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Svete: Mail Fraud Instruction Defective

By Tim Cone

In U.S. v. Svete, No. 05-13809 (March 26, 2008), the Court reversed mail fraud convictions for two defendants based on an erroneous jury instruction, but otherwise rejected the defendants? challenges to their convictions and sentences. The case arose out of an $80 million fraud on investors in life insurance benefits.Citing U.S. v. Brown, 40 F.3d 1218 (11th Cir. 1994), the Court rejected challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, pointing out that both defendants had testified in their defense, and that the jury was therefore free to believe of the opposite of their testimony.The Court, however, agreed that the mail fraud jury instruction was defective because, though directly copied from the Pattern Jury Instruction, it failed to instruct, as the caselaw provided, that a scheme was "reasonably calculated to deceive persons of ordinary prudence and comprehension...continue to full post

Full post as published by Defense Newsletter Blog on March 27, 2008 (boomark / email).