United States v. Seng Xiong, No. 17-3283 (8th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this Case
The Eighth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction of mail and wire fraud and sentence of 87 months in prison. Defendant's conviction stemmed from his scheme to promote the creation of a Hmong homeland by accepting money from donors.
The court held that the district court did not err in preventing defendant from raising a public authority defense at trial because he failed to show even apparent authority. Furthermore, the district court did not err by precluding him from presenting an entrapment by estoppel defense. The court also held that defendant's Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination was not violated; defendant's right to compulsory process under the Sixth Amendment was not violated; and the court declined to consider defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Finally, the court held that defendant's sentence was substantively reasonable where the district court did not abuse its discretion and explicitly considered sentencing disparities.
Court Description: Wollman, Author, with Colloton and Benton, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law and sentencing. The government prosecuted defendant for mail and wire fraud in connection with his promotion of the creation of a Hmong homeland. The district court did not plainly err in requiring defendant, before trial, to show actual authority for his public authority defense and it did not err in preventing him from raising the defense at trial when he failed to do so; nor did the court err in precluding him from presenting an entrapment by estoppel defense in light of his failure to offer any evidence; the district court's questions to defendant during a pretrial conference did not violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination; defendant's argument that the court violated his Sixth Amendment right to compulsory process was violated when the court required him to present actual authority to present his defenses and by determining that defendant could not refer to U.S. or U.N. officials when asserting his innocent intent defense is rejected; defendant's sentence was not substantively unreasonable and his argument that the court gave inadequate weight to the sentencing goal of reducing disparity among similarly situated defendants is rejected; court would not consider an argument raised for the first time in the reply brief.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.