The Court concluded the district court erred in providing a flawed supplemental instruction on official restraint. After summarizing the relevant precedent on official restraint, the Court reiterated that, in the attempt to reenter context -- as opposed to a "found in" case -- the key is whether the defendant intended to enter free from official restraint, not whether he or she was actually under official restraint.
Because the district court's supplemental instruction confused those concepts, the conviction could not stand. The Ninth Circuit concluded with the following:
On remand, the district court should instruct the jury that to convict CastilloMendez of attempted illegal reentry the government must prove specific intent to enter free from official restraint. Should the jury again ask for the definition of official restraint, the district court should remind the jury that official restraint is relevant only as a part of the defendant’s requisite mens rea, and answer with a definition drawn from attempted illegal reentry cases, such as “you must find that the defendant had the specific intent to enter free from official restraint, which means intent to enter without being detected, apprehended, or prevented from going at large within the United States and mixing with the population.”
