been definite and precise”18) asks whether a court has held

an individual “criminally responsible for conduct which he could not reasonably

be proscribed” due to the statute’s failure “to give a person of ordinary

intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden . . . .”19

Similarly, the Lanier fair notice test for judicial expansion of the scope of a

statute is whether the court applied a “novel construction” of the statute to

conduct not addressed by the statute or by previous cases. In Bouie, the state

court had retroactively added a distinct category of illegal conduct to the statute

– finding that individuals who remained in a restaurant after being asked to

leave violated a statute that had previously only prohibited entry onto land after

notification that such entry was illegal.20 The state court, in expanding the

trespass statute, drew upon the civil, not the criminal law, of trespass.21

We are not persuaded that this court in Kay II or the district court in

applying it, expanded the scope of the FCPA or created a new and independent

principle of law. The explicit terms of the FCPA do not include either language

18
Bouie, 378 U.S. at 353.
19
Id. at 351.
20
Id. at 349-50.
21
Id. at 357-58.

11
relating specifically to contracts or defining more general business practices that

may fall under the business nexus test, with the exception of the Act’s allowance

of “grease” payments. We are not persuaded that the district court’s

determination that the facts of the case fell within the FCPA’s terms of illegality

extended the Act beyond its explicit terms.

Our in-depth investigation of one factor’s – the business nexus test’s –

applicability to a specific action, out of a total of seven factors that define illegal

bribery under the FCPA, was not an extension of the Act’s terms but rather an

interpretation and application of its meaning to the facts of the case. A person

of common intelligence should have been reasonably aware of this meaning in

the 1990’s. Paying taxes and customs duties is inherent to foreign business, and

decreasing these payments through bribery, as Defendants have admitted, was

common practice in Haiti. If bribery to obtain favorable tax and customs

obligations was indeed as common as established in the record, then it is

reasonable to imply that businesses viewed these practices as one of the only

guarantees of maintaining a successful business in Haiti in the 1990’s. It is not

therefore a novel application of the law for the district court to find that

Defendants made these payments for the purpose of “retaining business.”

12
 Defendants rely to a large extent on this court’s investigation of the

FCPA’s legislative history in arguing that the district court retroactively applied

law beyond the original scope of the Act, and they assert that “[r]eliance on

legislative history (much less history as sparse as the FCPA’s) to resolve the

meaning of a criminal statute is rarely appropriate.” We do not agree. As we

discuss in further detail when we turn to the rule of lenity, the Supreme Court

has found, since Crandon22 and Hughey,23 that courts should rely on all available

sources, including legislative history, when interpreting a potentially ambiguous

statute and should find ambiguity only when none of those sources adequately

resolve the issue.24 This court’s investigation of the FCPA’s legislative history

does not indicate that in interpreting the Act, we required the district court to

use a novel application of the law or that the FCPA is vague. Rather, the history

serves as additional support for the court’s resolution of the ambiguity of the

business nexus test. This Court looked to numerous aspects of the Act – its text,

its title, its “grease payments” exception, the dictionary definition of “business,”

and the Act’s legislative history. And although we found that “the statute itself”

22
Crandon v. United States, 494 U.S. 152 (1990).
23
Hughey v. United States, 495 U.S. 411 (1990).
24
See infra note 40 and accompanying text.

13
was “amenable to more than one reasonable interpretation” and therefore

“ambiguous as a matter of law”25 absent its legislative history, this does not

indicate that we established a new interpretation of the law.

A third test under Lanier – that case’s “touchstone principle” – raises

similar questions of retroactivity and vagueness in asking “whether the statute,

either standing alone or as construed, made it reasonably clear at the relevant

time that the defendant’s conduct was criminal.”26 This addresses both

interpretation of the statute “standing alone” and a court’s enlargement of a

statute in “constru[ing]” the statute, whether by interpreting the statute or

applying relevant case law. The FCPA was just as clear in the 1990’s – when

Defendants’ relevant conduct occurred – as it is today. In Kay II we determined

that the FCPA was not void for vagueness27 but rather contained an ambiguous

provision. Defendants here fail in their understandable and able effort to inflate

the ambiguity of the business nexus test into an issue of unfair notice under

vagueness and retroactivity principles.

25
Kay II, 359 F.3d at 746.
26
Lanier, 520 U.S. at 267.
27
Kay II, 359 F.3d at 744 n.16.

14
 Defendants also make the most of the impact of sparse prior judicial

interpretation, arguing: “In all prior reported prosecutions under the statute, the

Government had charged only defendants whose conduct aimed at obtaining or

retaining business by, for example, paying a bribe to secure a government

contract.” This by no means indicates that this narrow type of payment is the

only conduct covered by the business nexus test, as suggested. Kay and

Murphy’s unlucky status as two of the few individuals that the Government has

vigorously prosecuted under the Act does not permit them to argue successfully

that they were unaware of the boundaries of illegality under the Act in the

1990’s. As the Court in Lanier points out, the lack of prior court interpretations

“fundamentally similar”28 to the case in question does not create unfair notice.

Defendants cannot therefore rely on the fact that courts have only interpreted

the meaning of the business nexus test in the context of contracts to argue that

they had inadequate notice of other reasonable applications of that test.

The Supreme Court has held that a defendant received fair notice under

retroactive applications of law broader than Kay II’s clarification of the

ambiguity of a statute. In Rogers, for example, the Court upheld the Tennessee

Supreme Court’s retroactive abolition of the infrequently-used common law

28
Lanier, 520 U.S. at 269.

15
principle that a defendant could not be found guilty of murder if the victim

survived the injury by at least a year and a day.29 The Court found that

although Tennessee had not officially abolished the principle when the murder

occurred, the law’s rarity and the fact that many other jurisdictions had

abolished it should have alerted defendant to the possibility that the law was no

longer applicable.30 Courts daily analyze the law’s “fit” with the criminal act in

question, and without some flexibility of interpretation and clarification, courts

would be unable to apply effectively criminal laws to the specific facts of each

case. As Rogers states, courts require “substantial leeway . . . as they engage in

the daily task of formulating and passing upon criminal defenses and

interpreting such doctrines as causation and intent, reevaluating and refining

them as may be necessary to bring the common law into conformity with logic

and common sense.”31 To find unfair notice whenever a court specified new types

of acts to which a criminal statute applied would stifle courts’ ability to interpret

and fairly apply criminal statutes.

29
Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451, 462 (2001).
30
Id. at 464.
31
Id. at 461-62.

16
 When a statute is not vague but contains ambiguity, as occurs here under

the FCPA, we must still consider the rule of lenity: while the “touchstone” of fair

notice is reasonable clarity of the illegality of conduct when it occurred, “the

touchstone of the rule of lenity is statutory ambiguity.”32 As the Court in Lanier

applied the lenity doctrine, it “ensures fair warning by so resolving ambiguity

in a criminal statute as to apply it only to conduct clearly covered.”33 The rule

is, however, a last resort of interpretation,34 and “[t]he mere possibility of

articulating a narrower construction [or an act] . . . does not by itself make the

rule of lenity applicable.”35 The rule only applies in situations of ambiguity

more extreme than here, where, “‘after seizing everything from which aid can be

derived, [a court] can make no more than a guess as to what Congress

intended.”36 To address potential statutory ambiguity, the Supreme Court has

relied upon “common usage,”37 dictionaries,38 the societal circumstances

32
Moskal v. United States, 498 U.S. 103, 108 (1990) (internal quotations omitted).
33
Lanier, 520 U.S. at 266.
34
Moskal, 498 U.S. at 108.
35
Smith v. United States, 508 U.S. 223, 239 (1993).
36
Reno v. Koray, 515 U.S. 50, 65 (1995) (internal quotations and citations omitted).
37
Smith, 508 U.S. at 240.
38
Id.

