UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. RUEL M. HAMILTON, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 21-11157
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
August 23, 2022
FILED August 23, 2022 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas USDC No. 3:19-CR-83
Before KING, ELROD, and SOUTHWICK, Circuit Judges.
Ruel Hamilton gave money to members of the Dallas City Council. He received nothing tangible in return. He was later indicted under
I.
Hamilton is a real-estate developer in Dallas who is known for his involvement in local politics. One local politician he supported was Carolyn Davis, who was a member of the Dallas City Council. Among the councilmembers, she served as the Chair of the Dallas Housing Committee. Several times between 2013 and 2015, Hamilton gave money to a non-profit called “Hip Hop Government” (HHG), which focused on combining “hip-hop culture with Government.” That non-profit was owned and operated by Davis‘s close friend (and campaign manager), Jeremy Scroggins. Some of those donations were used for HHG‘s legitimate purposes; others were purportedly given to HHG, cashed by Scroggins, then given to Davis personally. Hamilton also teamed up with Davis to support other city-council candidates in the 2015 election cycle: He gave money to her preferred candidates and gave her cash to help pay for those candidates’ workers.
Right around that 2015 election cycle, Hamilton was trying to secure some low-income-housing tax credits for one of his real-estate ventures,
A few years later, Hamilton needed to get a paid-sick-leave ordinance on the ballot in the upcoming election. Though he did like the ordinance for its own sake, he really wanted it on the ballot because he knew it would increase the voter turnout (which would ostensibly help his preferred candidates). He first tried to get the ordinance on the ballot by collecting voters’ signatures, but he did not get enough signatures in time. The only other way to get it on the ballot was through a vote by the City Council, and the City Council could not vote on it unless the Mayor put the ordinance on the agenda to discuss. So Hamilton called Dwaine Caraway, another member of the Dallas City Council.
Caraway was busy at the time. Unfortunately for Hamilton, Caraway was in the middle of signing some plea documents with the FBI over roughly $500,000 he had taken in kickbacks and bribes in another case. When Caraway saw the missed call, he showed the FBI agents. The FBI
At the meeting, Caraway began by calling his mother on speakerphone and lamenting about her health issues. He mentioned that he would visit her that day to handle some of her “healthcare” paperwork and that he would “pay all that stuff today.” After that call ended, Caraway and Hamilton bantered about how busy and tired Caraway was. They switched gears and began discussing the paid-sick-leave initiative and how that vote may come out if it was put on the agenda by the Mayor. After talking a bit about how he operates his business with paid leave and health insurance, Hamilton began peppering Caraway with praise: “I don‘t know for sure if you‘re going to run
again [but] I hope you do“; “I think you‘ve been doing an extraordinary job in your district. I want you here and I think that you and I can get a lot of stuff done. I really do.“; “Before you leave office or whenever your last term is, we‘re going to have stuff built down there on Eleventh Street. You just watch. I need you for that.”
Then Hamilton left the door open for the ask: “What I‘m saying is, I‘m there, you know, and so if there is anything that I can help you with, I mean, I hope you feel like you can reach out.” Caraway took that opportunity to imply he needed some cash:
Caraway: Well, I‘m going to tell you something, I‘m reaching out today. . . . I got to go find me $6,200 today. Man, let me tell you something, trying to survive in this -- in this and not campaign stuff, not campaign at all, it‘s -- it‘s difficult, man.
Hamilton: Yeah.
Caraway: I mean, I‘m -- I‘m dealing with so much s***, I -- I‘m ready to -- I‘m about -- look here, my hair‘s gray, I‘m tired, I‘m bleeding out my a**, I‘m just telling you straight up, my health is bad. This is pretty -- this is -- this has been a tough struggle, you know, and I want things to happen down here.
After a little more cajoling by Hamilton, and a little digression about a real-estate project that Caraway and Hamilton both wanted to see completed, Hamilton circled back and asked how he could help. Caraway responded: “You can answer that bill that I just threw out there . . . for about [$6,200] today and that will help me . . . do what I need to do.” Hamilton happily obliged: “Can I just write a check to Dwaine Caraway?” Caraway clarified that this was not a loan, and that it had nothing to do with the campaign, he just had to “go pay for my mama.” Hamilton penned the check for $7,000 and “wrote something down” in the memo line “for posterity[‘s] sake,” so that if “somebody ever asks, I can come up with some kind of reference.”
Shortly thereafter, a grand jury indicted Hamilton on two counts of federal-programs bribery relating to his dealings with Caraway and Davis. Caraway pleaded guilty shortly after meeting with Hamilton for taking bribes and kickbacks in an unrelated case. Next went Davis, who took a deal pleading guilty for “conspiring” with Hamilton to commit federal-programs bribery. According to Hamilton, Davis intended to withdraw her guilty plea because she only did so out of fear, and she purportedly told others that Hamilton “did not do anything wrong” and “did not pay her any bribes.” Tragically, however, Davis was killed in a car crash after being hit by
The government then secured a superseding indictment for Hamilton. Beyond the two substantive federal-programs-bribery counts under
After a litany of pre-trial motions, Hamilton went to trial. Over two weeks, the jury heard from Hamilton that (1) he knew not what Davis and Scroggins did with his donations, and (2) his funding of Davis‘s preferred candidates was totally above-board. As to Caraway and the paid-sick-leave initiative, Hamilton argued that the money he gave Caraway was purely him helping a friend out. The government provided evidence to the contrary, including: the video of Hamilton and Caraway‘s meeting; recordings of his
phone calls with Davis; testimony from Scroggins about his handling of the funds for Davis; surveillance video of Hamilton withdrawing $5,000 in cash with Davis in the car; and the various checks Hamilton wrote to Davis‘s preferred candidates with the names of family members or employees in the memo line. Scroggins‘s testimony about what Davis told him was allowed in under the co-conspirator hearsay exception; Davis‘s exculpatory statements about Hamilton, however, were deemed inadmissible, despite Hamilton‘s protestations that they were admissible statements against Davis‘s penal interest.
