United States v. Jeremy Wade ( 2020 )

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 19-2061
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
JEREMY C. WADE,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Wisconsin.
No. 18-cr-00076 — Pamela Pepper, Chief Judge.
____________________
ARGUED APRIL 15, 2020 — DECIDED JUNE 26, 2020
____________________
Before MANION, HAMILTON, and BARRETT, Circuit Judges.
MANION, Circuit Judge. Jeremy Wade hoped to reacquaint
himself with a girl he knew in high school so he could ask her
for a date. Instead of simply giving her a call, Wade masquer-
aded as an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration
(“DEA”) to persuade the object of his unrequited affection to
go out with him. In doing so he violated 18 U.S.C. § 912,
which prohibits impersonating a United States employee and
acting in conformity with that pretense. Wade argued to the
2 No. 19-2061
district court that his alleged romantic motivation (as op-
posed to a nefarious intent to deceive or defraud) negated a
culpable state of mind, but we have held intent to defraud is
not a separate element of § 912. Accordingly, the district court
prevented Wade from making this argument and refused to
instruct the jury on intent to defraud. The jury found him
guilty. We affirm the conviction.
I. Background
Wade twice pretended to be a DEA agent in January and
February 2018. The first time he drove a white Cadillac SUV
one early evening to the house of Nicole Bishop. Wade and
Bishop had attended high school together and had a few
friends in common, though they did not socialize then or
thereafter. Bishop saw him approaching her house and noted
he had a law enforcement badge around his neck and a hol-
stered gun. Believing based on these details he was a law en-
forcement officer, she opened her door to him. Wade pro-
ceeded to pretend he was investigating a suspect named
“Zach Light.” After Bishop denied having any knowledge of
Zach Light, Wade retrieved a mug shot of the alleged suspect
from his car. Bishop confirmed again that she did not know
the individual pictured. Wade then asked if she remembered
him (Wade), and she said she did. He apparently left after this.
About a week later, Wade returned to Bishop’s home and
left a business card in her mailbox. This business card claimed
Wade was a special agent of the DEA. It also listed two phone
numbers and an email address made to look like an official
Department of Justice address. Wade left the following hand-
written message on the back of the card:
No. 19-2061 3
I realized when I was here last week I didn’t leave you
any way to get a hold of me. So if something comes to
mind about the guy I was looking for or most im-
portantly, if you realize, “hey, it’s time I let this guy
take me out,” all my info is on the front. Text any time!!
Bishop was not amused. She reported Wade’s interactions
to the police, who opened a stalking investigation. Officers in-
vited Wade to the police station to make a statement, and
Wade did so. During the interview, Wade was evasive regard-
ing the identity of his employer.
Wade was indicted on two counts of impersonating a
United States employee and acting as such in violation of 18
U.S.C. § 912. Before trial, the government filed a motion in
limine to preclude Wade from arguing his romantic motiva-
tion negated his culpability. The government argued § 912
does not require proof of intent to defraud, referring to it as a
“strict liability” offense. The government likened it to posses-
sion of a firearm by a felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), where the
felon’s motivation for possessing the firearm is irrelevant and
evidence of motive is often precluded by courts. According to
the government, Wade’s arguments about his romantic moti-
vation could only encourage jury nullification by causing the
jury to conclude his actions, though illegal, were not serious
or harmful. The judge agreed and granted the motion. Even
so, during closing argument, defense counsel told the jury:
“Although [Wade] might be a hopeless romantic, he’s not a
criminal.”
The judge also ruled against Wade’s proposed jury in-
structions that would have required the jury to find Wade
acted “knowingly with intent to deceive or defraud,” defined
as “to act with the specific intent to try to get a person to do
4 No. 19-2061
something he would not otherwise have done.” Wade pro-
posed an alternative instruction requiring the jury to find be-
yond a reasonable doubt that he “by artifice or deceit, sought
to cause the deceived person to follow some course he or she
would not have pursued but for the deceitful conduct.” The
judge rejected this instruction as well. Instead, the court pro-
vided an instruction requiring the jury to find the following
beyond a reasonable doubt:
1. The defendant falsely assumed or pretended to be
an officer or employee of the Drug Enforcement Ad-
ministration, and
2. As such officer or employee, the defendant commit-
ted some overt act involving an assertion of claimed
authority derived from the office the defendant pre-
tended to hold.
