United States v. Makkar , 810 F.3d 1139 ( 2015 )

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
November 23, 2015
PUBLISH Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
No. 14-5147
IQBAL MAKKAR, a/k/a Jack Singh,
a/k/a Iqbal Singh Makkar,
Defendant - Appellant.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
No. 14-5148
v.
GAURAV SEHGAL, a/k/a Ricky
Sehgal,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Oklahoma
(D.C. Nos. 4:13-CR-00205-CVE-1 and 4:13-CR-00205-CVE-2)
Guy A. Fortney (Robert R. Nigh, Jr. and Corbin C. Brewster on the briefs),
Brewster & De Angelis, Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Defendant-Appellant Iqbal Makkar.
Stanley D. Monroe (Kirsten L. Palfreyman with him on the briefs), Monroe &
Keele, P.C., Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Defendant-Appellant Gaurav Sehgal.
Leena Alam, Assistant United States Attorney (Danny C. Williams, Sr., United
States Attorney, with her on the briefs), Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Before TYMKOVICH, Chief Judge, GORSUCH and McHUGH, Circuit Judges.
GORSUCH, Circuit Judge.
Iqbal Makkar and Gaurav Sehgal ran the “Gitter Done,” a small town
convenience store in northeastern Oklahoma. When questions surfaced about the
incense they carried on their shelves, the men spoke with state law enforcement
officers, offered to have the officers test the incense to determine its legality, and
offered as well to stop selling the product until the results came in. But this
cooperation with state authorities apparently won the men little admiration from
federal investigators: soon enough they found themselves under indictment and
convicted for violating the Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act
(Analogue Act), conspiracy, and money laundering. In this appeal Mr. Makkar
and Mr. Sehgal contend that the government overreached at trial — in the jury
instructions it sought and won, and again in its successful efforts to exclude
evidence of their cooperation with law enforcement. After our own review of the
record, we have to agree.
*
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Take first Mr. Makkar’s argument about the jury instructions. The
Analogue Act is a curious animal. It’s familiar learning that the Controlled
Substances Act (CSA) proscribes the knowing possession and distribution of
certain listed substances (marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and the like). What’s less
well known is that the Analogue Act picks up where the CSA leaves off,
forbidding the possession and distribution of substances analogous to those listed
in the CSA. In this way, the relationship between the two statutes is not unlike
the relationship between the different sections of the Armed Career Criminal Act
(ACCA). Much as here, one part of that statute lists certain specific violent
felonies and imposes special punishments for their commission. Meanwhile,
another part of that statute — what’s called its residual clause — extends the
statute’s punishments to other, unspecified offenses that can claim similarity to
listed ones.
The resemblance between the Analogue Act and the residual clause of the
ACCA might raise some questions in your mind. After all, the Supreme Court in
Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), recently declared the ACCA’s
residual clause too vague to permit its constitutional application. But so far at
least the Court hasn’t reached a similar judgment about the Analogue Act. In
fact, the Court only recently gave the Analogue Act a narrow construction that
may go some way to alleviating potential concerns about the vagueness of its
terms. In McFadden v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2298 (2015), the Court accepted
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the government’s concession that to establish a violation of the Analogue Act it
must prove the drug in question bears two features: (1) it must be substantially
similar in chemical structure to a schedule I or II CSA controlled substance, and
(2) it must have, or be represented or intended to have, an effect on the central
nervous system that is substantially similar to that of a schedule I or II CSA
controlled substance. Id. at 2305 n.2. When it comes to mens rea, the Court
further explained, the government must show that the defendant knew the drug he
possessed either (1) had both of these features, or (2) was controlled by the CSA
or Analogue Act. Id. at 2305. The Court seemed to suggest that this narrow
construction would help alleviate potential vagueness concerns, at least in the
face of a facial challenge. Id. at 2307. But whether this construction will suffice
to save the Analogue Act from the same fate as the ACCA’s residual clause may
still remain to be seen. It’s an open question, after all, what exactly it means for
chemicals to have a “substantially similar” chemical structure — or effect. And
whether terms like those will admit of fair application and afford citizens fair
notice, or whether we will find ourselves wading incrementally, in one as-applied
challenge after another, deeper into an analytical swamp much as we did with the
ACCA’s residual clause litigation.
