United States v. Adam Poitra, No. 21-3262 (8th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this Case
A jury convicted Defendant of aggravated sexual abuse, and the district court sentenced him to 440 months in prison. Defendant appealed his conviction. The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that Defendant claims the district court erred “by failing to instruct the jury that it had to agree on the specific act of sexual abuse in order to convict.” However, Defendant cites no authority that failure to give a specific unanimity instruction. To the contrary, the Eighth Circuit has held that jurors need not agree on a specific sexual act to reach a unanimous verdict.
Further, Defendant contends the district court erred in admitting hearsay statements regarding the reports of abuse. The court wrote that the statement was limited in scope to the victim’s disclosure of the abuse, not the specifics of it. But even if the statements were inadmissible hearsay, their admission would be harmless given the other evidence against Defendant.
Moreover, Defendant maintains he was deprived of his Fifth Amendment right to a fair trial because the government’s closing argument “distorted its burden of proof and unfairly mischaracterized Defendant’s theory of the case.” Even if the closing were improper, under plain error review, the Eighth Circuit wrote it will “reverse only under exceptional circumstances,” which requires that Defendant show “a reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different absent the alleged error.” The evidence and the district court’s instructions show this is not an exceptional case where the conviction is overturned based solely on a prosecutor’s statements during closing argument.
Court Description: [Benton, Author, with Smith, Chief Judge, and Stras, Circuit Judge] Criminal case - Criminal law. The court gave a general unanimity instruction, and the failure to give a specific unanimity instruction under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2241(c) was not plain error; certain statements were not hearsay, but even if they were, any error in admitting them was harmless; admission of testimony from a forensic examiner was not error; while it is a close call whether the government's closing argument shifted the burden of proof and distorted defendant's case, the evidence of guilt was strong, and the court would not reverse under a plain error standard of review.
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.