The jury convicted Wade on both counts after a brief trial.
Wade appeals.
II. Discussion
Wade challenges both the district court’s jury instructions
and the motion in limine ruling on the basis that intent to de-
fraud is an essential element of § 912. Additionally, he argues
the evidence was insufficient to support the jury’s verdict on
either count.
1. Jury Instructions
We review de novo “whether the jury instructions accu-
rately summarize the law, but give the district court substan-
tial discretion to formulate the instructions provided that the
instructions represent a complete and correct statement of the
law.” United States v. Bonin, 932 F.3d 523, 537–38 (7th Cir.
No. 19-2061 5
2019). The omission of an element from the jury instructions
amounts to a violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment
right to a jury trial. Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 12 (1999).
But such an omission is subject to harmless-error analysis. Id.
at 9–10. If it is “clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational
jury would have found the defendant guilty absent the error,”
then the error does not warrant reversal. Id. at 18.
Section 912 has two clauses, prohibiting two kinds of con-
duct. United States v. Rippee, 961 F.2d 677, 678 (7th Cir. 1992).
The first clause of the statute penalizes anyone who “falsely
assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under
the authority of the United States or any department, agency
or office thereof, and acts as such.” 1 18 U.S.C. § 912. This of-
fense has two elements: (1) falsely impersonating a United
States employee or officer, and (2) committing “an overt act in
conformity with the pretense.” See Rippee, 961 F.2d at 678.
Wade argues the offense requires submission of a third el-
ement to the jury: an intent to defraud or deceive. He builds
his case from legislative history and the Supreme Court case
United States v. Lepowitch, 318 U.S. 702 (1943). Prior to a 1948
revision, the offense of falsely impersonating a United States
officer or employee explicitly required that the defendant
acted “with intent to defraud either the United States or any
person.” See United States v. Rosser, 528 F.2d 652, 654 (D.C. Cir.
1976). In 1943, the Supreme Court held “the words ‘intent to
defraud,’ in the context of this statute, do not require more
1The second clause prohibits “false impersonation of a federal official
coupled with demanding or obtaining a thing of value.” Rippee, 961 F.2d
at 678. Wade was indicted under the acts-as-such clause, so the second
clause is not at issue in this case.
6 No. 19-2061
than the defendants have, by artifice and deceit, sought to
cause the deceived person to follow some course he would
not have pursued but for the deceitful conduct.” Lepowitch,
318 U.S. at 704. In 1948, Congress revised the statute to its pre-
sent form, removing the “intent to defraud” language. The re-
viser’s note simply stated “[t]he words ‘with the intent to de-
fraud the United States or any person’ … were omitted as
meaningless in view of [United States v. Lepowitch].”
In Rosser, the D.C. Circuit examined the effect of this revi-
sion and reconciled the competing notions that “Congress did
not intend to increase the scope of” the statute by the 1948
revision, but “courts should be extremely hesitant to read
back into the statutory definition of a crime words specifically
excised by Congress.” 528 F.2d at 656. The Rosser court con-
cluded both concerns may be accommodated “[i]f acting ‘as
such’ is understood to mean performing an overt act that as-
serts, implicitly or explicitly, authority that the impersonator
claims to have by virtue of the office he pretends to hold.” Id.
“[I]t seems reasonable for Congress to have concluded that
virtually everyone who pretends to be an officer or employee
of the United States and in some manner asserts authority by
acting ‘as such’ seeks ‘to cause the deceived person to follow
some course he would not have pursued but for the deceitful
conduct.’” Id.