In giving the jury instructions for the federal-programs-bribery counts, the district court (over Hamilton‘s objections) told the jury that neither a quid-pro-quo exchange nor any “official act” by the councilmembers was required. Along those lines, the district court also said nothing about what of Hamilton‘s activity received protection by the First Amendment. The court also declined to give an instruction on entrapment as to Hamilton‘s phone call and meeting with Caraway.
The jury convicted Hamilton on the two substantive
II.
When a jury-instruction challenge “hinges on a question of statutory construction,” our review is de novo. United States v. Garcia-Gonzalez, 714 F.3d 306, 312 (5th Cir. 2013). We review the propriety of jury instructions for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Naidoo, 995 F.3d 367, 378 (5th Cir. 2021); United States v. Whitfield, 590 F.3d 325, 347 (5th Cir. 2009). An instruction is not an abuse of discretion if, all things considered, the instruction “is a correct statement of the law” and it “clearly instructs jurors as to the principles of law applicable to the factual issues confronting them.” United States v. Freeman, 434 F.3d 369, 377 (5th Cir. 2005) (internal quotes omitted). But it is an abuse of discretion “to apply an erroneous view of the law.” United States v. Ayelotan, 917 F.3d 394, 400 (5th Cir. 2019).
Hamilton raises many arguments for why his conviction was unlawful, but we need only reach the first. The district court believed that
A.
Section 666 criminalizes bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds. It provides in relevant part:
(a) Whoever, if the circumstance described in subsection (b) of this section exists —
. . .
(2) corruptly gives, offers, or agrees to give anything of value to any person, with intent to influence or reward an agent of
an organization or of a [local government], or any agency thereof, in connection with any business, transaction, or series of transactions of such organization, government, or agency involving anything of value of $5,000 or more;
shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
(b) The circumstance referred to in subsection (a) of this section is that the organization, government, or agency receives, in any one year period, benefits in excess of $10,000 under a Federal program involving a grant, contract, subsidy, loan, guarantee, or other form of Federal assistance.
Section 666 grew out of a circuit split over another law. The general bribery statute,
Section 201 has two distinct subsections. Subsection (b) covers bribery, which “requires a showing that something of value was corruptly
given, offered, or promised to a public official” with the intent “to influence any official act.” United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of Cal., 526 U.S. 398, 404 (1999) (quoting
When Congress passed and President Reagan signed what would become
| (b)(1)(A): “directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official... with intent to influence any official act [by such official]” (c)(1)(A): “directly or indirectly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official ... for or because of any official act performed [by such official]” | “corruptly gives, offers, or agrees to give anything of value to any person, with intent to influence or reward an agent of [a local government]” |
For maximum prison time under each: federal-official bribery under
B.
As hinted at above, the Supreme Court has spoken to the substance of
The Court said yes, something more was required. Id. at 406-07. In reaching that conclusion, the Court discussed subsections (b) and (c) and how they interact. Id. at 404–05. The difference between the two was intent: bribery requires an intent to influence; illegal gratuity requires “only that the gratuity be given or accepted ‘for or because of an official act.” Id. at 404. In other words, bribery requires a quid pro quo — “a specific intent to give or receive something of value in exchange for an official act” — illegal gratuity does not. Id. at 404-05. Subsection (c) covers an illegal gratuity that is “merely a reward for some future act that the public official will take (and may already have determined to take), or for a past act
that a gratuity is not illegal if it is given merely because of the public official‘s office; instead, the government “must prove a link between a thing of value conferred upon a public official and a specific ‘official act’ for or because of which it was given.” Id. at 414.
Key for our purposes, in describing what language in the bribery provision made it apply only to a quid pro quo, the Court focused on the language requiring that something of value be corruptly given to a public official with intent to influence any official act. Id. at 404–05; cf.
C.
Despite the similarities between
Of the circuits that interpret
The First Circuit reads
amendment in 1986, which changed the language to read more like
Under the First Circuit‘s approach, “the word ‘reward’ does not create a separate gratuity offense in
D.
We believe that the First Circuit has the better approach under the plain language of
“intent to influence” language. Cf. Jarkesy v. SEC, 34 F.4th 446, 455 (5th Cir. 2022) (quoting Felix Frankfurter, Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, 47 Colum. L. Rev. 527, 537 (1947), for the proposition that “if a word is obviously transplanted from another legal source, whether the common law or other legislation, it brings the old soil with it“). These similarities compel a similar result: both
For these reasons, we conclude that
III.
Because
quo was required. Hamilton properly objected to this at that time, arguing that such an instruction was necessary under
The district court gave no instruction as to the meaning of “intent to influence or reward,” or that it requires a quid pro quo (because, of course, it did not think one was required), and its definition of “corruptly” said nothing about a formal this-for-that. And if a very capable and experienced district judge did not believe that the language of
gratuity theory that does not exist in
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Section 666 criminalizes only a quid pro quo, not mere gratuities. The district court‘s instruction allowed the jury to convict based on mere gratuities. For these reasons, we VACATE Hamilton‘s convictions and REMAND for proceedings consistent with this opinion.