152008P.pdf   07/01/2016  United States  v.  Alphonso Wynn
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  15-2008
   U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas - Little Rock   
   [PUBLISHED] [Loken, Author, with Gruender and Kelly, Circuit Judges] 
   Criminal case - Criminal law. The instructions given the jury on the 
   charge of transmitting a threat to injure through interstate 
   communications under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 875(c), though consistent with 
   then-governing Eighth Circuit precedent, omitted the mens rea element now 
   required by the Supreme Court's decision in Elonis v. United States, 135 
   S. Ct. 2001 (2015), and the conviction is reversed and the matter remanded 
   with instruction to vacate the conviction; however, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 
   115(a)(1)(B) applied to the threats that defendant made against his 
   supervisor at the VA, and the evidence was sufficient to support his 
   conviction on this charge; further, the instruction given to the jury 
   properly instructed them on the mens rea element of the offense; the court 
   did not err in refusing to instruct the jury on an entrapment defense as 
   the government's act of providing the number to a crisis Hotline did not 
   induce defendant to use the Hotline to make criminal threats;information 
   provided to nurses covering the Hotline was not protected by the 
   patient-psychotherapist privilege as there was no evidence the nurses were 
   licensed psychotherapists or that defendant made the calls in confidence 
   during a course of diagnosis or treatment.