Whether the petitioners were deprived of their Fifth Amendment right of due process to present a defense

ISSUES PRESENTED FOR REVIEW Petitioners, Nguyen and Simmons were doctors while Ms. Bagoumian worked as a nurse in medical clinics. They were convicted in a series of Medicare fraud related offenses. The medical clinics were created by two co-defendants who pled guilty before trial. The defense was that they did not know the fraudulent nature of the scheme and they had nothing to do with finding patients or billing. The two co-defendants had been charged with a similar Medicare fraud scheme in Arizona. In that scheme, the investigators concluded the medical professionals employed in the clinics were dupes. One of the organizers of the scheme at issue who pled guilty, Zayan “Mike” Pogosyan, at his guilty plea told the District Court that Petitioner Simmons and co-defendant Benjamin Martinez (not a party to this petition) knew nothing about the scheme. Petitioners attempted to introduce Pogosyan’s statement and testimony from a physician and investigator in the Arizona case as “reverse 404(b)” evidence. The District Court excluded the evidence and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The first two issues presented are: 1. Whether the Petitioners were deprived of their Fifth Amendment right of Due Process to present a defense by the District Court’s exclusion of the reverse 404(b) evidence. : 2. Whether the Petitioners were deprived of their Sixth Amendment right of compulsory process by the District Court’s exclusion of the reverse 404(b) evidence. The District Court gave what the Court of Appeals called a muddled standard for determining deliberate ignorance. In determining of the error was harmless, the Court of Appeals simply held there was sufficient evidence for a properly intructed jury to reach the same verdict. The third issue presented is: 3. Did the Court of Appeals use the correct standard to determine harmless error or should it have used the standard set out in FED. R. CRIM. P. 52(a) after it deems a jury instruction confusing. i