RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) File Name: 19a0284p.06 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ┐ Plaintiff-Appellee, │ │ > No. 14-3864 v. │ │ │ DIVNA MASLENJAK, │ Defendant-Appellant. │ ┘ On Remand from the Supreme Court of the United States. United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio at Cleveland. No. 1:13-cr-00126-1—Benita Y. Pearson, District Judge. Argued: October 3, 2018 Decided and Filed: November 21, 2019 Before: GIBBONS and McKEAGUE, Circuit Judges; ANDERSON, District Judge.* _________________ COUNSEL ARGUED: Zimra Payvand Ahdout, KIRKLAND & ELLIS LLP, New York, New York, for Appellant. Daniel R. Ranke, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee. ON SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF: Zimra Payvand Ahdout, KIRKLAND & ELLIS LLP, New York, New York, Christopher Landau, P.C., Patrick Haney, Jeff Nye, KIRKLAND & ELLIS LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Daniel R. Ranke, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee. *The Honorable S. Thomas Anderson, United States District Judge for the Western District of Tennessee, sitting by designation. No. 14-3864 United States v. Maslenjak Page 2 _________________ OPINION _________________ JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge. Divna Maslenjak immigrated to the United States as a refugee in 2000. Maslenjak claimed that she and her family feared for their safety because they faced “persecution from both sides of [Bosnia’s] national rift.” Maslenjak v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 1918, 1923 (2017). She said that Bosnian Muslims would persecute her family because of their ethnicity, and Bosnian Serbs would persecute her family because her husband had evaded conscription into the Bosnian Serb army. But part of Maslenjak’s story was untrue. In fact, Maslenjak’s husband had not only served in the Bosnian Serb army but was an officer in a brigade implicated in war crimes. Six years later, when Maslenjak applied for naturalization, she again lied to immigration officials. This time, Maslenjak’s lies “concerned her prior statements to immigration officials: She swore that she had been honest when applying for admission as a refugee, but in fact she had not.” Id. at 1930. In August 2007, Maslenjak was naturalized as a citizen of the United States. Based on her lies during the naturalization process, Maslenjak was charged with and convicted of two crimes: (1) unlawful procurement of naturalization or citizenship, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a); and (2) misuse of evidence of naturalization or citizenship, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1423. At trial, the district court instructed the jury that it could convict Maslenjak of procuring her naturalization contrary to law based on a false statement in the naturalization process, even if the statement was not material. Maslenjak challenged that instruction on appeal and this panel affirmed the district court. The Supreme Court reversed. It held that lies told in the immigration process must be material—meaning that the lies “would have mattered to an immigration official” and “played some role in [the] acquisition of citizenship.” Maslenjak, 137 S. Ct. at 1923. The Court instructed that the ...
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