Laura Jordan and Mark Jordan v. United States

I. Whether an appellate court’s harmless-error analysis of constitutional alternative theory error in jury instructions must decline to find the error harmless when (1) the defendant at trial contested the legally valid theory of guilt and (2) the evidence at trial, when viewed in a light most favorable to the defendant, allowed a rational jury to acquit the defendant of the valid theory but convict him of the invalid theory. II. Whether, for the reasons stated in Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion in Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1 (1999), this Court should overrule Neder and treat jury instructions that contain alternative theory error as structural error. III. Whether applying 18 U.S.C. § 666(a) to proscribe corrupt conduct by a state or local governmental official is a permissible exercise of Congress’s authority under the Spending Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause when the evidence at trial did not prove that the corrupt conduct caused or was intended to cause the state or local government to spend any funds and, thus, necessarily did not put any federal funding provided to the state or local government agency at risk.