17
surrounding the passage of an act,39 legislative intent derived from the language

of an act,40 and legislative history41 to clarify a law’s meaning and thus avoid the

rule of lenity. In Dixson, where petitioners argued that they did not fall within

the scope of the federal bribery statute, the Supreme Court (like this court in

Kay II) found that the words of the statute could support either petitioners’ or

the Government’s interpretation of the statute and that one of the statute’s

terms was ambiguous. The Court used legislative history to clear up the

ambiguity and found that petitioners could not, therefore, rely upon the rule of

lenity.42 Later, the Supreme Court in Hughey attempted to bar legislative

history as a means of clarifying ambiguity and avoiding application of the rule

of lenity,43 but the Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit have since affirmed that

39
Id. (discussing the high rate of drug-related murders in the United States when
Congress passed a statute punishing criminals’ use of firearms in drug trafficking).
40
Id. at 240 (“Congress affirmatively demonstrated that it meant to include
transactions like petitioner’s as ‘us[ing] a firearm’ by so employing those terms . . . .”).
41
See, e.g., Reves v. Ernst & Young, 507 U.S. 170, 184 n.8 (1993) (“Because the meaning
of the statute is clear from its language and legislative history, we have no occasion to consider
the application of the rule of lenity.”).
42
Dixson v. United States, 465 U.S. 482, 491, 496 (1984) (finding that “[i]f the
legislative history fails to clarify the statutory language, our rule of lenity would compel us to
construe the statute in favor of petitioners, as criminal defendants in these cases” but that
Congress was clear in its intent to broadly define the statutory term at issue).
43
Hughey v. United States, 495 U.S. 411, 422 (1990) (“[L]ongstanding principles of
lenity . . . preclude our resolution of the ambiguity against petitioner on the basis of general
declarations of policy in the statute and legislative history.”(internal citation omitted)).

18
legislative history is an appropriate means of clarification under the rule.44

Here, where the legislative history shows that “Congress meant to prohibit a

range of payments wider than only those that directly influence the acquisition

or retention of government contracts or similar commercial or industrial

arrangements,”45 the FCPA is not sufficiently ambiguous to merit application of

the rule of lenity.

In sum, under all four Lanier tests, Defendants have failed to show that

the FCPA, and the district court’s application of it, failed to provide them fair

notice.

III

As Defendants indicate, the Government must prove, and a jury must find

beyond a reasonable doubt, that Defendants both corruptly and willfully violated

subsections (a) or (g) of § 78dd-1 of the FCPA to obtain a criminal conviction

44
See, e.g., Moskal, 498 U.S. at 108 (“[W]e have always reserved lenity for those
situations in which a reasonable doubt persists about a statute’s intended scope even after
resort to the language and structure, legislative history, and motivating policies of the statute.”
(internal quotations omitted)); see also Holloway v. United States, 526 U.S. 1, 10, 12, n.14
(1999) (relying upon legislative history to conclude that Congress did not intend for a crime to
be interpreted narrowly, and affirming that “[t]he rule of lenity applies only if, after seizing
everything from which aid can be derived, . . . we can make no more than a guess as to what
Congress intended” (emphasis added) (internal quotations omitted)); United States v. Reedy,
304 F.3d 358, 367 n.13 (5th Cir. 2002) (quoting Moskal).
45
Kay II, 359 F.3d at 749.

19
under the Act.46 Here, a jury convicted Defendants on all counts for bribery that

induced foreign officials to accept documents containing false reports of the

quantities of rice that ARI imported to Haiti, thus reducing taxes and import

duties in violation of FCPA, 15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1, 78-dd-2. Defendants argue that

the district court failed to adequately instruct the jury on the element of

willfulness and thus gave improper instructions as to mens rea. We disagree.

The court’s instructions to the jury indicated that “corruptly” was an

element of the offense and defined a corrupt act as one that is “done voluntarily

and intentionally, and with a bad purpose or evil motive of accomplishing either

an unlawful end or result, or a lawful end or result by some unlawful method or

means.” The court also instructed the jury on the definition of an act done

“knowingly” (thus incorporating the willfulness element into its instructions)

and defined a knowing act as one “done voluntarily and intentionally, not

because of accident or mistake.” In response to a jury question as to whether

“knowledge of the FCPA” could be “considered an accident or mistake,” the court

referred the jury to its definition of the term “knowingly.” Defendants objected

46
See 15 U.S.C. §78ff(c)(2)(A) (“Any officer, director, employee, or agent of an issuer, or
stockholder acting on behalf of such issuer, who willfully violates subsection (a) or (g) of section
78dd-1 of this title shall be fined not more than $100,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years,
or both.”)

20
to the instruction given to the jury and proposed two alternative jury

instructions, thus preserving error.

We review preserved error in jury instructions under an abuse of

discretion standard47 and ask “whether the court’s charge, as a whole, is a

correct statement of the law and whether it clearly instructs jurors as to the

principles of the law applicable to the factual issues confronting them.”48 Under

this standard, we must recognize that trial courts have “great latitude” in the

court’s decision to include or omit jury instructions.49 The district court abuses

its discretion only if a requested instruction “(1) is substantively correct; (2) is

not substantially covered in the charge given to the jury; and (3) concerns an

important point in the trial so that the failure to give it seriously impairs the

defendant’s ability to present effectively a particular defense.”50 We find that

the district court’s instructions provided clear directions to the jury on all

applicable principles of the FCPA and that Defendants’ first requested

instruction was not substantively correct; and the second, although technically

correct but unnecessarily detailed, was substantially covered in the jury charge.

47
United States v. Daniels, 281 F.3d 168, 183 (5th Cir. 2002).
48
Id. (internal quotations omitted).
49
United States v. Correa-Ventura, 6 F.3d 1070, 1076 (5th Cir. 1993).
50
United States v. Simkanin, 420 F.3d 397, 410 (5th Cir. 2005).

21
Nor did the court’s omission of both of the instructions seriously impair

Defendants’ defense. The instructions still allowed Defendants to argue lack of

knowledge of their bad acts, lack of intent to commit bad acts, and, more

generally, lack of “corrupt” action.

Defendants did not argue at trial that the court should instruct the jury

on a separate element of willfulness, but they proposed two alternatives to the

court’s instructions on the definition of “corruptly.” The alternative instructions

would have required that an act done “corruptly” be done “willfully” and

“knowingly” and with “specific intent” to either “violate the law” (in this case, by

knowing that the FCPA prohibited Defendants’ actions) or to “achieve an

unlawful result by influencing a foreign public official’s action in one’s own

favor.”

The FCPA does not define “willfully,” and we therefore look to the common

law interpretation of this term51 to determine the sufficiency of the jury

instructions pertaining to the mens rea element. The definition of “willful” in the

criminal context remains unclear despite numerous opinions addressing this

issue. Three levels of interpretation have arisen that help to clear the haze.

