United States v. Oliver ( 2021 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 20-1654
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
MATTHEW OLIVER,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
[Hon. Joseph N. Laplante, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Howard, Chief Judge,
Selya and Barron, Circuit Judges.
Zainabu Rumala, Assistant Federal Public Defender, on brief
for appellant.
John J. Farley, Acting United States Attorney, and Seth R.
Aframe, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.
December 1, 2021
SELYA, Circuit Judge. A bit of doggerel, popular with
past generations of children, suggests that "sticks and stones may
break my bones, but words will never harm me." Under certain
circumstances, though, words threatening physical harm may violate
federal criminal law; provided, however, that the speaker knows
well enough how his words are likely to affect his target audience.
This case illustrates the point: defendant-appellant Matthew
Oliver was indicted by a federal grand jury sitting in the District
of New Hampshire on two counts of mailing threatening
communications through the United States Postal Service, see 18
U.S.C. § 876(c), and convicted on both counts following a trial.
He now appeals, arguing that no rational jury could have found him
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. After careful consideration, we
affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
We rehearse the relevant facts, recounting them in the
light most hospitable to the jury's verdict. See United States v.
Fuentes-Lopez, 994 F.3d 66, 71 (1st Cir. 2021). We then sketch
the travel of the case.
In January of 2017, the defendant — while jailed in New
York on a cluster of unrelated state charges — wrote a letter to
his stepmother, Linda George, and mailed it to her at her address
in New Hampshire. For ease in exposition, we refer to both Linda
George and her adult daughter, Ryan George, by their first names.
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The letter surprised Linda when it arrived: both she
and Ryan had renounced their relationships with the defendant
several years earlier (after they had developed concerns about his
mental health). The contents of the letter reinforced these
concerns. Although much of the letter rambled, its more lucid
segments laid out a series of grievances against Linda. These
grievances ranged from complaints about what the defendant
perceived to be his property rights to complaints about his health
insurance. Of particular pertinence for present purposes, the
defendant wove his grievances within a web of threatening language.
In addition, the letter contained some bizarre references, such as
an allusion to the defendant's self-proclaimed transition from his
previous identity to "Satan, [i]n the form of Lucifer."
The letter upset Linda and left her concerned for both
her safety and the safety of her daughter. Linda's fear —
amplified by her prior experience with what she described as the
defendant's "disturbing behavior" — impelled her to take the letter
to her local police department in Seabrook, New Hampshire. She
spoke with Officer Golden Tyre, who (after a preliminary inquiry)
advised her that the defendant remained in custody in New York and
did not appear to pose an immediate threat to her safety. Although
this news partially allayed Linda's anxiety, she later secured a
protective order against the defendant from a local court.
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In April of 2017, another letter from the defendant
arrived in Linda's mail. This letter was addressed to Ryan. Much
like its predecessor, the second letter was rife with hostile
language and weird satanic invocations. It also conveyed a
sexually explicit threat that left Ryan worried about her physical
safety. Finding the defendant's second letter "very disturbing,"
Linda delivered a copy to Officer Tyre and told him about the
restraining order she had obtained.
In due course, the Seabrook police department sent
copies of both letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI). Following an investigation by the FBI, the grand jury
indicted the defendant on the charges described above.
The travel of the case can be succinctly summarized.
The defendant pleaded not guilty and did not seek to interpose any
defenses based on either insanity or diminished mental capacity.
A jury was empaneled and a one-day trial ensued. After the
government presented its case in chief, the defendant moved for
judgment of acquittal. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(a). He argued
that the government had failed to produce sufficient evidence to
establish the elements of the charged crimes. The government
opposed the motion, and the district court reserved decision.
The defendant then indicated that he intended to waive
his right to testify. As part of its inquiry into whether the
defendant's proffered waiver was knowing, voluntary, and
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intelligent, see Lema v. United States, 987 F.2d 48, 52-53 (1st
Cir. 1993), the district court sought clarification surrounding
the defendant's mental health. The defendant informed the court
that he took an antipsychotic medication to treat bipolar
depression and that he had been committed to institutions three
times, but that he presently had full control of his mental
faculties. Along the same line, his attorney unequivocally assured
the court that he harbored no doubts as to the defendant's
competency either to stand trial or to waive his right to testify.1
Satisfied with the fruits of this exchange, the district court
accepted the defendant's waiver.