Still, in this case we face a much more prosaic problem. The government
sought and secured an ambitious mens rea instruction that just will not square
with the text of the statute or McFadden. At trial, the government didn’t attempt
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to show that Mr. Makkar or Mr. Sehgal knew the incense they sold was unlawful
under the CSA or Analogue Act — the second method of proving mens rea
McFadden prescribed. Instead, the government attempted to show mens rea only
in the first manner McFadden discussed — by showing that the defendants knew
that the incense they sold had (1) a substantially similar chemical structure to
JWH-18 (a synthetic cannabinoid with marijuana-like effects listed as a CSA
controlled substance) and (2) a substantially similar effect to that of marijuana
(another CSA listed substance). So far, at least for current purposes we may
assume, so good. 1 The difficulty is that, after choosing to proceed this way, the
government sought to shrug off the first of the mens rea requirements it had just
agreed to shoulder. In fact, as far as we can tell, at trial the government
introduced no evidence suggesting that the defendants knew anything about the
chemical structure of the incense they sold. And as a way around this
shortcoming the government sought — and the district court agreed to issue — an
instruction permitting the jury to infer that the defendants knew the incense they
sold had a substantially similar chemical structure to JWH-18 from the fact they
knew the incense had a substantially similar effect to marijuana. Coming at the
point another way, the government asked for and won the right to collapse its two
1
One wrinkle: note that the government sought to prove the incense bore
a similar structure to one CSA listed drug and a similar effect to another.
Whether this is permissible under the Analogue Act, or whether it might
contribute to questions about the constitutionality of its application, are not issues
presented to us in this appeal and we do not pass upon them one way or the other.
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separate elemental mens rea burdens into one. Under the inferential instruction it
secured, the government was able to argue to the jury that it should find the first
mens rea element satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt merely (and without more)
because it found the second satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt.
This surely made trial easier for the government, but just as surely it means
we must undo the judgment now. Before a district court may issue an instruction
permitting the jury to infer the presence of even a single essential element from a
set of facts the inference must — at the least — be shown capable of leading a
rational trier of fact to the conclusion that the element in question is proven to the
level demanded by the applicable standard of proof. United States v. Berry, 717
F.3d 823, 829 (10th Cir. 2013). Neither may a district court ever issue
instructions that effectively relieve the government of proving each essential
element specified by Congress. See United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 511
(1995). Both of these principles were violated here. The government’s
instructional inference invited the jury to infer the presence of one essential
element from another, effectively collapsing two independent statutory inquiries
into one. And it did so only by resort to a logical fallacy, a hasty generalization
or associational error — an unwarranted assumption that because certain things
share one characteristic they must share others. As a matter of common
experience and logic, the fact that one drug produces a similar effect to a second
drug just doesn’t give rise to a rational inference — let alone rationally suggest
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beyond a reasonable doubt — that the first drug shares a similar chemical
structure with the second drug. And it most certainly does not give rise to a
qualifying inference that the first drug shares a similar chemical structure with a
third drug — as the government was, in fact, allowed to argue to the jury in this
case.
The government now admits all this, expressly acknowledging on appeal
that different drugs can bear similar effects while lacking similar chemical
structures. As Mr. Makkar notes by way of example, Tylenol and Aspirin may do
much the same job on your aches and pains but most scientists do not place them
in the same chemical group. See Harold E. Doweiko, Concepts of Chemical
Dependency 208-09 (9th ed. 2015). Cocaine and methamphetamine are also
sometimes said to have similar effects, but their chemical structures are rarely
said to be substantially similar even by the government. See Drug Enforcement
Administration, Drugs of Abuse 51 (2015); 2 Encyclopedia of Applied
Developmental Science 1062 (Celia B. Fisher & Richard M. Lerner eds., 2005).
