Musacchio v. United States

Background

Michael Musacchio, a former president of one logistics company who started a rival firm, was accused of accessing his old employer’s computer system through a colleague’s password. A grand jury indicted him under the federal computer-crime law for conspiring to make unauthorized access and for accessing specific e-mail accounts in late November 2005. At trial the judge’s instruction mistakenly required the jury to find an extra element that the Government had not proposed, the Government did not object, and Musacchio did not raise a five-year statute-of-limitations defense at trial. A jury convicted him and the Fifth Circuit affirmed on appeal.

Reasoning

The Court addressed two questions. First, it held that when a jury is instructed on all the elements charged in the indictment but also—without objection—is told to find an extra element, a sufficiency-of-the-evidence review should ask whether the evidence supports the crime as charged in the indictment, not the extra instruction. The Court explained sufficiency review is a limited legal check that asks whether a rational jury could find the charged elements beyond a reasonable doubt. Second, the Court held the five-year statute in 18 U.S.C. § 3282(a) is a nonjurisdictional defense that a defendant must raise at trial; it cannot be successfully raised for the first time on appeal as plain error.

Real world impact

The ruling means defendants who fail to press a limitations defense at trial usually cannot win by raising it later on appeal. It also means reviewing courts measure evidence against what the indictment charged, not against an unobjected-to extra jury instruction. The opinion leaves certain technical questions open, including some limits on when an erroneous instruction can still require reversal.