Under all three, a defendant must have acted intentionally – not by accident or

51
See, e.g., Bryan v. United States, 524 U.S. 184, 193 (1998) (applying the Court’s
definition of willfulness “unless the text of the statute dictates a different result”).

22
mistake. The first and most basic interpretation of criminal willfulness is that

committing an act, and having knowledge of that act, is criminal willfulness –

provided that the actions fell within the category of actions defined as illegal

under the applicable statute. In these cases, the defendant need not have known

of the specific terms of the statute or even the existence of the statute. The

defendant’s knowledge that he committed the act is sufficient.52

The second and “intermediate” level of criminal willfulness requires the

defendant to have known that his actions were in some way unlawful.53 Again,

he need not have known of the specific statute, but rather he must have acted

with the knowledge that he was doing a “bad” act under the general rules of law.

Under this intermediate level of criminal common law willfulness, “the

Government must prove that the defendant acted with knowledge that his

conduct was unlawful.”54

52
See, e.g., Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 602, 618-19 (1994) (defendant need only
be aware that he has engaged in conduct that meets the statutory definition; he need not know
of the statute or his violation of the statute).
53
See, e.g., Bryan, 524 U.S. at 191 nn.12-13, 191-92 (discussing multiple
interpretations of criminal willfulness as meaning “not merely voluntarily, but with a bad
purpose,” “a thing done without ground for believing it is lawful,” or “[d]oing or omitting to do
a thing knowingly and willfully . . . not only [with] a knowledge of the thing, but a
determination with a bad intent to do it or to omit doing it” (internal citations and quotations
omitted)).
54
Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135, 137 (1994).

23
 The strictest level of interpretation of criminal willfulness requires that

the defendant knew the terms of the statute and that he was violating the

statute. The courts have reserved this category to limited types of statutory

violations involving “complex” statutes – namely those governing federal tax law

and antistructuring transactions. Although the Fifth Circuit has not addressed

the FCPA under this category, the Second Circuit has determined that the FCPA

does not fall within this narrow category of complex statutes,55 and we agree.

The district court’s jury instructions captured both the first and second

levels of criminal willfulness, but not the third and strictest interpretational

level. We find the instructions sufficient, since the strictest interpretation of

criminal willfulness is reserved for complex statutes. Under the first and

broadest definition of criminal willfulness, the term “knowingly” in the context

of willful criminal action “merely requires proof of knowledge of the facts that

constitute the offense.”56 For example, a defendant need only have known that

he possessed a weapon with the characteristics that fit within the definition of

“machinegun” in the relevant statute;57 he need not have been aware of the

55
Stichting Ter Behartiging Van de Belangen Van Oudaandeelhouders In Het Kapitaal
Van Saybolt Int’l B.V. v. Schreiber, 327 F.3d 173, 181 (2d Cir. 2003) [hereinafter Stichting].
56
Bryan, 524 U.S. at 193.
57
Staples, 511 U.S. at 619 (“[T]he Government should have been required to prove that
petitioner knew of the features of his AR-15 that brought it within the scope of the Act”).

24
statute or that his possession of the gun violated the statute.58 Indeed, at least

one circuit has specifically found that “[k]nowledge by a defendant that it is

violating the FCPA – that it is committing all the elements of an FCPA violation

– is not itself an element of the FCPA crime.”59 The Court in Bryan affirmed

that the “traditional rule” for criminal willfulness is that “ignorance of the law

is no excuse,”60 and that cases holding otherwise (requiring actual knowledge of

violation of the law) have involved unusually complex statutes with the potential

to implicate innocent individuals.61

The district court, by instructing the jury that a guilty verdict required a

finding that defendant acted “voluntarily and intentionally, and with a bad

purpose or evil motive of accomplishing either an unlawful end or result,” and

by including a separate “knowing” instruction, correctly indicated that the jury

must identify evidence amounting to “knowledge of facts that constitute the

58
Id. at 620. The Court did not concern itself with the question of knowledge of the law,
but rather with wrongfully convicting “gun owners who were wholly ignorant of the offending
characteristics of their weapons . . . .” Id. (emphasis added); see also Rogers v. United States,
522 U.S. 252, 254-55 (1998) (plurality opinion) (“It is not . . . necessary to prove that the
defendant knew that his possession was unlawful or that the firearm was unregistered.”).
59
Stichting, 327 F.3d at 181.
60
Bryan, 524 U.S. at 196; see also Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192, 199-201 (1991)
(discussing the particular complexity of the federal criminal tax laws and the Court’s historic
interpretation of these law, which led to a separate definition of willfulness for these laws).
61
Bryan, 524 U.S. at 194-95.

25
offense” required by the traditional criminal definition of willfulness (which we

have described as the first category of willfulness). The court’s instructions also

substantially covered the requested instruction that Defendants acted

“corruptly,” meaning they acted “knowingly and dishonestly, with the specific

intent to achieve an unlawful result by influencing a foreign public official’s

action in one’s own favor.” The instructions suggested that illegal conduct under

the FCPA defined the “unlawful end or result” to which the court referred, since

the jury had to have some standard by which to gauge lawfulness. Additionally,

the instructions correctly indicated that to be guilty under the Act, Defendants

must have knowingly (i.e., voluntarily and intentionally) acted with awareness

of these unlawful ends.62

62
We are disturbed by the jury’s confusion in this case as to the criminal intent
element. The jury’s question to the court of whether “knowingly” meant knowing violation of
the FCPA (“Can lack of knowledge of the FCPA be considered an accident or mistake?”)
indicates that the jury was confused as to whether Defendants had to know specifically that
they were violating the FCPA when they acted. But the jury need not have found this. Under
our first definition of willfulness, Defendants’ knowledge that they were committing the acts
of corrupt bribery of foreign officials was sufficient. Given, Defendants’ proffered instruction
that would have required that a finding that they “knowingly and dishonestly, with the specific
intent to achieve an unlawful result by influencing a foreign official’s action in one’s own favor”
would have helped the jury understand that the “unlawful ends” in the court’s instructions on
“unlawful end or result . . . or unlawful method or means” could refer to specific knowledge that
one was committing a corrupt act as defined by the FCPA. But even if the jury understood
“unlawful ends” in the more general sense – of acting with a bad or unlawful purpose – this
is an acceptable definition of criminal willfulness, which we describe as the “intermediate”
definition of willfulness and discuss below.

26
 The district court’s instructions, in defining the willfulness standard as

requiring knowledge that the acts committed were unlawful acts, were also

adequate despite their omission of the exact term “specific intent,” which was

proposed by Defendants in their second instruction. We have defined specific

intent crimes as those involving “willful and knowing engagement in criminal

behavior.”63 To instruct on specific intent, a court should require the jury “to find

that [defendant] intended to do something unlawful.”64 The court gave such an

instruction here, despite its failure to use the phrase “specific intent.” Where we

have struck down jury instructions for failure to convey specific intent, we have

done so on the grounds that the court mistakenly thought that the crime was a

general intent crime and therefore refused to instruct that the defendant had

intended to act unlawfully.65 Additionally, as discussed in further detail below,

Defendants need not have specifically known that they were violating the FCPA

in this case; only those cases that involve unusually complex statutes require

63
United States v. Berrios-Centeno, 250 F.3d 294, 299 (5th Cir. 2001).
64
United States v. Burroughs, 876 F.2d 366, 369 (5th Cir. 1989).
65
Id. at 368-69 (finding that the court mistakenly believed that the drug conspiracy was
a general intent crime and that the “[charge] language does not address the requisite intent
to break the law by her ‘voluntary’ actions. It thus does not compensate for the district court’s
incorrect definition of ‘willful’ or its omission of any reference to ‘specific intent,’ ‘unlawfulness,’
‘purposeful intent to violate the law,’ or any like language that would have suggested the need
to find specific intent”).

