United States v. Milliron

Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals PUBLISH Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS June 23, 2026 Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 23-1217 LORI MILLIRON, Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado (D.C. No. 1:22-CR-00012-WJM-2) _________________________________ Robert T. Fishman of Ridley, McGreevy & Winocur, P.C., Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant. Marissa R. Miller, Assistant United States Attorney (J. Bishop Grewell, Acting United States Attorney, with her on the brief), Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff- Appellee. _________________________________ Before HOLMES, Chief Judge, PHILLIPS, and CARSON, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge. _________________________________ At doctors’ appointments, museum tours, and freshman orientations, there are no bad questions. But when a prosecutor is the one asking and the answer carries a potential perjury charge, there are.  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 2 Lori Milliron testified before a federal grand jury that was investigating whether her paramour Larry Rudolph had murdered his wife. Armed with evidence that Rudolph had given Milliron tens of thousands of dollars in the two years before the murder, the government asked her why Rudolph had been so generous to her. She said she didn’t know. And later, the government asked whether Rudolph had proclaimed his innocence to her when discussing the FBI’s investigation into his wife’s death. She said he “probably” did. Based on Milliron’s testimony before it, the grand jury indicted her for five counts of perjury, one count of accessory after the fact to foreign murder, and one count of obstruction of justice. A petit jury later convicted Milliron on two perjury counts, accessory, and obstruction. On appeal, Milliron argues that her perjury convictions resulted from the prosecutor’s imprecise questioning and were unsupported by sufficient evidence. She also challenges her accessory conviction as beyond the bounds of the accessory statute and her obstruction conviction as contrary to the Double Jeopardy Clause. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm all Milliron’s convictions except for the first perjury count. 2  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 3 BACKGROUND I. Factual Background In 2003, Lori Milliron began working as a hygienist for dentist Larry Rudolph in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By 2004, the two had begun an extramarital affair. Milliron had long wanted Rudolph to divorce his wife, Bianca. But she understood Rudolph’s worry that a divorce would harm him financially. And Rudolph’s money mattered to Milliron too. Over the years, he’d helped pay for her house, car, and vacations, and he’d funded her children’s housing, educations, and plastic surgeries. Milliron often asked Rudolph for money, and he always gave it to her. In spring 2016, Bianca learned of Rudolph’s affair with Milliron and demanded that he end it. So Rudolph could have either (1) divorced Bianca and kept seeing Milliron or (2) stayed married and ended his affair with Milliron. But in October 2016, he chose a third option. He kept seeing Milliron and murdered Bianca while on safari in Zambia. To conceal the murder, Rudolph staged a scene in his and Bianca’s private cabin to convince others that Bianca had accidentally shot herself in the heart. While still in Zambia, and before even telling his children about their mother’s death, Rudolph had Bianca’s body cremated. Zambian authorities investigated but found no wrongdoing. And stateside insurance investigators treated Bianca’s death as accidental, paying Rudolph just under $5 million in life-insurance proceeds. 3  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 4 For her part, around April 2015, Milliron confided in one of her colleagues that she’d told Rudolph to “get rid of Bianca,” take cash from the dental practice, and move out of the country. J. App. vol. 14, at 3467. And three months before the murder, while preparing for an earlier Zambian safari with Bianca, Rudolph had Milliron order—through the dental practice—five vials of propofol, a surgical sedative that “puts [people] to sleep.” Id. at 3535. Before then, only the practice’s contracted anesthetists, not the practice itself, stored and used propofol. Rudolph told an employee that he was taking the propofol “in case of an accident.” Id. at 3510. Within hours of shooting Bianca, Rudolph texted Milliron that there had been an accident. But he waited six days before telling anyone in his family. Milliron received Rudolph’s text but never responded. Less than two weeks after Rudolph returned from Zambia, and just two days after Bianca’s funeral, Rudolph booked Milliron a one-way flight to join him at his and Bianca’s house in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Within six months, Milliron moved in. Within the next two years, Rudolph