081559P.pdf   04/17/2009  United States  v.  Robert John Farrell
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  08-1559
                          and No:  08-1561
   U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota   
   [PUBLISHED] [Melloy, Author, with Bowman and Smith, Circuit Judges]
   Criminal case - criminal law. Evidence was sufficient to support
   defendant's conviction for conspiracy to commit peonage and four counts
   of peonage, as the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that
   defendants' threats of physical abuse and arrest compelled the workers to
   serve defendants in order to satisfy the debts the workers had incurred in
   coming to the U.S. from the Philippines; evidence was sufficient to
   support defendants' conviction for document servitude as defendants
   confiscated and retained the workers' passports in furtherance of the
   peonage offenses; while portions of the government's expert testimony
   on the issue of domestic-worker exploitation invaded the province of the
   jury, the error did not affect substantial rights and was harmless in light 
   of the admissible evidence on the substantive counts.