27
defendants to have specific knowledge that they are violating a statute.66 Indeed,

the district court’s jury instructions closely track the language that the Court in

Bryan approved as correctly defining criminal willfulness.67

Because there are multiple definitions of criminal willfulness, however, we

also look to stricter standards of willfulness to consider whether Defendants’

instructions were substantively correct and whether omission of those

instructions seriously impaired an effective defense. We find that the district

court’s jury instructions also capture our second, or intermediate, definition of

criminal willfulness – a definition that we commonly follow68 – that a defendant

66
See, e.g., Cheek, 498 U.S. at 200 (“Congress has . . . softened the impact of the
common-law presumption by making specific intent to violate the law an element of certain
federal criminal tax offenses. Thus, the Court . . . interpreted the statutory term ‘willfully’ as
used in the federal criminal tax statutes as carving out an exception to the traditional rule.
This special treatment of criminal tax offenses is largely due to the complexity of the tax
laws.”); Bryan, 524 U.S. at 194-95 (distinguishing the cases where “the jury must find that the
defendant was aware of the specific provision of the tax code that he was charged with
violating” (emphasis added)).
67
Bryan, 524 U.S. at 190. The jury instructions in Bryan read as follows: “A person
acts willfully if he acts intentionally and purposely and with the intent to do something the law
forbids, that is, with the bad purpose to disobey or to disregard the law. Now, the person need
not be aware of the specific law or rule that his conduct may be violating. But he must act
with the intent to do something that the law forbids.” Id.
68
See, e.g., Burroughs, 876 F.2d at 368 (describing “‘willfully’” to mean that “‘the act
was committed voluntarily and purposely, with the specific intent to do something the law
forbids; that is to say, with bad purpose either to disobey or disregard the law’” (quoting U.S.
Fifth Circuit District Judges Association Pattern Jury Instruction (Criminal), Basic
Instruction 9A, at 21 (1983) (emphasis added)); United States v. Wilkes, 685 F.2d 135, 138 (5th
Cir. 1982) (upholding instructions that defined “willful as incorporating a ‘bad purpose either
to disobey or to disregard the law’”).

28
knew that he was doing something generally “unlawful” at the time of his action.

This level of interpretation is stricter than the first because it does not only

require that the defendant knew that he was committing an act (an act which,

incidentally, falls within the definition of the relevant statute); the defendant

must have known that the act was in some way wrong. The district court’s jury

instructions captured this level of intent well with their requirement that the

jury find that Defendants acted “with a bad purpose or evil motive.”

Finally, the statute here does not fall within the narrow exception to the

Bryan Court’s rule. Under this rare exception (which covers our third and

“strictest” level of criminal willfulness), a defendant must know the specific law

that he is violating in order to act willfully. The “highly technical” exceptional

statutes to which the Court in Bryan refers are federal tax laws, for which the

Court has explicitly “carv[ed] out an exception to the traditional rule” that

ignorance of the law is no excuse,69 and a complicated statute addressing

structuring of cash transactions, where the Court limited its holding specifically

to antistructuring laws.70 We have agreed that willfulness does not generally

69
Cheek, 498 U.S. at 200 (citing United States v. Bishop, 412 U.S. 346 (1973)); United
States v. Pomponio, 429 U.S. 10, 12 (1976) (For cases involving tax statutes, the exception
defines willfulness as the “voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal duty”) (internal
quotations omitted)).
70
Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135, 137 (1994) (“To establish that a defendant
‘willfully violat[ed]’ the antistructuring law, the Government must prove that the defendant

29
require that the defendant knew that he was violating the specific provisions of

a law.71 Although the Fifth Circuit has not directly addressed this issue in the

context of the FCPA, the Second Circuit has held that “[f]ederal statutes in

which the defendant’s knowledge that he or she is violating the statute is an

element of the violation are rare; the FCPA is plainly not such a statute.”72

Thus, the instructions need not have, as Defendants argued, indicated that the

jury “must find that the defendant knew that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

prohibited American businessmen from providing anything of value to a foreign

official in order to obtain or retain business . . . .” This level of specificity was

not required here.

The instructions’ requirements that Defendants acted corruptly, with an

“unlawful end or result,” and committed “intentional” and “knowing” acts with

a bad motive sufficiently captured the definition of criminal willfulness that we

follow. They also allowed Defendants to effectively put forth adequate defenses:

Defendants could have argued lack of intent and that they were not acting with

acted with knowledge that his conduct was unlawful.”).
71
United States v. Garcia, 762 F.2d 1222, 1224 (5th Cir. 1985) (rejecting defendant’s
arguments that the jury instructions were erroneous because they “did not clearly require that
the Defendant have knowledge of the particular law allegedly violated.”).
72
Stichting, 327 F.3d at 181.

30
knowledge of unlawful means or ends. The district court’s jury instructions

adequately conveyed the “willfulness” required for a conviction under the FCPA.

IV

Defendants argue that in addition to improperly instructing the jury on

the element of willfulness, the district court allowed the jury to convict based on

a defective indictment that omitted the element of willfulness. We review this

issue de novo73 and will find an indictment to be sufficient if it “alleges every

element of the crime charged and in such a way as to enable the accused to

prepare his defense and to allow the accused to invoke the double jeopardy

clause in any subsequent proceeding.”74

The second superseding indictment upon which the jury convicted

Defendants indeed omitted the term “willful.” However, this omission was

harmless error at most, as the language of the indictment described the exact

type of conduct required for a finding of willfulness. As we discussed in detail in

the context of jury instructions, criminal willfulness requires only that criminal

defendants have knowledge that they are acting unlawfully or “knowledge of the

facts that constitute the offense,” depending on the definition followed, unless

73
United States v. Ratcliff, 488 F.3d 639, 643 (5th Cir. 2007).
74
Id. (internal quotations omitted).

31
the statutory text provides an alternate definition of this element.75 The FCPA

does not define willfulness, so we rely upon the common law definition.

The indictment in this case was not required to contain the exact term

“willfulness.” This court has specifically found that an indictment alleging that

defendant “corruptly did endeavor” sufficiently “charges an intentional act,”

which is “interchangeable with the term willful.”76 Similarly, by alleging that

Defendants in this case themselves “paid bribes and authorized the payment of

bribes;”77 “acted on his [sic] own behalf and as an agent of American Rice, Inc.,”78

to reduce customs duties; paid bribes to underreport import quantities because

Defendants “believed”79 that they would otherwise lose sales to competitors;

“directed employees”80 to make false shipping documents; and acted “corruptly”81

“in violation of their lawful duty,”82 the indictment sufficiently alleged the

75
Bryan, 524 U.S. at 193.
76
United States v. Haas, 583 F.2d 216, 220 (5th Cir. 1978) (internal quotations
omitted).
77
Second superseding indictment, Count 3.
78
Id., Count 6.
79
Id., Count 3.
80
Id., Count 5.
81
Id., Count 11.
82
Id.