Even closer to home, the DEA has issued published guidance acknowledging that,
while JWH-18 and marijuana have similar effects, the former “is not related in
chemical structure to [THC] or other cannabinoids contained in the cannabis
plant.” Drug Enforcement Administration, JWH-018 1-Pentyl-3-
(1-naphthoyl)indole (2013). And closer to home still, the government’s own
chemistry experts advised the government and court in another case decided
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before Mr. Makkar’s trial that the very inferential instruction it sought here “is
not scientifically sound.” United States v. Lane, No. CR-12-01419-PHX-DGC,
2013 WL 3716601, at *1 (D. Ariz. July 13, 2013).
But while conceding now that the jury instruction it sought and won in this
case was wrong, the government also insists that the error isn’t consequential
enough to worry over. The government points to the fact that Mr. Makkar didn’t
object to the instruction at trial. And the government reminds us that, in these
circumstances, we apply the plain error standard of review. Under that standard,
before reversing we must be persuaded that (1) the district court erred; (2) the
error was plain; (3) the error affected a defendant’s substantial rights; and (4) the
error seriously affected the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of a judicial
proceeding. United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732 (1993). The government
accepts that the first element — error — is present in this case, but pitches an
avid battle on the second, insisting that the instructional error here can’t fairly be
described as plain. By way of support it points us to United States v. Turcotte,
405 F.3d 515 (7th Cir. 2005) — a decision that arguably once endorsed the
government’s inferential instruction. From the fact that another court once
committed the same error it did in this case, the government asks us to reason, the
error it invited doesn’t qualify as a plain one.
This argument depends on a hasty generalization of its own. The fact other
circuits have committed an error can supply “strong evidence” that it doesn’t
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qualify as a “plain” one. United States v. Story, 635 F.3d 1241, 1248 (10th Cir.
2011). But another circuit’s commission of an error doesn’t necessarily and
always “control” the plain error inquiry. United States v. Ahidley, 486 F.3d 1184,
1193 n.7 (10th Cir. 2007); see also United States v. Overholt, 307 F.3d 1231,
1256 (10th Cir. 2002). The fact that able judges elsewhere once committed an
error may go some way toward showing it isn’t plain, but it doesn’t always and
necessarily prove the point as the government seems to suppose. Neither could it
sensibly do so. After all, to err is human — and to plainly err is too. Despite our
aspirations (and maybe sometimes our pretenses) we judges can hardly claim to
escape that fact of life. Certainly far greater minds than ours haven’t managed to
evade its grasp. See, e.g., Atom Energy Hope Is Spiked by Einstein, Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, Dec. 29, 1934, at 13 (“The idea that man might some day utilize the
atom’s energy brought the only emphatic denial from [Einstein].”); Lord May,
Royal Society Anniversary Address, Dec. 2003, quoting Lord Kelvin (1895),
(“Heavier than air flying machines are not possible.”).
When it comes to the particular error before us, too, we harbor no doubt
that it was plain by the time of the trial in this case. Yes, Turcotte appears to
have fallen into the same trap as the government did here. But even in the
government’s telling, no other circuit court repeated Turcotte’s mistake in all the
years between that decision in 2005 and the trial in this case in 2014. And surely
those years of precedential silence chirping around Turcotte — the fact that over
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the span of nearly a decade no other circuit apparently endorsed its reasoning —
must be heard and accounted for. Even more dramatically, we know that in those
intervening years the government in Lane expressly disavowed Turcotte’s
inference as scientifically unsound. And we know the DEA effectively rejected
the inference as irrational too when it acknowledged that JWH-18 and marijuana
bear similar effects but do not share a similar chemical structure. These
developments, moreover, only confirmed what’s been true all along — that the
government’s inference depends on what can only be described as an assumption
inconsistent with logic and experience — an assumption that just because one
drug shares a particular trait in common with a second drug the first also shares a
different trait in common with the second drug — or even a third drug. And
while we cannot ignore the holding of another circuit when assessing the
plainness of an error, we equally cannot ignore so many countervailing
considerations like these. In this case, those countervailing considerations seem
to us to speak clearly and loudly to the plainness of the government’s error and in
a way even Turcotte cannot fairly obscure. Indeed, we find it hard to see how we
might fairly describe an error as anything less than plain when the government
itself concedes the error on appeal and did so (effectively twice) even before the
trial in this case.
