United States v. Roussel, No. 11-30908 (5th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CaseDefendant, a New Orleans Police Department Captain and Traffic Division commander, was convicted of crimes related to his involvement with a scheme to defraud Entergy, a New Orleans-based utilities provider. The court held that the district court's issuance of the deliberate ignorance instruction was erroneous, but the error was harmless; the district court correctly recognized that the standard Rule 404(b) instruction to the jury on "other acts" would need to be modified; to the extent the introduction of the Rule 404(b) evidence was erroneous, the doctrine of invited error applied; there was no Confrontation Clause violation nor abuse of discretion in limiting defendant's counsel's cross-examination of the codefendant; the district court did not clearly err in applying either the public official sentencing guidelines enhancement or the high-level or sensitive position enhancement; the district court erred in finding more than one bribe, and it should have therefore declined to apply the corresponding two-level sentencing guidelines enhancement; the district court erred in its calculation of the expected benefit; the district court's consideration of the 30-year statutory maximum was improper but it was harmless; and the sentencing guidelines enhancement errors were not harmless. Accordingly, the court affirmed the conviction and vacated and remanded for resentencing.
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