32
element of willfulness by using language that directly asserted Defendants’

knowing commission of acts that are unlawful generally and unlawful under the

FCPA. The indictment’s language sufficiently placed Defendants on notice of

each element of the crime charged and allowed them to prepare an effective

defense.

V

In addition to arguing that the indictment failed to allege willfulness,

Defendants assert that the indictment insufficiently alleged, and the

Government failed to prove at trial, that Defendants made “use of the mails or

any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce corruptly in furtherance

of an offer, payment, promise to pay, or authorization of the payment of any

money, or offer, gift, promise to give, or authorization of the giving of anything

of value” to foreign officials.83 They claim that the Government only alleged in

the indictment and proved at trial that Defendants used barges and similar

interstate commerce for the false documents that underreported ARI’s imports

but failed to allege or prove that these false documents, or any other money or

documents, were sent through interstate commerce “in furtherance” of the actual

bribes. To the contrary, they argue, “the purpose of the bribe was to clear the

83
15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1(a), -2(a).

33
way for the acceptance of the shipping documents. That is, the bribes furthered

the use of instrumentalities to ship the documents and rice into Haiti, not the

other way around.”84 Defendants further allege that “payments were made in

person in Haiti, with cash drawn from local bank accounts.”85

When we review a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence underlying

Defendants’ conviction and Defendants have moved for a judgment of a

acquittal, as they did here in their Rule 29 motions,86 we ask “whether a rational

juror could have found the elements of the offense proved beyond a reasonable

doubt. In so doing, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the

government, with all reasonable inferences and credibility choices made in

support of the jury verdict.”87 A rational juror could have inferred from the

evidence in this case that Defendants used interstate commerce “in furtherance

of an offer, payment, promise to pay, or authorization of the payment of any

84
Murphy Reply Br. at 4.
85
Murphy Br. at 8.
86
Although the Government argues that we should apply a plain error standard of
review for sufficiency of the evidence, as Defendants did not object to the jury instructions on
the interstate commerce issue in their Rule 29 motions, we need not address this argument;
we find that even under a more generous standard of review for Defendants (assuming they
properly addressed the interstate commerce element in their Rule 29 motion), Defendants’
claim fails.
87
United States v. Valles, 484 F.3d 745, 752 (5th Cir. 2007).

34
money, or offer, gift, promise to give, or authorization of the giving of anything

of value to . . . any foreign official . . . .”

As to the sufficiency of the indictment, the language of the indictment

arguably failed to allege that Defendants sent any money for their bribes

through interstate commerce,88 thus requiring us to address Defendants’

argument that a defendant can only be convicted under the bribery portion of the

FCPA if the defendant used the mails or other interstate commerce “in

furtherance of making the bribe itself”89 and not for more broad use of interstate

commerce for activities that support the bribe payment.

This issue does not require us to look to the legislative history or the

dictionary, as Defendants would have us do. The plain language of the statute

applies to defendants that “make use of . . . any means or instrumentality of

interstate commerce . . . in furtherance of an offer, payment, promise to pay, or

88
Even this claim in Defendants’ briefs is dubious, as the indictment alleges that “[i]n
furtherance of bribes. . . defendants authorized employees of American Rice, Inc. to withdraw
funds from American Rice, Inc. bank accounts and to pay these funds to officials of the Haitian
government . . .” Second Superseding Indictment, Count 7. This language suggests that
Defendants, since their company was based in America, sent funds through interstate
commerce from America to Haiti to pay these bribes. Because the language does not specifically
indicate this, however, we give Defendants’ argument some credence and further address the
indictment’s allegations of documents, rather than money, that Defendants transported in
furtherance of bribes.
89
Murphy Br. at 8.

35
authorization [to pay] . . . .”90 The indictment similarly alleges that Kay directed

employees to, “in furtherance of . . . bribes . . . prepare shipping documents . . .

that falsely represented the weight and value of the rice being exported to

Haiti.”91

Defendants attempt to portray the false shipping documents as a product

of the bribes and argue that they therefore did not send the documents through

interstate commerce “in furtherance” of bribes; rather, they argue, Defendants

paid the bribes using cash in Haiti, and these cash bribes allowed ARI to carry

a set of false documents with its Haitian-bound cargo. But the indictment

alleges, and the evidence shows, a reverse causal chain: ARI used the false

documents to calculate the bribes, sending the documents through interstate

commerce “in furtherance” of the bribes. Under ARI’s “Plan B,” Theriot

described in testimony how ARI based its bribes to customs officials on the

shipping documents: ARI, in its false reports, reduced the quantity of rice that

it was importing by 30 percent and paid customs officials 30 percent of this 30

percent reduction to induce the customs officials to continue to accept false

documents. Joel Malebranche, a sales and plant manager for ARI in Haiti whose

90
15 U.S.C. § 78dd-2.
91
Second superseding indictment, Count 5.

36
responsibility was to “clear the [ARI] vessels for customs,” described in detail

how the payments were made based on the false shipping documents. Under

Plan B for underreporting the amount of rice imported to Haiti and paying

customs officials to accept these underreported amounts, ARI sent two sets of

documents for each shipment of rice. With the ship, they sent a stowage plan

and invoice indicating the correct quantity of rice on board. Then, through DHL

or Federal Express, they sent a set of false documents from Houston to Haiti,

reporting lower quantities. These false documents, once they arrived in Haiti,

allowed ARI employees to clear the vessel in port by writing a check; Kay

calculated the amount to be paid by comparing the accurate and underreported

quantities of rice. As an example of this system, Government Exhibit 1A

showed the correct quantity of rice on board the vessel (7718 metric tons), while

Exhibit 1C, accompanied by a Federal Express slip, showed a quantity of 6218

tons. Malebranche, when asked if he had to “make any payments to customs to

cause them to accept these documents,” responded that ARI had to make cash

payments – which he clarified to consist of “a check to cash, which was then

cashed at the bank” and used to pay the bribes – and affirmed that he used the

“savings” number calculated by Kay (a fraction of the taxes saved from the

37
underreported amounts92) to “calculate how much had to be paid to the officials

. . . . One third goes to the officials; and two thirds comes to us, to Rice

Corporation.” Government Exhibit 1G showed an ARI check, based on the

calculation of the savings from underreported rice quantities, written to bribe

Haitian officials.

The indictment, by alleging that the false documents transported by

interstate means were transported “in furtherance” of bribes, accurately tracked

the interstate commerce element of the FCPA and was supported by evidence

from the case. It placed Defendants on notice as to the crime charged and

allowed them to present an effective defense. The indictment and the evidence

were therefore sufficient with respect to the interstate commerce element of the

FCPA.

VI

During the SEC’s investigation, Murphy was subpoenaed to produce

documents and provide testimony. He withheld several documents referring to

payments to Haitian officials, and denied during testimony knowledge of

payment to customs officials or of the falsification of shipping documents.