drew more than a million dollars from Bianca’s life-insurance proceeds to finance the construction of a $2.5 million Paradise Valley house for him and Milliron. And by the time of her grand-jury testimony, Milliron knew that Rudolph killed Bianca. In January or February 2020, Rudolph and Milliron were dining at a Phoenix steakhouse where they were regulars. Just as a song ended, the bartender and customers seated nearby heard Rudolph in a very firm, harsh tone 4  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 5 say to Milliron: “I killed my fucking wife for you.” United States v. Rudolph, 152 F. 4th 1197, 1211 (10th Cir. 2025) (citation modified), cert. denied, --- S. Ct. ----, 2026 WL 79716 (Jan. 12, 2026). Milliron gathered her purse, lowered her head, and left the restaurant. Id. at 1212. The bartender thought that Milliron seemed embarrassed but unsurprised. Rudolph left soon after, apologizing to the bartender on his way out. Meanwhile, the FBI had begun investigating Rudolph for foreign murder. Around August 2020, FBI agents approached Rudolph’s son to talk about the investigation. The son then told Rudolph about the FBI’s visit. Rudolph relayed that news to Milliron and told her what he had learned about the investigation. In December 2021, the government filed a criminal complaint against Rudolph. The complaint charged foreign murder as well as mail fraud related to Bianca’s life-insurance proceeds. A few weeks later, Milliron attended a hearing on Rudolph’s motion to dismiss that complaint. At that hearing, she heard the government lay out its case. The next day, Milliron appeared via subpoena before the grand jury that was investigating Rudolph. She testified for over an hour, discussing among other things her relationship with Rudolph and his comments about the FBI’s investigation. Soon after, the grand jury indicted Rudolph. And a month later, it indicted Milliron too, based on her testimony. 5  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 6 II. Procedural History The grand jury indicted Milliron on five counts of perjury, 18 U.S.C. § 1623(a); one count of accessory after the fact to foreign murder, 18 U.S.C. §§ 3, 1119, 1111; and one count of obstruction of justice, 18 U.S.C. § 1503(a). Each charge stemmed from her grand-jury testimony. After a fourteen-day joint trial with Rudolph, the jury convicted Milliron on two of the five perjury counts (Counts Six and Nine), the accessory count (Count Three), and the obstruction count (Count Four). 1 Milliron moved for a new trial and a judgment of acquittal. The district court denied her motion. Later, the court sentenced Milliron to 204 months’ imprisonment, an upward variance from the sentencing guidelines. Milliron timely appealed. DISCUSSION We consider Milliron’s challenges to her perjury convictions, then her challenges to her accessory-after-the-fact and obstruction convictions. We vacate her perjury conviction on Count Six and affirm her other convictions. I. Perjury Convictions To prevail on a perjury charge under 18 U.S.C. § 1623(a), the government must prove four elements beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) that the defendant made a statement while under oath before a grand jury, (2) that the The jury convicted Rudolph on both of his charges. We affirmed. 1 Rudolph, 152 F.4th at 1239. 6  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 7 statement was false, (3) that the defendant knew the statement was false, and (4) that the statement was material to the grand-jury proceeding. See United States v. Leifson, 568 F.3d 1215, 1220 (10th Cir. 2009); see United States v. Strohm, 671 F.3d 1173, 1177–78 (10th Cir. 2011). Milliron concedes that she testified under oath before a grand jury. We review de novo whether sufficient evidence supports a conviction. See United States v. Schulte, 741 F.3d 1141, 1152 (10th Cir. 2014). We view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict. Id. And when a perjury charge alleges more than one knowingly false, material statement, we affirm even if a reasonable jury could find that only one of the charged statements was knowingly false and material. Strohm, 671 F.3d at 1185 n.14. To that end, the jury “is best equipped to determine the meaning that a defendant assigns to a specific question.” United States v. Lighte, 782 F.2d 367, 372 (2d Cir. 1986). “Precise questioning is imperative as a predicate to the offense of perjury.” Bronston v. United States, 409 U.S. 352, 362 (1973). “The burden is on the questioner to pin the witness down to the specific object of the questioner’s inquiry.” Id. at 360. This is so even when the witness’s “answers were not guileless but were shrewdly calculated to evade.” Id. at 362. With that in mind, we turn to Milliron’s two perjury convictions. A. Count Six We begin by laying out the indictment’s exact language and identify in bolded brackets what we’ll call Question 1 and Question 2: 7  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 8 Count 6 On or about January 5, 