Flawed Jury Instructions Regarding a Defendant’s Knowledge Found Harmless

In spite of flawed jury instructions regarding the government’s need to establish a defendant’s knowledge of a crime, overwhelming evidence of a defendant’s guilty knowledge was sufficient to convict him

United States v. McFadden, 2016 BL 160033, 4th Cir., No. 13-4349, 5/19/16

    In McFadden v. United States in 2015, the Supreme Court found the government did not meet its statutory burden of proof regarding criminal intent in convicting a defendant on allegations of dealing drug analogues, such as bath salts.  To be successful, the government must prove the defendant knew he was dealing with a substance regulated under federal drug law.

    On remand, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reinstated six out of nine counts because the evidence that the defendant had guilty knowledge was overwhelming, in spite of jury instructions that did not establish the government’s burden to prove knowledge. Although the jury could infer that the defendant did not know what he was dealing initially, that inference disappears with additional evidence that points to the defendant’s knowledge of the drug when referring to the substance’s potency and duration of the “high.”  While six counts were upheld, three more are remanded back to the district court to be analyzed under the Supreme Court’s ruling. 

http://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/document/United_States_v_McFadden_No_134349_2016_BL_160033_4th_Cir_May_19_.