92
Government Exhibit 33, a January 20, 1998 e-mail from Kay, stated, “Share this with
Joel then destroy.” The exhibit shows the calculations that Kay used to determine, based on
the “savings” from the underreported shipping quantities (sent via Federal Express or DHL
from Houston to Haiti) as compared to the properly reported quantities (sent on the ship), the
payments to customs officials.

38
 Murphy was convicted on the obstruction charge.93 He argues that the

district court abused its discretion by refusing to give a requested good-faith jury

instruction on this count. Assuming that Murphy’s proffered instruction is

substantively correct, we find no abuse of discretion because Murphy’s

instruction was substantially covered by the actual charge. The district court

used the pattern jury instruction, which explains that one element of obstruction

is “[t]hat the defendant’s act was done ‘corruptly,’ that is, that the defendants

acted knowingly and dishonestly, with the specific intent to subvert or

undermine the due administration of justice.” Murphy’s proffered jury

instruction would have added that “good faith on the part of the defendant is

simply inconsistent with a finding that the defendant acted with the corrupt

intent required . . . . A person who acts, or causes another person to act, on a

belief or an opinion honestly held is not punishable under this statute merely

because the belief or opinion turns out to be inaccurate, incorrect, or wrong.”

The charge was sufficient without Murphy’s requested instruction. While

counsel understandably wanted the charge to contain the verbal footing for their

close, the omission of those wished-for terms was not reversible error. The

instruction given required the jury to find that Murphy “knowingly and

93
18 U.S.C. § 1505.

39
dishonestly” lied to the SEC, a finding which leaves no room for “good faith” and

“honesty.” Murphy’s argument for inclusion relies heavily on Arthur Andersen

LLP v. United States, where the Supreme Court vacated an obstruction

conviction because a jury instruction, as it read it, permitted the jury to convict

where the defendant innocently impeded the government’s fact-finding ability.94

In Arthur Andersen, the district court departed from the pattern instruction,

removing the word “dishonestly,” and with it much of the good-faith defense.

Because the district court here followed the pattern instruction, there was no

danger under the charge as given that Murphy could have been convicted of

violating 18 U.S.C. § 1505 without a corrupt intent. We AFFIRM Murphy’s

conviction on count 14 for obstruction of justice.

VII

Defendants argue that the district court erred in refusing to admit

certified tax receipts on the grounds of inadequate authentication. These

documents – consisting of “bordeaus” (customs documents) and memos – would

have allegedly shown that following initial underpayments at port, Defendants

later engaged in reconciliations with the Haitian government where they

substantially paid their taxes owed. Defendants also allege that the bordeaus,

94
Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696, 706-07 (2005).

40
which indicate the “amount of rice recorded” in addition to taxes paid, would

demonstrate that they mis-reported quantities and underpaid taxes to a lesser

extent than claimed by the Government.

Defendants obtained the documents and gave them to the Government

several weeks before trial but then sent them back to Haiti for certification.

They provided certified copies of the documents to the Government the day

before trial. The Government objected to the documents’ admission on the basis

that the documents were certified by the brother of a co-conspirator in the case,

that the Government had not had sufficient time to test the documents, and that

the documents were originally accompanied by a post stating that they were

“Received from Murphy,” not from the individual who later certified the

documents. The Government argued that the authentication issues were of

particular concern because the case dealt with false documentation. Further,

Defendants were unable to locate the originals of the documents or explain why

they were unavailable. The district court refused to admit the documents and,

although not providing an explicit reason, apparently did so under Rule 403 of

the Federal Rules of Evidence. We review a district court’s exclusion of relevant

evidence under Rule 403 for an abuse of discretion,95 and, if we find an abuse of

95
United States v. Jimenez, 256 F.3d 330, 341 (5th Cir. 2001).

41
discretion, we find reversible error only if the ruling affected a substantial

right.96

To preserve error in an evidentiary ruling excluding evidence under Rule

103(a), a defendant must make an “offer of proof” of evidence, meaning that “the

substance of the evidence” must have been “made known to the court by offer”

or must have been “apparent from the context within which questions were

asked.”97 The defendant need not renew his objection to the exclusion of

evidence “[o]nce the court makes a definitive ruling on the record admitting or

excluding evidence . . . .”98 If Defendants had failed to make an offer of proof in

this case, as the Government claims, then we would not address the court’s

decision to exclude the evidence.99 However, a formal offer of proof was not

necessary here.100 By explaining to the court the substance of the proffered

evidence (receipts indicating tax payments that Defendants made after

96
Guy v. Crown Equip. Corp., 394 F.3d 320, 324 (5th Cir. 2004); United States v. Hicks,
389 F.3d 514, 524 (5th Cir. 2004).
97
FED. R. EVID. 103(a)(2).
98
FED. R. EVID. 103(a).
99
United States v. Winkle, 587 F.2d 705, 710 (5th Cir. 1979).
100
United States v. Clements, 73 F.3d 1330, 1336 (5th Cir. 1996); see also United States
v. Ballis, 28 F.3d 1399, 1406 (5th Cir. 1994) (“[E]xcluded evidence is sufficiently preserved for
review when the trial court has been informed as to what counsel intends to show by the
evidence and why it should be admitted, and this court has a record upon which we may
adequately examine the propriety and harmfulness of the ruling”).

42
shipments were complete) and why the court should admit these documents101

(describing how the documents had been “subscribed and sworn – and certified

by the United States vice counsel”), Defendants made a sufficient “informal”

offer of proof. Although Defendants did not renew their attempt to admit the

evidence in trial after the court’s decision to exclude, the court definitively

rejected the evidence in its pre-trial ruling.102 No further objections by

Defendants were necessary.

Although Defendants properly objected to the district court’s ruling, the

district court did not abuse its discretion here. Defendants attempted to

introduce the documents at the last minute, and the court could have reasonably

concluded that they would create confusion or unfair prejudice. Additionally, the

Government provided evidence that the documents were certified by a

potentially biased party. Because the district court did not provide reasons

(certification, relevance, or others) for the exclusion of the evidence, however, we

also determine whether, if there was any error, it was reversible.

101
See Ballis, 28 F.3d at 1406 (counsel must demonstrate “what counsel intends to
show by the evidence and why it should be admitted.”)
102
See, e.g., Jimenez, 256 F.3d at 342-43 (5th Cir. 2001) (although “[o]bjecting to an in
limine order excluding testimony or evidence does not relieve a party from making an offer of
proof” at trial, an informal offer of proof may be sufficient “when the trial court makes clear
that it does not wish to hear further argument on the issue”).

43
 Defendants failed to show that their “substantial rights” were affected by

the district court’s exclusion of the evidence, and therefore the court’s decision

did not result in reversible error.103 To show that the court’s decision to exclude

the evidence affected their substantial rights, Defendants must demonstrate

that the ruling “affected the outcome of the proceedings.”104 The jury here could

still have found Defendants guilty if the court had admitted the tax documents.

Regardless of whether the tax documents presented evidence that Defendants

paid a substantial amount of their taxes in later reconciliations with the Haitian

government, as Defendants claim, this fails to diminish the weight of the

Government’s ample evidence demonstrating that Defendants initially based

their tax payments on false reports of the quantity of rice they imported, which

Defendants then used to calculate bribes to customs officials and to ensure

acceptance of further false reports.