2022, in the State and District of Colorado, the defendant LORI MILLIRON, having taken an oath to testify truthfully in a proceeding before a grand jury of the United States sitting in the District of Colorado, knowingly made false material declarations, that is, MILLIRON gave the following underlined false testimony: Q: Why was Larry paying you this additional money if you already had a salary for those things? A: Because he wanted to help me. Q: Did he explain why? A: He was very generous. .... Q: So in 2015 you received approximately double your salary— or your salary again but all in cash? A: Yes[.] Q: And in 2016 you received a little bit more than your salary in cash? A: Yes. Q: [Question 1] Why was Larry so generous to you? A: I don’t know why. But like I said, he would give other—staff members, he would buy them washers and dryers. He would give them cash if they needed it, a whole variety of things. Q: [Question 2] So your testimony before the members of the Grand Jury today is that you don’t know exactly why he gave you $60,000 in 2015? A: I don’t know exactly why. J. App. vol. 1, at 99–100. 8  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 9 Milliron argues several theories, but we begin—and end—with whether the jury had sufficient evidence to find that her statements were knowingly false. 2 It didn’t. On Question 1, Milliron argues that because of “the inherent difficulty in one person knowing what truly motivates another person’s actions, no reasonable jury could conclude that Milliron’s initial ‘I don’t know why’ response was knowingly false.” Op. Br. at 19–20. And on Question 2, she argues that she “truthfully respond[ed] to a precise question with an equally precise answer.” Id. at 19. Guided by Lighte, we agree with Milliron. 782 F.2d at 374. In that case, the defendant testified before a grand jury investigating a blood-plasma center. Id. at 369–70. He was asked about another person’s trust account that bore his name. Id. at 371 n.1. The prosecutor asked, “How do you know it’s [the other person’s] account?” Id. The defendant answered, “Because he told me.” Id. Soon after, the prosecutor asked, “Why would [the other person] tell you he was setting up [an account] in your name?” Id. The defendant answered, “I don’t know.” Id. 2 Early in her prosecution, Milliron referenced the “perjury trap” doctrine, which we’ve yet to consider in this circuit. That doctrine bars perjury prosecutions in which the government executes a “premeditated design . . . to trap the witness into perjury in . . . an unfair way.” See United States v. Simone, 627 F. Supp. 1264, 1269 (D.N.J. 1986) (emphasis omitted); see generally Bennett. L. Gershman, The “Perjury Trap”, 129 U. Pa. L. Rev. 624 (1981). She does not argue this doctrine on appeal. 9  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 10 The Second Circuit held that the defendant’s “I don’t know” answer couldn’t support a perjury conviction. See id. at 374. That’s because the question required the defendant to “speculate as to [the other person’s] motives.” Id. And the defendant “could truthfully respond that he did not know the reasoning underlying [the other person’s] behavior.” 3 Id. In Question 1, Milliron was asked to speculate about Rudolph’s motives, and she answered, “I don’t know.” Supp. App. vol. 2, at 357. And in Question 2, she was asked to more precisely speculate, and she again said she didn’t know. As in Lighte, Milliron’s answers were not knowingly false. See 782 F.2d at 374. Stated plainly, a witness generally can’t be convicted of perjury for saying she didn’t know what went on inside another person’s head. This squares with our general aversion to speculative testimony, see, e.g., United States v. Tapaha, 891 F.3d 900, 906 (10th Cir. 2018), including witnesses’ testifying without foundation about a defendant’s state of mind. See United States v. Hoffner, 777 F.2d 1423, 1426 (10th Cir. 1985). Our analysis would differ if there were evidence that Rudolph had told Milliron why he gave her money in 2015 and 2016. See id. But as we explain, there isn’t. To be sure, this section of Lighte concerned the literal-truth defense. 3 See 782 F.2d at 373–74. But its logic applies equally to whether the evidence sufficed to prove that a statement was knowingly false. See Strohm, 671 F.3d at 1185. 10  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 11 1. Milliron’s Indicted Testimony Before addressing the government’s arguments head on, we present Milliron’s testimony that she gave just before the answers underlying her criminal charges. The prosecutor asked Milliron about Rudolph’s individual cash gifts. Having handed Milliron a book of deposit slips, the prosecutor showed her a sequence of deposits from 2014 through 2021 and confirmed that she deposited “a couple of hundred dollars at a time.” Supp. App. vol. 2, at 355. Milliron explained that these gifts were for “expenses” like “bills” and “education.” Id. The prosecutor then asked her why Rudolph gave her “this additional money” and whether Rudolph “explain[ed] why.” Id. (emphasis added). Milliron nonresponsively answered that Rudolph “was very generous.” Id. at 356. The prosecutor handed Milliron another exhibit, which totaled these cash deposits into annual summaries. 