Wade points to Rosser and decisions of other circuits to ar-
gue the 1948 revision was not meant to remove intent to de-
fraud as an element of the offense but simply recognized in-
tent to defraud was inherent in the offense, making the lan-
guage redundant. As an initial matter, Wade’s reliance on
Rosser is misplaced. The court in that case specifically refer-
enced Congress’s revision as the “elimination of intent to
No. 19-2061 7
defraud as an element of” the offense, noting that the elimi-
nation was consistent with Lepowitch. Id. Rosser also affirmed
instructions by which “the jury was told that to find Rosser
guilty it must find that he had falsely pretended to be an of-
ficer or employee of the United States and that he had ‘com-
mitted some overt act as such employee,’” without any further
instructions regarding intent to defraud or deceive. Id. at 658.
The instructions in this case also identified those two elements
and thus were substantially the same as those affirmed in
Rosser.
More importantly, our precedent stands against Wade’s
position as well. In United States v. Cord, we held fraudulent
intent is not an essential element of § 912. 654 F.2d 490, 492
(7th Cir. 1981). Citing Rosser’s analysis, we concluded it is
“implicit in the remaining language … that the ‘acts’ … cause
a victim to follow a path he would not otherwise have taken,”
so there is no need to separately allege or prove an intent to
defraud or deceive. Id. Wade argues the issue in Cord was only
whether fraudulent intent must be alleged in the indictment,
not whether it must be submitted to the jury. But our reason-
ing in Cord was broader than the indictment context. We
stated “[t]he code section was changed to eliminate the ele-
ment of intent to defraud; this change cannot simply be ig-
nored.” Id.
We do, however, want to take care in delineating the dif-
ference between the proper scope of § 912 on the one hand
and criminalizing mere boastful speech on the other. That dif-
ference is found in the second element of the offense: the acts-
as-such element. In United States v. Bonin, we examined a First
Amendment challenge to § 912’s acts-as-such impersonation
offense, and explained it is the requirement of an “intentional
8 No. 19-2061
action in the pretended character sought to cause the deceived
person to follow some course he would not have pursued but
for the deceitful conduct” that saves this offense from uncon-
stitutionally abridging protected speech. 932 F.3d at 536
(quoting Lepowitch, 318 U.S. at 704) (internal markings omit-
ted); see also Rosser, 528 F.2d at 657–58 (“[F]ocusing attention
on the nature of the defendant’s action should differentiate
the mere braggart from the criminal.”). Our cases applying
§ 912’s acts-as-such clause have involved overt action taken to
cause the victim to follow a course of action he would not
have otherwise pursued. See, e.g., Bonin, 932 F.3d at 536 (de-
fendant falsely pretended to be a U.S. Marshal to cause movie
theater audience to tolerate his rude and threatening behavior
and to prevent police officers from taking action against him);
United States v. Hamilton, 276 F.2d 96, 97–98 (7th Cir. 1960) (de-
fendant falsely told boarding house owner that he was a “Fed-
eral tax man” and FBI agent, influencing her to tolerate him
carrying a gun openly in her house).
Bonin, Cord, and Hamilton affirm that the second element
encompasses the defendant’s overt act in the pretended char-
acter intended to cause the victim to take a course of action he
or she would not otherwise pursue. This was the conclusion
of Rosser as well, taking its cue from Lepowitch. But it does not
require separate proof of a nefarious intent to defraud or de-
ceive.
Wade’s second proposed jury instruction tracked the lan-
guage of Lepowitch and would have been helpful to direct the
jury to the proper application and scope of § 912. The district
court would have done well to use such language. But, as in
Bonin, an intent to cause the victim to follow a course she oth-
erwise would not pursue was inherent in the court’s
No. 19-2061 9
instructions on the acts-as-such element. In fact, the instruc-
tions here were nearly identical to the instructions affirmed in
Bonin, with the added instruction that the jury must find the
overt act “involve[d] the assertion of authority.”2 As the D.C.
