Last June, 12 federal jurors found Shixu Huang, Lihua Yi, Zhanshan Zhang and Pingping Zhang guilty beyond reasonable doubt of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. They appealed their conviction.
The Ninth Circuit said the indictment against the appellants was “sufficient” because when “read in its entirety” it “contain[ed] the elements of the charged crime in adequate detail to inform the defendant[s] of the charge and to enable [them] to plead double jeopardy.”
But in a separate opinion, Judge Milan D. Smith said: “This is a disturbing case. Although I feel compelled by precedent to agree with the judgment and reasoning of the memorandum disposition, I write separately to highlight what I consider to be the highly questionable tactics used by the prosecutors in this case.” He added: “Future adventurous prosecutors could easily abuse the ‘defraud clause’ in such a way to create a Kafkaesque scenario…if they do not have a clear vision of their role as public fiduciaries, with the goal of seeing justice done. Without such a vision future government victories could be society’s loss.”