4 The prosecutor then pointed out that Milliron had deposited $60,000 in 2015 and $75,450 in 2016. At that point, the prosecutor asked Milliron why Rudolph was “so generous” to her (Question 1). And to reiterate that he was asking about gifts from a specific period, the prosecutor then asked (Question 2): “you don’t 4 The parties did not identify the actual documents shown to Milliron, but in his closing, the prosecutor said: “Now this is what she was looking at when she was asked those second two questions. . . . [T]his is clearly an annual summary.” J. App. vol. 19, at 4933 (emphasis added). 11  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 12 know exactly why [Rudolph] gave you $60,000 in 2015?” Id. at 357 (emphasis added). It’s not clear to us “exactly why” Rudolph gave Milliron $60,000 in 2015, nor why he was “so generous” to her in 2015 and 2016. For all we know, he may have given her that money for fear of a costly divorce, fear of damage to his reputation and dental practice, love for Milliron’s children, compensation for not having left Bianca earlier, and so on. 5 Nor do we think there’s record evidence for Milliron, the grand jury, or the petit jury to have inferred why. And though we generally leave this sort of interpretation to the jury, we can’t affirm a conviction based on a jury’s guess. See United States v. Farmer, 137 F.3d 1265, 1269–70 (10th Cir. 1998). To the government, this epistemological mountain is a molehill. Milliron must have known why Rudolph was so generous and gave her $60,000 in 2015: because they were in a relationship. To show this, the government marshals several facts: (1) Milliron introducing Rudolph as her boyfriend, (2) Their countless intimate emails, including Rudolph calling her the love of his life, 5 Another possible reason that Rudolph gave Milliron that money was to keep her from revealing his perjury in earlier, unrelated civil litigation. In 2013, he sued his hunting club for defamation, alleging that its officers falsely accused him of cheating on his wife. During that litigation, he denied that he was having an affair—let alone communicating—with Milliron. But at trial in this case, he admitted that this was a lie: he had been having an affair with Milliron at the time. 12  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 13 (3) His confession that he killed his wife for her, (4) Testimony from Rudolph’s other employees that they did not receive anywhere near the cash that Milliron received, (5) Rudolph’s efforts to help Milliron’s children financially, (6) Milliron thanking him for sending her to Paradise and telling him that in return she would “pamper the hell out” of him with sex and champagne, (7) The switch from cash payments to a credit card following Bianca’s death, and (8) His own testimony that he gave her money because she was his girlfriend. Resp. Br. at 20–21 (citation modified). Missing from this list is any message, email, or other evidence showing that Milliron knew “the reasoning underlying” Rudolph’s gifts in 2015 and 2016. See Lighte, 782 F.2d at 374. And without a foundation, a witness cannot be prosecuted for disclaiming knowledge of another person’s motivations. 2. Milliron’s Later Testimony The government next argues that Milliron later admitted “she did know why [Rudolph] gave her the money.” Resp. Br. at 21. We disagree with the government’s reading of Milliron’s testimony. And to explain why, we quote her testimony at length: Q: Do you remember him giving you $4,000 on February 18th, 2016? A: No, I do not. 13 Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 14 Q: Would you agree that $4,000 is a lot of money? A: Yes, that’s a lot of money. Q: Do you remember what you used it for? A: I don’t remember. Q: Why did he give you $4,000? A: I don’t remember why he did. Q: That was on February 18th. If you go down, again, to February 20th, 2016. Now we’re on page 137. A: Yes. Q: So he gave you $4,000 on February 18th, 2016, and then $3,400 on February 20th, 2016; is that right? A: I don’t know when he gave it to me. Q: But that’s when you deposited it? A: That’s when it was deposited. Q: When you got these cash deposits, did you deposit them immediately, or did you hold onto it for a little bit? A: I don’t remember. Q: So in total, though, you deposited approximately $7,400 in this span of three days? A: Yes. Q: If you go to the next one on page 138, do you see that? A: Yes. Q: Two days after that did you deposit $3,460? A: I don’t remember. 