Karl Hampton v. United States

The mail- and wire-fraud statutes, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1343, criminalize the use of mails or wires in furtherance of “any scheme or artifice to defraud.” A federal indictment is duplicitous if it joins two or more distinct offenses in a single count, because such an indictment risks a non-unanimous verdict in violation of the Sixth Amendment. See Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. 83 (2020); Richardson v. United States, 526 U.S. 813 (1999); Each of the eight fraud counts on which Petitioner was convicted alleged a single “scheme and artifice to defraud Barbara Wade and/or Kitty Harris and/or various financial institutions and credit and loan-issuing institutions and/or others.” United States v. Hampton, No. 24-5858, 2026 WL 196220, at *8 (6th Cir. Jan. 26, 2026). Yet the evidence at trial supported three distinct schemes. The district court did not give a specific unanimity instruction. Reviewing only for plain error, the Sixth Circuit held that these multiple frauds against multiple victims constituted a single “scheme” with alternative “means,” and that the indictment and verdict were sound. The question presented is: Whether an indictment that charges, in a single mail- or wire-fraud count, what the evidence shows to be discrete schemes against discrete victims, is duplicitous in violation of the Sixth Amendment’s requirement of jury unanimity.