The White Collar Appeal: Eighth Circuit Addresses Meaning of “Willfulness” in Election Fraud Statutes

• In United States v. Taylor, the defendant argued that she could not have acted willfully because she was not familiar with Iowa election laws.  In doing so, she urged the court to adopt the definition of “willfulness” from Cheek v. United States, the 1991 Supreme Court decision involving tax fraud.
• The Eighth Circuit rejected that argument, holding that the standard of willfulness from Bryan v. United States applies to election fraud, rather than the higher standard articulated in Cheek.
• The decision illustrates that Cheek’s demanding standard for willfulness remains largely confined to tax crimes—and potentially other highly technical regulatory schemes—while most federal crimes require merely that defendants know their conduct is unlawful even if they do not know what precise statute it violates.

Background

The facts of United States v. Taylor are relatively straightforward. Kim Phuong Taylor undertook a voter registration drive in her local Vietnamese-American community in Sioux City, Iowa to help her husband get elected to office.  Her efforts started innocently enough:  she brought registration forms and absentee ballots to Vietnamese-American families, many of whom struggled with English and were unfamiliar with the American election system.  She translated the forms, helped people complete them, and returned them to the county auditor.  Eventually, however, she encouraged some of those families to complete the registration forms or vote on behalf of children away at college.  Then she began filling out and signing the registration documents in other people’s names.  In total, Taylor submitted 26 fraudulent documents with handwriting and signatures that did not belong to the named voters.

The government charged her with election fraud under two statutes:  52 U.S.C. § 20511(2), which prohibits “knowingly and willfully … procur[ing] … voter registration applications that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State,” and 52 U.S.C.  § 10307(c), which prohibits “knowingly or willfully” giving “false information” for the purpose of establishing eligibility to vote.   

Taylor’s defense centered on her mental state.  She argued that, because voting laws are so technical, the jury should be required to find that she understood the specific provision of the voting laws she was charged with violating—the standard that applies to tax crimes under Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991).  The district court disagreed and instead instructed the jury that, to find Taylor guilty, it must find that she “acted in a manner … that the defendant knew to be defective under Iowa law.”  In doing so, the district court effectively adopted the standard of willfulness from Bryan v. United States, 524 U.S. 184 (1998), which holds that willfulness requires an “intent to do something the law forbids.”  The jury convicted on all counts.

Holding

The Eighth Circuit rejected Taylor’s argument and held that the Bryan standard of willfulness applies to both voter fraud statutes. “[K]nowledge that the conduct itself is illegal, not what provision of the state criminal code makes it unlawful” is sufficient to establish willfulness “in connection with a non-technical prohibition on depriving, defrauding, or attempting to deprive or defraud others ‘of a fair and impartially conducted election process.’” The panel also concluded that there was sufficient evidence in the record to meet this standard for each of the 52 counts in the indictment.

Key Takeaways

Cheek is the exception, not the rule.  Taylor follows a long line of decisions declining to extend Cheek beyond the realm of tax fraud.  For most criminal statutes with a willfulness requirement, courts will apply the Bryan standard.

Yet there may still be hope for extending Cheek. Nevertheless, defendants should not give up arguing for the higher Cheek standard, especially in cases involving highly technical or regulatory provisions.  Cheek essentially reflects that, unlike most criminal statutes, which derive from traditional tenets of morality, tax law is so technical, non-obvious, and often arbitrary that showing that a person engaged in conduct he knew to be unlawful effectively requires showing that he understood what the law was.  Because ordinary people know that it is unlawful to make statements they know are false in connection with a securities transaction, the Bryan standard will do, but because they might not know the arcana of what kinds of expenses can be deducted on their tax returns, the heightened Cheek standard is necessary.  So for other criminal violations premised on conduct that is not inherently wrongful—for example, riding a dirt bike with a broken taillight—defendants can still make full-throated arguments that Cheek should apply.

Always read the fine print.  In finding there was sufficient evidence of Taylor’s knowledge that her behavior was unlawful, the Eighth Circuit placed significant weight on the fact that the voter registration forms and absentee ballots contained explicit warnings that false statements and forgery were crimes.  That evidence was nearly dispositive—and may even have doomed Taylor’s argument under a Cheek standard too.