In short order, the defendant rested without presenting
any evidence. He proceeded to renew his motion for judgment of
acquittal. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(c). The district court again
reserved decision and submitted the case to the jury, which found
the defendant guilty on both counts.
This was not the district court's first inquiry into the
1
defendant's competency. The court and the parties discussed the
subject during a pretrial detention hearing. The record of that
hearing suggests that the defendant underwent multiple court-
ordered competency evaluations while he awaited trial in New York
on unrelated state charges. Although those evaluations produced
varying results, the charges eventually were dismissed (partially
because of the length of time that the defendant already had been
detained and partially because of concerns about the defendant's
competency). In the end, the defendant and the government agreed
— and the district court accepted — that the defendant was
competent to stand trial on the federal charges.
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The defendant again moved for judgment of acquittal, see
id., and also moved to dismiss the charges against him based on
allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. The district court
denied both motions.2 With respect to the defendant's Rule 29(c)
motion, it concluded that the evidence sufficed to permit a
rational jury to find the defendant guilty on both of the charged
counts. The court subsequently imposed a fifteen-month term of
immurement on each count, to run concurrently, followed by a two-
year supervised release term. This timely appeal ensued.
II. ANALYSIS
We review the district court's denial of the defendant's
motion for judgment of acquittal de novo. See United States v.
Kilmartin, 944 F.3d 315, 325 (1st Cir. 2019). The prism through
which we review sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenges is
familiar: we scrutinize the evidence in the light most hospitable
to the jury's verdict, draw all reasonable inferences to the
government's benefit, "and ask whether a rational jury could find
that the government proved all the elements of the offense[s]
beyond a reasonable doubt." Fuentes-Lopez, 994 F.3d at 71. In
making this determination, we place "no premium . . . upon direct
as opposed to circumstantial evidence; both types of proof can
2 Inasmuch as the defendant does not renew his claim of
prosecutorial misconduct on appeal, we have no need to describe in
any detail either his motion to dismiss or the district court's
ruling on that motion.
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adequately ground a conviction." United States v. Ortiz, 966 F.2d
707, 711 (1st Cir. 1992).
Under this standard of review, it is not our prerogative
to make independent assessments of witness credibility. See United
States v. Andújar, 49 F.3d 16, 20 (1st Cir. 1995). Rather, we
must "resolve[] all credibility issues in favor of the verdict."
Id. To uphold a conviction, we need only ascertain that the
verdict "finds support in 'a plausible rendition of the record.'"
United States v. Echeverri, 982 F.2d 675, 677 (1st Cir. 1993)
(quoting Ortiz, 966 F.2d at 711).
Here, both counts of conviction are premised on the same
statute. See 18 U.S.C. § 876(c). The elements of the charged
crimes chart the course of our journey through the trial record.
The statute makes it a crime for a person "knowingly" to
mail a communication by means of the United States Postal Service
"addressed to any other person and containing . . . any threat to
injure the person of the addressee or of another." Id. As the
district court explained in its jury instructions, the government
had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt — with respect to each count
— that the defendant "knowingly caused the [United States] Postal
Service to deliver" the letter in question; that the letter
"contained a true threat to injure another person"; and that the
defendant sent it either "with the purpose of issuing a true threat
to injure another person or . . . with the knowledge that the
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communication would reasonably be viewed as a true threat to injure
another person." Because the defendant neither objected to the
district court's instructions below nor assigns error to them on
appeal, we treat the instructions as the law of the case. See
Kilmartin, 944 F.3d at 328-29.3
As to each count of conviction, the defendant challenges
the sufficiency of the evidence only with respect to the third
element of the offense. The defendant's chief contention is that
the letters only "made clear his intent to wage psychological
warfare," not to inflict physical harm. Therefore, he contends,
no rational jury could find that he knew (let alone intended) that
either Linda or Ryan would understand his letters to contain true
threats of bodily harm. The government demurs: it submits that
the "evidence was ample to support the jury's conclusion that the
3 The district court's instructions are consistent with the
Supreme Court's reading of a related, albeit distinct, statute in
Elonis v. United States, which held that "the mental state
requirement in [18 U.S.C.] Section 875(c) is satisfied if the
defendant transmits a communication for the purpose of issuing a
threat, or with knowledge that the communication will be viewed as
a threat." 575 U.S. 723, 740 (2015). Although this standard is
in tension with our statement in United States v. Walker that the
mens rea inquiry under section 876(c) is "whether the author
reasonably should have foreseen that his message would be
perceived . . . as a threat," 665 F.3d 212, 226 (1st Cir. 2011),
Walker simply applied the legal standard agreed upon by the parties
in that case and, in all events, was decided before Elonis. Cf.
