US v. David Miller, No. 20-4095 (4th Cir. 2022)
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Defendant appealed from his convictions for conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to launder money, and eight counts of mail or wire fraud. He argued that his trial was constitutionally defective, his indictment was constructively amended, his jury instructions prejudiced him, and his conviction for conspiracy to launder money must be reversed for lack of sufficient evidence.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed Defendant’s conviction, holding that his arguments—most of which were not properly preserved—are meritless. The court held that Defendant’s right-to-compel challenge falters, at minimum, at the third step of the plain error inquiry because he fails to show how the district court’s alleged Fifth Amendment error affected the outcome of his proceedings.
Further, even if the probable-cause finding for Count 2 were flawed, the Government would still have been well within its rights to seize Defendant’s properties based on the underlying and unchallenged probable-cause findings for these other counts.
Next, the court wrote that Defendant failed to show that his indictment contained an error, much less a plain error. It is well established that “[t]he allegation in a single count of conspiracy to commit several crimes is not duplicitous, for [t]he conspiracy is the crime, and that is one, however diverse its objects.” United States v. Marshall, 332 F.3d 254 (4th Cir. 2003).
Moreover, the court explained that even if it assumed that the district court’s concealment-money-laundering instructions were flawed, that error did not affect the outcome of Defendant’s proceedings because he was nevertheless convicted of conspiring to commit transactional money laundering.
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