Richard Villanueva Mitchell financed his appliance business by borrowing $500,000 from a lender and purchasing hundreds of appliances valued at over $321,000. When he filed for bankruptcy in 2017, he reported assets worth less than $50,000 and failed to disclose the appliances on his bankruptcy schedules. He also testified under oath that his documents were complete and denied having other assets. After the lender discovered the concealment and reported it to the bankruptcy trustee, Mitchell was indicted for bankruptcy fraud, concealment, false declaration, false oath, and bribery. The government dismissed the concealment and false oath counts, and Mitchell went to trial on the remaining charges. Before trial, the parties debated the jury instructions for the false declaration count. The government proposed an instruction requiring the jury to find the false statement was about a material matter. Mitchell proposed an instruction that omitted the materiality element and objected to the government's inclusion of it. The trial court adopted Mitchell's proposed instruction, omitting the materiality element, and Mitchell did not object to the final instruction before it was read to the jury. He was convicted and sentenced to two years of probation.
The Tenth Circuit addressed Mitchell's claim that the trial court committed plain error by failing to instruct the jury that materiality is an element of the crime under 18 U.S.C. § 152(3). The court applied the invited error doctrine, which holds parties accountable when they induce an error at trial. The court explained that this doctrine embodies a waiver theory, preventing a party who has waived a right from seeking appellate relief. Specifically, the court noted that its caselaw forecloses appellate review when a defendant has waived the right to challenge a jury instruction by affirmatively approving it at trial. The record showed that Mitchell had taken the exact opposite position on appeal than he did at trial. He had urged the district court to omit the materiality element and had specifically objected to the government's proposed instruction that included it. The court found that Mitchell's inducement of the district court to commit the purported error precluded him from setting it aside on appeal. The court also rejected Mitchell's argument that the government was complicit or that the court did not fully adopt his position, noting that the government's proposed instruction did include the materiality element and that Mitchell's successful efforts to induce the omission of that element were the controlling factor.
The decision affirms Mitchell's conviction and sentence, leaving the legal landscape for bankruptcy fraud jury instructions unchanged regarding the materiality element. However, it reinforces the strict application of the invited error doctrine in the Tenth Circuit, warning that defendants who strategically request the omission of specific elements in jury instructions cannot later claim that omission was error. The case serves as a reminder that parties must carefully consider the long-term consequences of their trial strategy regarding jury instructions, as they may be bound by their own requests on appeal.
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