Although Defendants also argue that some of the excluded documents

demonstrate that they reported more of their rice imports than the Government

alleged at trial, they do not suggest that the documents show that Defendants

reported the amounts honestly, or in full. Rather, they allege that the excluded

103
FED. R. EVID. 103 (a) (“Error may not be predicated upon a ruling which admits or
excludes evidence unless a substantial right of the party is affected.”).
104
United States v. Cuellar, 478 F.3d 282, 295 (5th Cir. 2007) (internal quotations
omitted).

44
evidence would have indicated that “RCH received much less, if any, actual tax

benefit from the commission payments it made.”105 The district court had no

such evidence that the documents actually demonstrated this – nor do we. And

Defendants’ claims that they received less “tax benefit” than alleged by the

Government skirt the central matter of the case: Defendants underreported

quantities of rice and made bribes to continue this false reporting, which in turn

allowed for underpayment of taxes and customs duties at port. Whether

Defendants actually obtained substantial tax benefits is a collateral matter. The

district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the evidence and, even if

it had, Defendants have failed to demonstrate that the court’s exclusion of the

documents affected their substantial rights by changing the outcome of the case.

VIII

The foreign payments in this case came to the attention of the SEC after

Kay voluntarily revealed ARI’s conduct to company counsel. Kay, however,

refused to speak to a second set of investigating lawyers and, when later

subpoenaed, he invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify regarding

the payments. At trial, Kay disclosed his intent to introduce testimony of his

pre-indictment reports at trial, to suggest that his disclosures evidence his belief

105
Murphy Br. at 24.

45
that his actions had been lawful. Responding to Kay’s in limine request, the

district court defined Kay’s exposure to cross examination should he so testify.

The district court ruled that the Government would be able ask Kay whether he

had appeared before the SEC and whether Kay had been asked to appear, but

no more; and that the court would then if requested by Kay instruct the jury on

Kay’s Fifth Amendment rights.

In some circumstances, Kay’s response to this question and the court’s jury

instructions may have improperly alerted the jury to Kay’s invocation of his

Fifth Amendment rights and, despite the court’s proposed instruction to the jury

in its ruling, would have violated the Fifth Amendment protection guaranteed

by Hale.106 But here the court’s ruling was tailored to prevent Kay from

selectively using his Fifth Amendment rights as a “sword,” while simultaneously

benefitting from the shield created by these rights, and allowed the Government

to reasonably respond to Kay’s testimony.

Kay correctly asserts that Hale erects a fortress around the Fifth

Amendment by barring mention in criminal court of a defendant’s silence

following arrest.107 Without this protection, the right against self incrimination

106
United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171, 181 (1975).
107
Id.

46
would be diluted by the high risk that juries might draw a “strong negative

inference” from this silence.108 Although we find, contrary to the Government’s

assertions, that Kay properly preserved the Fifth Amendment issue under Luce,

we find no Hale violation here.

The Government argues that under Luce, Kay failed to preserve the Fifth

Amendment issue. Its reliance is misplaced. As the Government admits in its

own brief, “this case is not exactly like Luce”; in fact, this case bears little

resemblance to Luce, where the Court found that a defendant must testify in

order to preserve claims under Rule 609(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Evidence.109

Here, Kay did testify. Although he did not testify regarding his prior statements

about payments, Kay’s proposed testimony was clear: he proposed to testify that

he voluntarily told the company’s lawyers about the payments as evidence that

he thought the payments were lawful. The court also made clear that it would

allow the Government to elicit on cross that Kay refused to respond to the SEC

and that it would instruct the jury that Kay had a constitutional right to not

respond to the SEC.110 It is true that the district court’s initial ruling in Luce

108
Id. at 180.
109
Luce v. United States, 469 U.S. 38, 41 (1984).
110
The district court made it clear in this case that its determination was final, and it
made this clarification immediately prior to Kay’s testimony. The court confirmed attorney
Urofsky’s clarification that, if Kay offered evidence that he revealed ARI’s activities to his

47
was “subject to change when the case unfold[ed],” but the Court there was

particularly concerned with situations where “defendant’s ‘actual’ testimony

[may] differ[] from what was contained in the defendant’s proffer.”111 This was

not an issue here. Before Kay testified, counsel and the court had made clear

the proposed testimony on voluntary disclosure of payments, as well as the

court’s proposed treatment of that testimony if he chose to offer it. In Luce, it

was “unknowable.”112

Kay preserved his Fifth Amendment claim. We find, however, that the

district court did not err in its ruling. The Supreme Court has found that when

a “prosecutor’s reference to the defendant’s opportunity to testify is a fair

response to a claim made by defendant or his counsel,”113 there is no violation of

the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. As Justice Stevens

put it, “the protective shield of the Fifth Amendment should [not] be converted

into a sword that cuts back on the area of legitimate comment by the prosecutor

attorneys (thus suggesting he was honest), the court would allow the Government to ask Kay,
“Did you talk to SEC?” The court further explained “And then it opens it up for two questions
from you [the Government] with my offer of an instruction . . . that’s the end of it. Okay? No
more.” (emphasis added).
111
Luce, 469 U.S. at 41.
112
Id.
113
United States v. Robinson, 485 U.S. 25, 32 (1988).

48
on the weaknesses in the defense case.”114 Applying the Griffin Court’s

prohibition against comment on Fifth Amendment silence to “forbid the

prosecutor from fairly responding to an argument of the defendant by adverting

to that silence”115 would have been improper here.

Although Appellant’s prior initial statements to his attorney may have

been consistent with his later invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege116 (as

required if he wished to receive Hale protection),117 his pre-indictment silence,

when a second set of lawyers wished to inquire further as to his earlier

disclosures, is not consistent with his initial disclosure of information. Kay

claims that the Government sought Fifth Amendment impeachment “only as a

114
United States v. Hastings, 461 U.S. 499, 515 (1983) (Stevens, J., concurring).
115
Robinson, 485 U.S. at 34.
116
His post-indictment silence and pre-indictment statements appear to be consistent
under all three of Grunewald’s tests for consistency. First, although Kay did not speak about
the payments after being indicted and therefore made no “repeated assertions” of innocence
during proceedings, his initial revelation of the payments demonstrates his belief that he was
innocent. Hale, 422 U.S. at 178 (citing Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 422 (1957)).
Second, Kay asserted his right to silence in a secretive proceeding by refusing to speak when
subpoenaed. As the Court in Grunewald found: “Innocent men are more likely to plead the
privilege in secret proceedings, where they testify without advice of counsel and without
opportunity for cross-examination.” 353 U.S. at 422-23. Finally, Kay reasonably believed that
he was a potential defendant when the SEC subpoenaed him, and it was therefore “natural for
him to fear that he was being asked questions for the very purpose of providing evidence
against himself.” Id. at 423.
117
Grunewald, 353 U.S. at 418–20 (prosecution may impeach defendant regarding
invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege if defendant’s use of the privilege is “in fact
inconsistent” with his testimony”).

49
naked quid pro quo, to exact a price for Kay’s testimony,”118 but the record shows

otherwise. The Government plausibly argued before the district court that if

Kay’s attorney cross-examined him on his initial disclosure of ARI’s bribery, this

would suggest that Kay was “the reporter . . . the complainant . . . the one who

started this whole thing” – the honest individual who initiated the events

leading to the investigation. Kay would have been able to use this testimony to

his advantage and block any cross examination as to his subsequent refusal to

talk by later invoking the Fifth Amendment.