Of course, that still leaves the remaining two elements of the plain error
test. But our discussion on these points can be brief. The government doesn’t
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dispute either element and it’s easy to see why. At trial, the government sought
to prove mens rea by way of the first route McFadden approved. Yet, it made no
effort to carry the burden of producing evidence suggesting that the defendants
knew the chemical composition of the incense they sold, relying instead entirely
and admittedly on an unsound inference. And surely a defendant’s substantial
rights and the integrity of judicial proceedings are both implicated when he is
relegated to federal prison even though the government concedes it hasn’t proven
what the law demands it must prove to send him there. United States v.
Sabillon-Umana, 772 F.3d 1328, 1333-34 (10th Cir. 2014). 2
*
With the plain error test satisfied, it might seem we’ve reached the end of
the road on Mr. Makkar’s challenge to the jury instructions. But at oral argument
on appeal the government sought to introduce a new argument in defense of the
instructions it sought and won. To bear its burden of showing mens rea under
McFadden, the government contended, it must prove only that the defendant knew
the drug in question has a substantially similar effect to a class I or II CSA
2
In this light, you might also wonder if double jeopardy precludes a retrial
in this case. Given the parties’ intent focus on the instructional error in this
appeal, however, that’s a matter we decline to pass upon one way or the other at
this time and leave for the district court to address in the first instance on remand
in the event the government should seek a retrial.
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controlled substance. And, the government contended, it proved at least that
much at trial.
This new argument concerns us on various fronts. Not only does it appear
too late in these proceedings to be taken seriously — presented for the first time
at argument. And not only is it inconsistent with the jury instructions the
government itself sought and the trial court issued in this case. It also disregards
the Supreme Court’s recent teachings and the statutory text. After all and as
we’ve seen, McFadden imposes a far more challenging mens rea requirement than
the government is willing now to admit. McFadden requires the government to
show that the defendant: (1) knew the drug in question had both a similar
chemical structure and similar effects to a controlled substance, or (2) knew the
drug in question was unlawful under the Analogue Act or CSA. 135 S. Ct. at
2305. Proof that the defendant merely knew the drug he sold had a similar effect
to a controlled substance is never enough. And the plain language of the statute
underscores and confirms what McFadden clearly explained. As written, the
Analogue Act makes it a crime to possess or distribute a drug that both (1) is
substantially similar in chemical structure to a schedule I or II CSA controlled
substance, and (2) has, or is represented or intended to have, an effect on the
central nervous system that is substantially similar to that of a schedule I or II
CSA controlled substance. Both elements are essential to a conviction and the
government offers no sensible way or reason why a mens rea requirement applied
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to the statute might take an olympian leap over the first essential element and
touch down only on the second. Neither can we discern for ourselves any
plausible argument along these lines. Cf. Flores-Figueroa v. United States, 556
U.S. 646, 650 (2009) (noting that when a statute introduces elements of a crime
with the word “knowingly,” that means it applies to “all the subsequently listed
elements”).
*
Where Mr. Makkar identifies an instructional error, Mr. Sehgal focuses our
attention on an evidentiary error. As part of their defense at trial Mr. Makkar and
Mr. Sehgal sought to introduce evidence showing that they asked state law
enforcement agents to test the incense to assure its legality under state law — and
that they offered to stop selling the incense until the results came in. In the
defendants’ view, this evidence was relevant to the questions whether they knew
the chemical structure of the incense and whether they knew its structure was
substantially similar to the structure of controlled substances. After all, they
sought to argue, why run a test if you already know the answer? Let alone agree
to have law enforcement administer the test if you know the answer will be
unfavorable to you under either state or federal law? Especially when state and
federal agents often cooperate with one another (as, in fact, they did in this case)?
In reply to the defendants’ trial plans, the government filed a written motion in
limine seeking to exclude the evidence as irrelevant under Rule 401 of the Federal
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Rules of Evidence. And here again the district court adopted the government’s
position. In doing so it rejected the defendants’ suggestion that the evidence was
relevant because “[i]f they knowingly sold [the incense], and it is an analogue,
it’s illegal. [They] don’t have to know the chemical composition.” Aplt. App.
Vol. II, at 321.
