Wire Fraud — harmless error

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Wire Fraud — harmless error

Where a Skilling error was harmless, the defendant’s conviction must be affirmed.

“Although the district judge thought otherwise, we conclude that the jury can only have convicted Turner on both wire-fraud theories. As we explained in our earlier opinion, the core of the case against Turner was that he aided and abetted the janitors’ scheme to defraud the State of Illinois of its money—in the form of thousands of dollars in salaries paid for no work—by helping to perpetuate and cover it up. Turner, 551 F.3d at 659, 666. The honest-services fraud theory was thus entirely ‘premised [up]on [the] money/property fraud.’ Id. at 666. On the evidence in this case, the jury could not have convicted Turner for honest-services fraud had it not been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he aided and abetted the janitors’ money-fraud scheme. In short, this prosecution was an all-or-nothing proposition. Either Turner was guilty of aiding and abetting a pecuniary and an honest-services fraud (as it was then understood), or he was not guilty of either type of fraud.”

“Accordingly, even though Turner ‘could not lawfully be convicted of honest-services fraud[,] . . . it is not open to reasonable doubt that a reasonable jury would have convicted [him] of pecuniary fraud.’ Black, 625 F.3d at 388. Because the Skilling error was harmless, the wire-fraud convictions can stand.”

Reversed and Remanded.

11-3426 Turner v. U.S.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, McDade, J., Sykes, J.