14 Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 15 Q: All told, that’s a lot of money, right? A: Yes. Q: Do you remember why Larry gave you all that money? A: I don’t remember. Q: Ms. Milliron, were you in a relationship with Larry Rudolph? A: Yes. Q: What was the relationship? A: Well, we had a working relationship, and we also had a personal relationship. We would travel together. Q: What was the nature of the personal relationship? A: We were friends. Q: Were you ever anything more than friends? A: Yes. We traveled mostly. Q: When did that relationship begin? A: Shortly – well, I don’t know if it was shortly – after I started working for him. It was probably back in 2003 or ’4. Q: Were these payments part of that relationship? A: I don’t know how to answer that. Q: Were you having a sexual relationship with him? A: We did occasionally. Q: Was he supporting you financially? A: You could say that. 15  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 16 Q: These cash payments, was that part of his supporting you? A: I would say so. Q: While you were in a relationship with him? A: Yes. Q: And the payments to your daughter, was that also part of the relationship? A: Yes. Q: So earlier, when you said you didn’t know why he was giving you all this money, do you now have a better understanding of why he might have been giving you this money? A: Well, I did know why he gave me money. I just don’t know specifically each one, what it was for. Supp. App. vol. 2, at 360–62. Each side claims that Milliron’s last answer supports its position. To the government, it shows that Milliron indeed knew why Rudolph gave her “the money.” Resp. Br. at 21. And to Milliron, it shows that when she was asked precise questions, she gave precise answers. We disagree with the government. When reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, we don’t make “every potential inference” in the government’s favor; instead, we make “only those inferences reasonably and logically flowing from . . . [the] evidence.” Goldesberry, 128 F.4th at 1192 (citation omitted). Look closely at the last question. The prosecutor says: “earlier, when you said you didn’t know why he was giving you all this money.” Supp. App. vol. 2, at 362 (emphasis added). He’s not referring to the charged statements about Rudolph’s 16  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 17 generosity from several minutes (and some fifty questions) before; he’s referring to when he asked, just then, why Rudolph had given her “all that money”—meaning three deposits in February 2016. Id. at 361. Milliron had answered, “I don’t remember.” Id. at 360–61. So her final answer—that she knew “why he gave me money”—wasn’t referring to her answers to Questions 1 and 2 from several minutes before. See id. at 362. And inferring otherwise doesn’t “reasonably and logically” flow from the evidence. Goldesberry, 128 F.4th at 1192 (citation omitted). Next, and more subtly, the government argues that Milliron’s last answer shows that she “could answer the question without speculating about Rudolph’s mental state.” Resp. Br. at 21. Perhaps Milliron’s later answer—“I did know why he gave me money”— set some foundation for her to testify about Rudolph’s motivations. Supp. App. vol. 2, at 362. But the questions in the indictment were (1) why he was “so generous” to her in 2015 and 2016 and (2) “exactly why” he gave her “$60,000 in 2015.” J. App. vol. 1, at 100. Milliron’s generic statement doesn’t lay a foundation that Milliron knew why Rudolph was “so generous” to her and “exactly why” he gave her $60,000 in 2015. Knowing why someone gives you money differs from knowing why he was “so generous” over two specific years, and it also differs from knowing “exactly why” he gave a specific quantity in a 17  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 18 specific year. 6 See id. Put another way, Milliron’s statement didn’t lay a foundation to testify to either of those highly specific facts. So contrary to the government’s argument, Milliron never said she knew what motivated Rudolph in 2015 and 2016. Finally, the government argues that Milliron lied in her responses to Questions 1 and 2 by not answering that Rudolph gave her money in 2015 and 2016 because they were in an intimate relationship. But when the prosecutor succinctly asked if Milliron was in a relationship with Rudolph, she unequivocally said yes. We conclude with an important reminder. To address imprecise and evasive testimony, prosecutors should ask better questions rather than pitch perjury charges. See Bronston, 409 U.S. at 362; United States v. Sainz, 772 F.2d 559, 564 (9th Cir. 1995) (reversing a perjury conviction because the witness answered truthfully after the prosecutor “narrowed the focus of his questioning to the information actually sought”). At bottom, the prosecutor’s purpose is “to obtain the truth,” not “to obtain perjury.” United States v. Shotts, 145 F.3d 1289, 1299 (11th Cir. 1998) (emphasis omitted). * * * 6 After Milliron said she knew why Rudolph gave her money, the prosecutor didn’t follow up and ask why. 18  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 19 Briefly, because both parties address them, we discuss our circuit’s defenses to perjury based on literal truth and ambiguity. Neither defense applies