While we normally afford a district court a good deal of discretion on
evidentiary rulings, we do not defer to rulings that rest on legal error. United
States v. Toombs, 713 F.3d 1273, 1278 (10th Cir. 2013). And the government’s
motion in limine, adopted by the district court, clearly depends on a mistaken
view of the Analogue Act. As we’ve seen, McFadden’s first path for proving
mens rea — the path the government chose to pursue at trial in this case —
required it to prove a good deal more than that the defendants knowingly sold the
incense. The government had to prove that the defendants knew the incense had
both similar effects and a similar chemical structure to a controlled substance.
Neither does anyone before us even attempt to suggest that the defendants’
proffered evidence was irrelevant to these properly controlling questions. The
government did not attempt to suggest so much at trial, the district court did not
contend so much in its ruling, and the government does not make any effort in
this direction on appeal.
Instead and again the government replies that, even if it invited error at
trial, the error it invited was (again) immaterial. In doing so, the government this
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time points to harmless error doctrine and reminds us that, even when a defendant
rightly identifies and objects to an error at trial, federal appellate courts aren’t in
the business of supplying remedies where they aren’t needed — where the error in
question did not affect the defendant’s substantial rights. See Fed. R. Crim. P.
52; 28 U.S.C. § 2111.
All that’s true enough but we don’t see how it might fairly describe the
error here. It’s the government’s burden of showing any error it invited is only
harmless. And toward that end in this case the government stresses that Mr.
Makkar and Mr. Sehgal were allowed to introduce other evidence about their
mens rea. From this fact, the government would have us conclude that the
erroneously excluded evidence was merely cumulative. But this represents
another leap of logic longer than we can safely take. As a matter of common
sense and our collective experience, we have a hard time imagining more
powerful proof that a defendant didn’t know the chemical composition of a drug,
and didn’t know it was substantially similar to an unlawful substance, than
evidence that he turned to law enforcement for information about the drug’s
composition and offered to suspend sales until tests could be performed. Indeed,
it’s difficult for us to imagine why the government would have opposed the
introduction of this evidence and taken the trouble to present a written motion on
that score but for its extraordinary power to persuade the jury on questions like
these. See United States v. Yarbrough, 527 F.3d 1092, 1103 (10th Cir. 2008)
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(When an error deprives a defendant of “important evidence relevant to a sharply
controverted question going to the heart of [the] defense, . . . substantial rights
[are] affected.”).
*
Mr. Makkar and Mr. Sehgal present several other arguments for reversal —
at least some of which raise some potentially troubling questions in their own
right. For example, they complain that the government endorsed and the district
court admitted unreliable and inflammatory testimony about the health effects of
the incense. They point by way of illustration to one government witness who
testified before the jury that the incense killed his friend — even though the
friend was alive and apparently well — and scheduled to testify later the same
day. They point as well to the calculation of their advisory guidelines sentences.
In most cases, they note, inert materials associated with illicit drugs are added
into guidelines calculations at the “drug quantity table” stage, with the aim of
capturing the actual “street weight” of the drugs as sold. See U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1.
But in this case, they tell us, the district court included inert materials at an
earlier stage, when it applied the “drug equivalency table.” And this choice
meant the inert materials exerted something like a geometric effect on their
advisory guidelines sentencing calculations. Thus calculated, they say, the
guidelines attributed to them not the actual “street weight” of the inert materials
they sold but 167 times that weight. See id. The men argue that in following this
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path the district court misread the guidelines, which most expressly reference
inert materials in a note to the drug quantity table, not the drug equivalency table.
And they argue their resulting sentences were irrationally inconsistent with the
sentencing commission’s goal of seeking sentences that account for the actual
street weight of illicit drugs as sold. We see no need, however, to resolve the
defendants’ additional objections along these and other lines. Whether or not
their arguments bear merit, we think the essential point by now amply evident:
their convictions rest on legal errors that cannot be easily dismissed as harmless.
Neither do we assume the additional putative errors they complain of will
necessarily recur: to the contrary and as we’ve seen, it’s unclear at this point
whether the men can be lawfully retried consistent with the law’s demands.
Mr. Makkar’s and Mr. Sehgal’s convictions for violating the Analogue Act
are vacated. Because the putative violation of the Analogue Act was the only
predicate crime to support their convictions for conspiracy and money laundering,
Mr. Makkar’s and Mr. Sehgal’s convictions on these counts are vacated as well.
The case is remanded and any further proceedings shall conform with this
opinion.
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