Circuit held in Rosser, such an assertion of authority will vir-
tually always involve a purpose to influence the victim to fol-
low some course of action she otherwise would not have pur-
sued. Rosser, 528 F.2d at 656. In fact, even under Wade’s
“hopeless romantic” theory of the case, he sought to cause
Bishop (a single woman living alone) to open the door of her
home to him (an armed man whom she did not know well),
to engage and continue in conversation with him, to answer
questions about a make-believe criminal suspect, to text or
call him either with information related to the investigation or
for romantic purposes, and, ultimately, to go out with him.
Most, if not all, of these are things Bishop would have been
unlikely to do absent Wade’s pretense.
Accordingly, the district court did not err by not explicitly
instructing the jury that it must conclude Wade intended to
cause Bishop to follow a course of action she otherwise would
not have pursued to find him guilty.
Intent to defraud aside, the first element of § 912 implicitly
requires a mens rea element: the defendant’s knowledge that
2 We stated in Bonin that an “assertion of authority” instruction for a § 912
acts-as-such offense is unnecessary since the statutory language does not
include this. 932 F.3d at 539. But where, as here, the jury did find the de-
fendant’s overt action involved an assertion of authority, there is little
doubt the act also encompassed an attempt to influence the victim to fol-
low a course of action she otherwise would not have pursued.
10 No. 19-2061
he is not truly an officer or employee of the United States. 3 See
Bonin, 932 F.3d at 538–39. The district court concluded it was
not necessary to separately instruct the jury on this scienter
requirement because one cannot falsely pretend without
knowing one’s pretense is false. We held in Bonin, however,
that failure to instruct on this mens rea element is an error,
though it may be a harmless one. Id. Here, the error was in-
deed harmless. The record includes no evidence to support a
finding that Wade did not know he was not a DEA agent, and
Wade concedes he never argued this. Wade’s alleged romantic
intent does nothing to negate the scienter requirement, either,
because his motivation has no bearing on whether he knew
he was not a DEA agent.
Accordingly, we find no reversible error in the court’s jury
instructions.
3 Throughout his written submissions and oral argument, Wade con-
strued the district court’s failure to instruct on intent to defraud as an elim-
ination of any mens rea element and transformation of § 912 into a strict
liability offense. Although it now accuses Wade of “conflating motivation
with mens rea,” the government muddied that water itself by referring to
§ 912 as a strict liability offense at the pre-trial conference in the district
court. That was an incorrect and troubling representation, since the Su-
preme Court has instructed “the general rule is that a guilty mind is a nec-
essary element in the indictment and proof of every crime,” and courts
should “generally interpret criminal statutes to include broadly applicable
scienter requirements, even where the statute by its terms does not contain
them.” Elonis v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2001, 2009 (2015) (internal mark-
ings omitted). However, it appears from the transcript that the parties and
the court understood the government’s argument to be that the defend-
ant’s underlying motivation was irrelevant to the offense elements, not that
no mens rea was necessary at all. That argument, though improperly artic-
ulated, was correct.
No. 19-2061 11
2. Motion In Limine
We generally review decisions on motions in limine for
abuse of discretion. See Aldridge v. Forest River, Inc., 635 F.3d
870, 874 (7th Cir. 2011). Here, the district court granted the
motion based on its determination that evidence of Wade’s
romantic intent was insufficient as a matter of law to establish
a defense to § 912 and would instead invite jury nullification.
“The legal sufficiency of a proffered defense is a question of
law and therefore is reviewed de novo.” United States v. Santi-
ago-Godinez, 12 F.3d 722, 726 (7th Cir. 1993). We therefore re-
view de novo the district court’s legal conclusions underlying
the grant of the motion, though we still review its ultimate
decision to grant the motion for abuse of discretion.