to the exchange that led to Count Six. The literal-truth defense bars perjury convictions based on nonresponsive but literally true statements. Strohm, 671 F.3d at 1183–84. Milliron’s conviction doesn’t fit because we’ve held that the defense applies only when an answer is nonresponsive. Id. at 1185. And Strohm held that “I don’t know” is responsive. Id. So the literal-truth defense doesn’t help Milliron. Nor does Milliron’s case fit neatly into our fundamental- and arguable- ambiguity defenses. Those defenses require a question to be so unclear that reasonable people would not know what the prosecutor is asking. See Farmer, 137 F.3d at 1268–69. But the questions leading to the statements in Count Six were not confusing. They were just imprecise. They asked a witness to report from inside another person’s head. And unless the government can show that the witness has a firm foundation for that knowledge, it shouldn’t indict a witness for saying that he or she doesn’t know. * * * Because there was insufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find that Milliron’s statements in Count Six were knowingly false, we vacate her conviction on that count. 19 Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 20 B. Count Nine We again start with the indictment: Count 9 On or about January 5, 2022, in the State and District of Colorado, the defendant LORI MILLIRON, having taken an oath to testify truthfully in a proceeding before a grand jury of the United States sitting in the District of Colorado, knowingly made false material declarations, that is, MILLIRON gave the following underlined false testimony: Q: Did [Rudolph] say anything about the merits of an investigation? A: I don’t recall. Q: Did he say anything about whether [Bianca’s death] was an accident? A: No. He had told me previously it was an accident. ... Q: Did he proclaim his innocence? A: He probably did. I don’t really recall that. Q: What do you recall? A: I really don’t recall. Q: As you sit here today with the members of the Grand Jury, you don’t recall a conversation with Mr. Rudolph about an FBI investigation? A: There has been conversation about that, but I think he was aggravated. I can’t give you specifics. Q: Can you give me generalities? 20  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 21 A: Irritated that there was an FBI investigation because he felt he was innocent. J. App. vol. 1, at 102. Milliron argues that the government didn’t provide sufficient evidence that either of Count Nine’s statements were knowingly false or material to the grand jury’s proceedings. We disagree. A reasonable jury could find Milliron’s statement, “He probably did,” to be both knowingly false and material. And because Milliron’s argument doesn’t address the latter part of the statement—“I don’t really recall that”—we consider only “He probably did.” See Op. Br. at 23–26. 1. Knowingly False The prosecutor’s question focused on a specific conversation between Rudolph and Milliron months after he told her that he had killed his wife. For a reasonable jury to find Milliron’s statement knowingly false, the government had to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Milliron knew that Rudolph didn’t proclaim his innocence to her in that conversation. So we first establish the timing of when Rudolph and Milliron spoke. We then consider the circumstances that a reasonable jury could have considered. First, we lay out a timeline to find when the relevant conversation took place. Start back in January or February 2020, when a bartender and patrons at the steakhouse heard Rudolph say to Milliron, “I killed my fucking wife for you.” Rudolph, 152 F.4th at 1211 (citation modified). Fast-forward to August 21  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 22 2020, when the FBI approached Rudolph’s son to talk about the investigation, after which the son told Rudolph about the visit. Finally, fast-forward again to May 2021, when Milliron took an unplanned flight away from Pittsburgh because FBI agents showed up at her house and she “didn’t want to speak with them.” Supp. App. vol. 2, at 386–87. Now refocus on the grand-jury testimony that was the subject of Count Nine. The prosecutor asked Milliron, “Who told you that there was an FBI investigation?” Id. at 387. Milliron answered that Rudolph had told her and that he had known about the investigation from “when the FBI knocked” on his son’s door. Id. at 388. Then the prosecutor asked Milliron, “Did you have a conversation with Mr. Rudolph about the FBI’s investigation?” Id. at 389. Milliron said yes. Drawing reasonable inferences from the evidence above, this conversation happened after the FBI spoke with Rudolph’s son but before May 2021, when Milliron left Pittsburgh to avoid speaking to the FBI. The prosecutor kept asking Milliron about the conversation. He asked if Rudolph “proclaim[ed] his innocence.” Id. at 390. Milliron responded, “He probably did. I don’t really recall that.” Id. Now we can consider the circumstances from which a jury could infer— beyond a reasonable doubt—that Milliron’s statement was knowingly false. Rudolph and Milliron’s relationship differed from Rudolph’s relationship with anyone else in two key respects. 