Twitty v. United States, 577 U.S. 802 (2015) (vacating section
876(c) conviction and remanding for further consideration in light
of Elonis); United States v. Mabie, 862 F.3d 624, 631-32 (7th Cir.
2017) (applying Elonis to section 876(c)).
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defendant knew that his letters would be perceived by a reasonable
person as a true threat." We examine each letter separately to
determine whether a rational jury could have found that the
defendant knew that his statements would be interpreted as true
threats of physical harm.
A. Count One.
The first count of conviction (count one) derives from
the defendant's letter to Linda. That letter included an ominous
message: "If I were you I'd tread carefully around town . . . and
when I am done with you, you wont [sic] be able to walk let alone
breathe until you die a moments [sic] notice from the day of my
choice . . . ." In the same letter, the defendant wrote that Linda
would "die a thousand deaths or more in a land far, far away + in
a time you do not follow" (emphasis in original). Whether these
statements comprised true threats was an issue of fact for the
jury to determine. See United States v. Walker, 665 F.3d 212, 226
(1st Cir. 2011); United States v. Fulmer, 108 F.3d 1486, 1492 (1st
Cir. 1997).
Although much of the defendant's missive was rather
cryptic, a jury reasonably could conclude — as this jury did —
that the defendant's statements threatened Linda with physical
harm. See Fulmer, 108 F.3d at 1492 ("The use of ambiguous language
does not preclude a statement from being a threat."). Indeed,
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Linda testified that she regarded the letter as threatening bodily
harm.
The harder question is whether the defendant knew that
his letter would be so interpreted. He argues that the letter,
read as a whole, shows that his threats could not be taken to
portend physical violence. He points out that the threats were
part of a rambling, sometimes unintelligible diatribe about
"Satan," "black magic[]," "Christian wicca," and other
metaphysical forces. Additionally, the defendant suggests that
certain language in the letter limited his threats to the enigmatic
recesses of the psychic realm. For example, the letter tells Linda
that the defendant is out "to destroy you psychically" and that he
"will be sure to send a polite reminder as you sleep with my spirit
body which exists solely to cause you pain and to suffer
metaphorically." Given these expressions, the defendant says, no
rational jury could have found that he knew that Linda would take
his letter as a true threat of physical harm.
We do not agree. The evidence regarding the defendant's
mental state consists of both the letter's text and his extrinsic
commentary. Viewed in a vacuum, the letter's text is surely
ambiguous: portions of its violent fantasies are explicitly
denominated as psychic or metaphorical. And even though the letter
does convey what clearly appears to be a death threat, it elsewhere
predicts that Linda will "finally die of disease, possession of
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the mind by spirits," or will be burned alive by a nearby Jewish-
operated power plant.
Here, however, the letter did not stand alone. The jury
also heard from the deputy sheriff who interviewed the defendant
during his detention in New York after the letters were received.
The deputy sheriff testified that in response to a question
concerning the contents of the letters, the defendant "adamantly"
insisted "that Linda should be worried and concerned for her
safety." This admission supplies evidence from which the jury
reasonably could infer the defendant's awareness that the letter
would be interpreted by the recipient as a threat of bodily injury.
See Kilmartin, 944 F.3d at 325 (explaining that reviewing court
must consider both the evidence and "the plausible inferences
therefrom"); Fulmer, 108 F.3d at 1493 (noting that jury is entitled
to infer essential elements of the crime "from the circumstances
surrounding the [threatening] statement[s]").
The binary conclusion that the government presented
sufficient evidence to show both that the letter contained a true
threat of physical harm and that the defendant knew that his letter
would be so interpreted is not undermined by the defendant's
purportedly exculpatory statements to the deputy sheriff.
Although the defendant said that he did not intend to threaten
Linda with physical harm in the letter — he suggested that the
threats were "all in his head and not illegal" — the jury was under
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no compulsion to credit these self-serving statements. As a
general matter, a criminal jury is entitled, within wide limits,
to doubt a defendant's statements regarding his motives and to
credit a plausible alternative motive suggested by the government.