As we have already explained, an intent to defraud or de-
ceive is not a separate element of § 912. The district court did
not err in concluding Wade’s alleged romantic motivation
was not relevant to whether he (1) knowingly falsely pre-
tended to be a United States officer or employee and (2) en-
gaged in an overt act sought to cause the victim to follow a
course of action she otherwise would not have pursued. His
motivation does not negate his knowledge that he was not, in
fact, a DEA agent. It also has no bearing on whether he com-
mitted an overt act to cause Bishop to follow a course of action
she would not otherwise pursue.
Wade argues his romantic motivation undermines any
true assertion of authority, but this is a meritless argument as
well. First, even though the district court instructed the jury it
must find an overt act “involving an assertion of authority,”
we have held that no such instruction is required. Bonin, 932
F.3d at 539. The statute’s language does not require an asser-
tion of authority, and “acting as such” has been defined to
12 No. 19-2061
mean “acting in the pretended character, and not necessarily
doing an act which defendant would have been authorized to
do under the authority of the assumed capacity.” Hamilton,
276 F.2d at 98. Furthermore, the evidence supports the con-
clusion that Wade did assert the authority of a DEA agent by
taking actions in conformity with his pretended character.
Wade represented to Bishop that he was investigating a sus-
pect, showed her pictures of the fake suspect, and left a false
DEA business card in her mailbox with instructions to call or
text him if she remembered any information related to his
purported investigation. The fact that he purportedly took
such actions out of a misguided attempt to convince her to go
out with him makes no difference.
Thus, the only effect the romantic-motivation argument
could have had was to cause the jury to conclude Wade’s
crime was not all that serious or harmful, leading to jury nul-
lification. This is precisely what the district court determined
as well, which is why the argument was precluded. Although
every jury has the de facto power of nullification due to the
unreviewable nature of a judgment of acquittal, a defendant
has no right to argue for the jury to disregard the law. Gibbs v.
VanNatta, 329 F.3d 582, 584 (7th Cir. 2003). The district court’s
underlying legal conclusions were correct, and it did not
abuse its discretion by granting the motion in limine.
3. Sufficiency of the Evidence
Wade raises one more argument on appeal, challenging
the sufficiency of the evidence to convict him on either count.
According to Wade, § 912’s “acts as such” clause requires an
overt act separate and distinguishable from the original pre-
tense, whereas his actions were indistinguishable from the
pretense itself or mere repetitions of the pretense.
No. 19-2061 13
When reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evi-
dence, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the
government and will overturn the jury’s verdict “only when
the record contains no evidence, regardless of how it is
weighed, from which the jury could find guilt beyond a rea-
sonable doubt.” United States v. Torres-Chavez, 744 F.3d 988,
993 (7th Cir. 2014).
Wade’s argument fails to overcome the “nearly insur-
mountable” burden of proving that the evidence could not
support the jury’s finding of guilt. Id. The evidence was more
than sufficient for the jury to find Wade guilty. During the
first encounter, Wade went beyond merely asserting a pre-
tense by wearing a badge and gun, interviewing Bishop about
a fake investigation, and showing her a photograph of the
pretend subject of his investigation. Regarding the second in-
cident, Wade argues that leaving the business card cannot suf-
fice for both elements of the offense (falsely pretending and
acting as such), but he misstates the facts. By leaving the offi-
cial-looking business card, Wade again falsely pretended to
be a DEA agent (the card identified him as an agent and in-
cluded an official-looking DOJ email address). He then went
beyond this pretense by also leaving the handwritten note,
which once again asked Bishop for information related to his
fake investigation and prompted her to contact him. Thus,
both elements of the offense were present in both counts, and
the evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the govern-
ment supports the jury’s verdict.
III. Conclusion
Wade argues he is “a hopeless romantic,” not a criminal.
Those roles need not be mutually exclusive, however. Regard-
less of his alleged motivation for doing so, Wade violated
14 No. 19-2061
§ 912 by falsely pretending to be a United States employee
and acting as such. Accordingly, we AFFIRM.