The district court properly tailored the Government’s response to Kay’s

proposed use of the testimony by allowing the Government – if Kay testified as

to his initial statements – to ask if Kay was summoned by the SEC and whether

he responded but not about his refusal to respond to lawyers engaged by the

company to conduct an internal investigation.

Thus, the court made a fair and proportional response in admitting and

excluding some evidence. The court recognized here that Kay had a

fundamental right to silence, yet he wished to invoke the positive inference of his

disclosures by testifying about his disclosures and simultaneously avoid any

mention of later silence that could damage this inference. Entirely preventing

118
Kay Repl. Br. at 27.

50
Government questioning related to Kay’s disclosures and silence would have

prevented the Government from sufficiently responding to Kay’s testimony. We

find no Fifth Amendment violation.

IX

Murphy contests the district court’s decision to increase his sentence by

two levels for an abuse of trust under § 3B1.3 of the Federal Sentencing

Guidelines. Although post-Booker, the Sentencing Guidelines are only

advisory,119 we must still ensure that the district court properly applied the

guidelines when enhancing a sentence under the guidelines range.120 Under §

3B1.3, a defendant commits an abuse of trust by “abus[ing] a position of public

or private trust, or us[ing] a special skill, in a manner that significantly

facilitate[s] the commission or concealment of the offense . . . .”

We read the abuse of trust standard as a two-part test, asking “(1) whether

the defendant occupies a position of trust and (2) whether the defendant abused

her position in a manner that significantly facilitated the commission or

concealment of the offense.”121 We further define significant facilitation by

119
United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 246 (2005).
120
See, e.g., United States v. Villegas, 404 F.3d 355, 362 (5th Cir. 2005) (per curium).
121
United States v. Jobe, 101 F.3d 1046, 1065 (5th Cir. 1996) (quoting United States
v. Fisher, 7 F.3d 69, 70-71 (5th Cir. 1993)).

51
determining “whether the defendant occupied a superior position, relative to all

people in a position to commit the offense, as a result of her job.”122 Although in

Sudeen we questioned the first prong and suggested that defendant need not

“legitimately” occupy a position of trust,123 we have not overruled this test and

therefore apply it here. We review the court’s legal interpretation of § 3B1.3 de

novo, with deference to the district court.124 We also review the question of

whether Defendants occupied a position of trust de novo, while we review the

abuse of trust for commission or concealment of an offense for clear error.125

In reviewing the court’s enhancement, we first determine whether an

abuse of trust or skill is part of the FCPA (the base offense) or a specific

characteristic of the FCPA. If so, the guidelines would not provide for

enhancement based on an abuse of trust, as use of the enhancement would lead

to double counting.

The FCPA does not require an individual to possess special skills to be

culpable under the Act. The Application Notes to § 3B1.3 define “special skill”

as a “skill not possessed by members of the general public and usually requiring

122
Id.
123
United States v. Sudeen, 434 F.3d 384, 391-92 (5th Cir. 2005).
124
Id. at 391.
125
Id. (citing United States v. Hussey, 254 F.3d 428, 431 (2d Cir. 2001)).

52
substantial education, training, or licensing.” The FCPA contains no such

requirements; it applies to “any officer, director, employee, or agent” of an issuer

or “any stockholder thereof acting on behalf of such issuer,”126 whose actions fall

under the remaining elements of the Act. Nor does the Act require a defendant

to commit an abuse of trust.

Although we have not yet addressed an abuse of trust enhancement under

the FCPA, we have found in fraud and embezzlement cases that the base offense

does not include an abuse of trust but rather a lesser standard of breach of

trust.127 We have also upheld abuse of trust enhancements in money laundering

cases, finding that the conduct that led to the conviction under the base offense

did not “itself . . . include any abuse of trust.”128 Like fraud, embezzlement, and

money laundering offenses, Murphy’s actions that led to his FCPA conviction –

falsely reporting import quantities and bribing foreign officials to accept false

reports – were not themselves an abuse of trust as defined by § 3B1.3.

126
15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(a).
127
See United States v. Buck, 324 F.3d 786, 792-93 (5th Cir. 2003) (discussing cases
where the Fifth Circuit has affirmed abuse of trust enhancements in fraud sentences, and
determining that “3B1.3 may apply to embezzlement convictions”). Under fraud and
embezzlement, the court should distinguish “between the breach of trust necessary . . . and
more egregious conduct and discretion necessary to trigger an abuse of trust enhancement.”
Id. at 793.
128
United States v. Powers, 168 F.3d 741, 751 (5th Cir. 1999).

53
Therefore, a sentence enhancement under § 3B1.3 is not “double counting” in

this context.

Under the two-prong test for abuse of trust under § 3B1.3, Murphy

occupied a position of trust with respect to the Haitian government. Murphy

errs in arguing that the abuse of trust enhancement only applies when a

defendant abuses “a position of trust vis-à-vis the victim of the crime.” As we

noted in Buck: “We have never held . . . nor do the guidelines explicitly require,

that the determination whether a defendant occupied a position of trust must be

assessed from the perspective of the victim.”129 In that case, we upheld the

defendant’s sentence enhancement because she violated her position of trust

with respect to the government.130

We have also applied § 3B1.3 enhancements where the defendant’s

position of trust did not apply to the main victims of the crime, but rather to

collateral victims. In Sidhu, we affirmed a doctor’s conviction for defrauding the

government and insurance companies by mis-reporting patient services and

over-billing patients. The doctor had a position of trust with respect to the

patients, yet the lower court based his conviction on government and insurance

129
Buck, 324 F.3d at 794.
130
Id. at 795.

54
company fraud.131 We have interpreted Sidhu to permit enhancement under §

3B1.3 “whenever any victim of a criminal scheme placed the defendant in a

position of trust that significantly facilitated the crime.”132 Here, Murphy, as the

president and CEO of ARI, maintained a position of trust with respect to the

Haitian government as well as ARI’s shareholders. Even if the shareholders are

not primary victims of the crime charged, Murphy harmed shareholders by

conducting illegal foreign activities on behalf of the corporation.

Murphy, in occupying a position of trust, maintained a position superior

to that of all other individuals with a similar ability to commit or conceal

offenses. As a leader within the corporation, the record shows that Murphy

authorized employees to pay “commissions” (bribes) to Haitian officials to induce

these officials to accept underreported quantities of rice imports.133 In doing so,

Murphy “significantly facilitated the commission” of the FCPA offense. The

district court therefore committed no error in applying the § 3B1.3 enhancement

131
United States v. Sidhu, 130 F.3d 644, 647, 655-56 (5th Cir. 1997).
132
Buck, 324 F.3d at 795 (emphasis added).
133
See, e.g., Government Exhibit 82, E-mail from Douglas Murphy to ARI employees
and David Kay (Dec. 29, 1998) (approving a $40,000 commissions payment to Haitian officials);
Testimony of Lawrence Theriot (describing conversations with Kay and Murphy regarding
ways to “shrink” the cargo and reduce tax payments under “Plan B”).

55
for abuse of a trust position to Murphy’s sentence, and we AFFIRM the

sentencing enhancement.

X

We AFFIRM conviction of Defendants on all counts.

56