131027P.pdf   07/18/2014  United States  v.  Martin Sigillito
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  13-1027
   U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis   
   [PUBLISHED] [Smith, Author, with Loken and Murphy, Circuit Judges] 
   Criminal case - Criminal law. In this fraud scheme prosecution, the search 
   warrant described with particularity the items to be seized from 
   defendant's law office as the fraud in question permeated defendant's 
   practice and the warrant's reach would necessarily encompass most of the 
   law firm's records; even if the executing officers failed to leave a copy 
   of an attachment to the warrant describing the materials to be seized at 
   the scene of the search, the error was an isolated inadvertance and does 
   not trigger exclusion of the evidence seized, especially when the officers 
   left a detailed inventory of all items seized; a claim the warrant was 
   facially invalid because it failed to comply with 21 U.S.C. Sec. 853 is 
   rejected; the search warrant application did not rely on a private search 
   by defendant's secretary; while a testifying witness was related to an 
   Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri, the AUSA took 
   no part in the prosecution and defendant's claim of a conflict is 
   rejected; Western District of Missouri U.S. Attorneys who prosecuted the 
   case were lawfully appointed under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 543; claims of Brady 
   violations rejected; claims of investigative misconduct rejected; the 
   court rejects defendant's argument that the court committed plain error in 
   failing to have the jury determine the maximum amount of forfeitable 
   property as the right to a jury verdict on forfeitablity does not fall 
   within the Sixth Amendment's protection; claim that the government made 
   improper closing arguments regarding defendant's credibility rejected; no 
   error in restricting defendant's cross-examination of the witness related 
   to the Assistant U.S. Attorney as the nature of their relationship was 
   irrelevant; no error in limiting cross-examination regarding the creation 
   of business entity after the search as the matter did not bear on the 
   misrepresentations at issue in the case; no error in giving a "willful 
   blindness" instruction; any error the district court may have made in 
   calculating the amount of the loss or in imposing a vulnerable-victim 
   enhancement was harmless given that defendant's offense level without 
   these alleged errors would still be 43 and his sentence would still be 
   life; sentence was not substantively unreasonable.