See United States v. Nivica, 887 F.2d 1110, 1115 (1st Cir. 1989);
United States v. Cintolo, 818 F.2d 980, 989 (1st Cir. 1987). This
is such a case.
At any rate, the defendant's statements to the deputy
sheriff go only to his intent, not to his knowledge. Even if he
intended to refer only to a psychic attack taking place "in his
head," he may nevertheless have known that Linda would not share
this interpretation and would instead understand the letter to
threaten her with bodily harm. On this record, the jury was free
to reach such a conclusion and to find knowledge sufficient to
establish the requisite mens rea under section 876(c).
To say more about count one would be to paint the lily.
Taking the evidence in the light most hospitable to the jury's
verdict — as the standard of review requires, see Ortiz, 966 F.2d
at 711 — we conclude that the proof is sufficient to ground the
defendant's conviction on count one. The district court,
therefore, did not err in denying the defendant's Rule 29 motion
as to that count.
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B. Count Two.
We turn next to the second count of conviction (count
two), which derives from the defendant's letter to Ryan. In that
letter, which was written after Linda had secured her restraining
order, the defendant explicitly threatened Ryan with sexual
assault and other injury, although some of the violence is
qualified. Pertinently, the defendant wrote: "Now go home and
cry like the wind and if I ever see you outside my
door . . . again, I will rape you like a baby and kill you IN MY
HEAD for food — in my mind — much like the time your mother did
inside my mind . . . ." In performing its factfinding function,
the jury reasonably could have read past the letter's attempted
qualifications and concluded that the letter contained a true
threat to injure Ryan. See Fulmer, 108 F.3d at 1492.
Once again, the defendant argues that he lacked the
requisite mental state (either intent or knowledge) to support a
conviction. We agree that the letter's repeated characterization
of certain of the defendant's threats as purely psychological,
combined with its inherently delusional qualities, call into
question the defendant's intent and/or his knowledge of how the
letter would be interpreted. The jury, however, had more evidence
than the letter alone. As we observed earlier, see supra Part
II(A), the defendant's comment to the deputy sheriff that "Linda
should be worried and concerned for her safety" lays the foundation
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for an inference that he knew that his first letter would be
received as a physical threat.
That same comment supports a parallel inference
regarding his letter to Ryan. After all, the two letters were
quite similar both in tone and in content. It was, therefore,
fair for the jury to conclude that since the defendant knew that
his first letter would be regarded as a physical threat, he must
have known that his second letter would also be so regarded. See
Ortiz, 966 F.2d at 711 (explaining that "juries are not required
to examine . . . evidence in isolation, for 'individual pieces of
evidence, insufficient in themselves to prove a point, may in
culmination prove it'" (quoting Bourjaily v. United States, 483
U.S. 171, 179-80 (1987))). In the last analysis, "[c]hains of
inference are a familiar, widely accepted ingredient of any process
of ratiocination. This method of reasoning . . . should not be
forbidden to a criminal jury." United States v. Spinney, 65 F.3d
231, 238 (1st Cir. 1995).
Drawing all reasonable inferences from the evidence in
favor of the verdict, see Fuentes-Lopez, 994 F.3d at 71, the proof
at trial supplied a plausible basis for a rational jury to find
that the defendant sent the second letter with the requisite
knowledge of how it would be perceived. While much of the evidence
relating to the defendant's knowledge is admittedly
circumstantial, that is not a fatal flaw. There is simply no
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requirement that the government must adduce direct evidence to
prove a defendant's mens rea in a criminal case. See United States
v. Floyd, 740 F.3d 22, 28 (1st Cir. 2014).
We need go no further. Because the evidence sufficiently
shows that the defendant sent his second letter with the requisite
knowledge of how it would be interpreted, the defendant was not
entitled to a judgment of acquittal on count two. The district
court, therefore, did not err in denying the defendant's Rule 29
motion as to that count.
III. CONCLUSION
We do not gainsay that reasonable minds could differ as
to the persuasiveness and force of the evidence adduced at trial.
But in the first instance, weighing the evidence is the jury's
task — and our review confirms that the evidence in this case,
taken in the light most hospitable to the jury's verdict, is
sufficient to support that verdict. For the reasons elucidated
above, the judgment of the district court is
Affirmed.
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