United States v. Charles Scarborough ( 2015 )

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 15a0033n.06
Case No. 14-5855
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
FILED
Jan 12, 2015
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk
)
Plaintiff-Appellee, )
) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
v. ) STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR
) THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF
CHARLES SCARBOROUGH, ) TENNESSEE
)
Defendant-Appellant. )
BEFORE: GIBBONS and COOK, Circuit Judges; GWIN, District Judge.*
PER CURIAM. A magistrate judge found Charles Scarborough guilty of threatening and
intimidating a forest officer. See 36 C.F.R. § 261.3(a) (“Threatening, resisting, intimidating, or
interfering with any forest officer engaged in or on account of the performance of his official
duties in the protection, improvement, or administration of the National Forest System is
prohibited.”). On initial appeal under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 58, the district court
found the evidence sufficient to sustain the colleague conviction and affirmed. Scarborough now
reasserts his sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge before this court. We find that the district
court’s opinion diligently and correctly sets out the undisputed facts and the governing law.
*
The Honorable James S. Gwin, United States District Judge for the Northern District of
Ohio, sitting by designation.
Case No. 14-5855
United States v. Scarborough
Scarborough offers only one new argument on appeal—that intimidation is merely a
species of true threat, and because “the magistrate judge specifically found that Mr. Scarborough
did not threaten Ms. Hawkins, this Court should find, without more, that the evidence failed to
establish that Mr. Scarborough intimidated Ms. Hawkins.” Yet as the Ninth Circuit noted when
faced with a similar challenge, “‘threatening, resisting, intimidating, or intentionally interfering’
are stated disjunctively so that proof of any one of the acts alone constitutes an offense.” United
States v. Bucher, 375 F.3d 929, 933 (9th Cir. 2004). Scarborough fails to persuade us to depart
from our sister circuit’s reasoning that one may intimidate a forest officer without necessarily
threatening her. See United States v. Hoff, 22 F.3d 222, 223–24 (9th Cir. 1994) (affirming
conviction where the lower court found that the defendant “intimidated” a forest officer “but did
not threaten or assault her”).
Because this court’s issuance of a full opinion would be duplicative and serve no
jurisprudential purpose, we AFFIRM Scarborough’s conviction on the basis of the district
court’s well-reasoned opinion of June 12, 2014.
-2-