In United States v. Hillman, ___ F. 3d. ___, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 11962 (10th Cir. 2011), the defendant was "convicted of several crimes arising from a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from an insurance company for which he worked." The counts of conviction were: "one count of conspiracy to engage in money laundering (18 U.S.C. § 1956(h)), five counts of money laundering (18 U.S.C. §§ 1957(a) & 2), and one count of false statements to a federal law enforcement agent (18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2))." The false statements were made to an IRS Agent.
The defendant raised several issues on appeal, but I focus on the deliberate ignorance issue. I have previously written about deliberate ignorance, which goes by several different names such as conscious avoidance etc. See prior blogs here.
The jury was properly instructed that it could convict based on defendant's own knowledge. The judge also instructed the jury that deliberate ignorance would suffice to establish the knowledge requirement. The jury returned a general verdict of guilty on each count. Defendant complained on appeal that the trial court should not have instructed the jury on deliberate ignorance. You will recall that all courts say that the deliberate ignorance instruction is to be rarely used, but sustain its use in appropriate cases. The defendant's point was that it was inappropriately used in this case and that, if so, the guilty verdict should be reversed because it could have been based on the inappropriate instruction.
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