Conrad M. Black, John A. Boultbee, and Mark S. Kipnis v. United States (561 U.S. 465)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 24, 2010 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 561 U.S. 465 · 130 S. Ct. 2963
- Decided
- June 24, 2010
- Term
- October Term 2009
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. In Skilling v. United States, decided today, ante, p. 358, we vacated the Court of Appeals judgment and remanded the case because the indictment rested, in part, on an improper construction of the “honest services” component of the federal ban on mail fraud, 18 U. S. C. §§ 1341, 1346. A similar infirmity is present in this case. Here, too, the Government and trial court advanced an interpretation of § 1346 rejected by the Court’s opinion in Skilling. Nevertheless, the Government urges, the convictions of the defendants below, petitioners here, should be affirmed for an independent reason. At trial, the Government pursued alternative theories: (1) money-or-property fraud; and (2) honest-services fraud. To pinpoint whether the jury based its verdict on money-or-property fraud, or honest-services fraud, or both, the Government proposed special interrogatories to accompany the verdict. The defendants resisted, preferring an unelaborated general verdict, and the Government ultimately acquiesced in that standard form of submission. The Court of Appeals held that the defendants, by opposing the Government-suggested special interrogatories, forfeited their objection to the honest-services-fraud instructions given to the jury. 530 F. 3d 596, 603 (CA7 2008). We reverse that ruling. A criminal defendant, we hold, need not request…
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