Tom Goldstein moves for JOA

The federal criminal justice system is so messed up -- there are no motions for summary judgment.  There are no depos.  So if you want to get rulings about the validity of a case, you pretty much have to go to trial and risk a sentence 5x as long as if you plead.  It's so wrong in so many ways.  

This leads us to SCOTUSblogger's Tom Goldstein's motion for judgment of acquittal.  Bloomberg covers it here:

Tom Goldstein, the US Supreme Court advocate and ultra high-stakes poker player convicted of tax and loan-related offenses in late February, is asking the judge who presided over the six-week trial to toss the jury’s verdict.

Goldstein’s motion for acquittal or, in the alternative, a new trial challenges, among other things, the court’s jury instructions on accessory liability and willful blindness. It was filed Monday in the US District Court for the District of Maryland.

The error in the instructions on accessory liability alone requires a retrial on every every count, Goldstein claims. General “charging instructions” failed to advise the jury that aiding and abetting liability required finding another guilty principal; willful conduct by Goldstein; and an affirmative act, not merely an omission, the motion says.

The instructions also failed to advise the jury that finding him guilty for causing “an act that would be an offense if directly performed by him or another” required it to find that Goldstein intended that the substantive offenses be committed.

Further, Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby granted the government’s request to eliminate the accessory instructions detailing aiding and abetting requirements after the parties delivered their closing arguments. It’s a violation of a procedural rule that Goldstein says was “undoubtedly prejudicial” in this case.

Doing so “changed accessory liability from essentially a non-issue in the case to a serious basis on which to convict,” the motion argues. If defense counsel had known the jury would be permitted to find accessory liability without finding that some other principal committed every element of the substantive offense, they would have taken the issue on at closing, the motion said.