United States v. Williams

218 F. Supp. 3d 730, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 150105, 2016 WL 6432583
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedOctober 31, 2016
DocketNo. 15-CR-00540
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 218 F. Supp. 3d 730 (United States v. Williams) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Williams, 218 F. Supp. 3d 730, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 150105, 2016 WL 6432583 (N.D. Ill. 2016).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

John J. Tharp, Jr., United States District Judge

Sundae Williams was convicted, following a week-long jury trial, of one count of [734]*734conspiracy and seven counts of receiving payments for patient referrals in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b. She was acquitted by the jury on one count of violating the Anti-Kickback Statute. Following the trial, Ms. Williams moved for a judgment of acquittal or a new trial on at least eleven different grounds. See Mot., ECF No. 59. Her challenges range from insufficiency of the evidence, to the Anti-Kickback Statute being void for vagueness, to various eviden-tiary objections and jury instructions that she contends were wrongly decided. None of these challenges are meritorious. For the reasons stated below, Ms. Williams’ motion for acquittal or a new trial [59] is denied.

BACKGROUND1

Williams’ trial began on August 22, 2016 and ended on August 30, 2016. During the trial, the government presented a large volume of records and documents found at Serenity Marketing, the home healthcare marketing company Williams owned and operated. These records included a number of checks from home healthcare agencies with memo lines referencing specific referred patients or numbers of patients, lists of patients marked as “done” or “paid,” and various contracts with home healthcare agencies purporting to set fixed or hourly rates. The government also called several Serenity employees, federal agents who had conducted the investigation of Serenity’s operations or interviewed Williams, Medicare contractor employees, and home healthcare executives who had been business partners of Williams. It also introduced a recording of a phone conversation Williams had with her nephew, a former employee. The evidence generally showed that Williams had relationships with a number of home healthcare agencies in which her firm would call individuals to inquire as to whether they were on Medicare and met certain other criteria. If so, they might qualify for home health services, and Williams would forward the patient’s information to one of the home healthcare agencies that had hired her; those companies would then proceed to sign up those individuals for home healthcare services covered by Medicare. In exchange, the home healthcare agencies would send Williams a check, usually around $600 per patient, once each referred patient began receiving services covered by Medicare. Soliciting or receiving payments in exchange for referrals of Medicare patients is illegal under the Anti-Kickback Statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b(b)(l)(A). James Ademiju, who ran two of the home healthcare agencies to which Serenity referred patients, testified that he and Williams were aware of the requirements of the Anti-Kickback Statute during their relationship and conspired to avoid it. The evidence showed that Williams covered up the per-patient referral payments Serenity received by entering into contracts that included sham payment obligations tied to fixed monthly payments or hourly rates. Records revealed the simple code employed to conceal the scheme: Williams simply substituted 10 “marketing hours” for every patient referred.

Williams testified in her own defense; she also called two former employees and a lawyer with whom she had spoken in March 2013 after her nephew and a client raised concerns regarding per patient payments. Williams maintained that she stopped charging on a per patient basis in 2013 when she learned doing so was illegal and that her invoices for marketing hours genuinely reflected an hourly compensation. One of the employees, Sherry [735]*735Williams (Sundae Williams’ sister), testified that in 2013 Williams held a meeting of all the Serenity managers and informed them that they would begin billing based on marketing hours. The other employee called by Williams, Rhonda Morris, did not remember any 2013 meeting about changes to billing. Neither Sherry Williams nor Morris knew how marketing hours were calculated despite being senior members of the management team. Sherry Williams also testified before the grand jury that she had been told by Sundae Williams that clients were billed based on marketing hours before the 2013 managers’ meeting. The jury deliberated for less than a day before convicting Williams of the conspiracy count and seven of the eight Anti-Kickback statute violations charged. The jury acquitted Williams on Count Two, the one Anti-Kickback charge premised on conduct before 2013. As Williams challenges nearly every facet of the government’s case, the facts presented at trial are described in more detail below.

DISCUSSION

Williams moves for a judgment of acquittal under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29 and a new trial under Rule 33 for almost every one of her challenges. She also claims to bring challenges under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 34, which dictates that the Court “must arrest judgment if the court does not have jurisdiction of the charged offense.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 34(a). However, Williams’ submissions make no arguments that this Court lacks jurisdiction over the charged offense or that the indictment does not charge an offense. See United States v. Martel, 792 F.2d 630, 638 (7th Cir. 1986) (Rule 34 motion appropriate when the indictment did not charge an offense under the statute of conviction); United States v. Boender, 719 F.Supp.2d 951, 953 (N.D. Ill. 2010) (“the rule raises a pure question of law distinct from the evidence adduced at trial”). In fact, Williams’ submissions do not even cite to Rule 34 after her initial introduction section, so the Court is unclear which arguments Williams ■ intended this rule to apply to. Similarly, Williams contends that her motion is also pursuant to “the due process and indictment by grand jury clauses of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution ‘as well as the right to confront witnesses guaranteed by the 6th Amendment.” Mot. at 1. Neither of these clauses is mentioned again after her introductory paragraph. A court is “not obligated to guess at a party’s meaning,” so the Court does not entertain the Rule 34 or constitutional questions further beyond how they may relate to the substantive issues genuinely raised- in Williams’ briefing. Holman v. Indiana, 211 F.3d 399, 405 (7th Cir. 2000).

Under Rule .29, the Co.urt must “enter a judgment of acquittal of any offense for which the evidence is, insufficient to sustain a conviction.” Fed. R. Crim. ,P. 29(a). When a Rule 29 motion, .is entertained after the jury has convicted, “a defendant making a sufficiency of the evidence challenge bears a heavy burden and faces a nearly insurmountable - hurdle.” United States v. Seawood, 172 F.3d 986, 988 (7th Cir. 1999).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
218 F. Supp. 3d 730, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 150105, 2016 WL 6432583, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-williams-ilnd-2016.