22  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 23 First, by the time of her grand-jury testimony, Milliron had been Rudolph’s trusted confidante and mistress for over fifteen years. At Rudolph’s instruction, she had ordered the propofol that he wanted in case of an “accident” on Bianca’s penultimate safari. J. App. vol. 14, at 3510. She received Rudolph’s first communique about Bianca’s death—that “there had been an accident”—which a reasonable jury could interpret as, “it’s done.” See J. App. vol. 18, at 4561. And Milliron didn’t respond. In sum, the jury could infer that long before her grand-jury testimony, Milliron knew that Rudolph planned to kill Bianca. Second, before their conversation, Rudolph had told Milliron—in public—that he was guilty. In this respect, Milliron was unlike Rudolph’s hunting guides, Zambian law enforcement, American consular officials, the insurance investigators, Bianca’s brothers, the FBI, the jury, the judge at sentencing, and Rudolph’s own children. Rudolph may well have scrupulously maintained his innocence with everyone else, but he told Milliron he was guilty. So with these two conclusions, the jury could reasonably infer that Milliron knew that Rudolph hadn’t proclaimed his innocence to her. The longtime affair; the propofol; the unanswered, post-murder text message from Zambia; Milliron’s move to Rudolph and Bianca’s Paradise Valley house; and Rudolph’s financing of a separate Paradise Valley house with Bianca’s life- insurance proceeds—all of this furnished the jury more than enough to find that 23  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 24 Milliron knew Rudolph planned to and actually did kill Bianca. And Rudolph’s steakhouse utterance that he killed Bianca for Milliron cements the inference that, with Milliron, Rudolph didn’t need to—and didn’t—pretend innocence. A reasonable jury could conclude that Rudolph’s utterance wasn’t just an accidentally public confession; it was a reminder to Milliron that she owed him for murdering Bianca so they could be together. Still, Milliron argues that the steakhouse statement “furnishes no factual basis for inferring that he could not . . . have proclaimed his innocence.” Op. Br. at 24. And if we were to ignore the context of the prosecutor’s question, that would be correct. If the prosecutor had asked, “did Rudolph ever proclaim his innocence to anyone,” as the partial dissent interprets the question, Milliron’s answer wouldn’t support a perjury conviction. But we may not “isolate[e] a question from its context . . . to give it a meaning entirely different from that which it has when considered in light of the testimony as a whole.” See Farmer, 137 F.3d at 1269. Consider the examination leading up to the questions in the indictment: “Did you have a conversation with Mr. Rudolph about the FBI’s investigation? . . . Was this conversation in person or over the phone? . . . Did he try to put you at ease?” Supp. App. vol. 2, at 389– 90 (emphasis added). 7 Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the 7 The partial dissent states that “nothing . . . indicates that the prosecutor focused on one specific conversation between Rudolph and [Milliron] when asking whether Rudolph proclaimed his innocence.” We disagree. 24  Appellate Case: 23-1217 Document: 122-1 Date Filed: 06/23/2026 Page: 25 prosecutor asked whether Rudolph proclaimed his innocence to Milliron during a specific conversation. That conversation occurred sometime after the steakhouse statement but before Milliron flew from Pittsburgh. And Rudolph’s wielding the murder against Milliron at the steakhouse sufficed for the jury to infer that he didn’t proclaim his innocence to her in their later conversation. In other words, a reasonable jury could infer, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Milliron lied when she said that he “probably” proclaimed his innocence. Arguing from “experience” in the law, Milliron states that “guilty people proclaim their actual innocence all the time.” Id. Fair enough. But guilty people don’t typically proclaim their innocence to people who know of their guilt. It makes no sense that Rudolph would proclaim his innocence to Milliron after reminding her that he murdered Bianca for her. “Experience” gives us no reason to think that’s what happened, much less to say that no reasonable jury could find otherwise. 8 Milliron also argues that the government changed its Count Nine theory between trial and appeal. But upon review of the trial record and the government’s briefing on appeal, we see no difference. 8 The partial dissent posits that Rudolph may have told Milliron he was innocent even though she knew of his guilt, “to get his story straight.” And perhaps Milliron could have argued that Rudolph would have told her something like “you know I’m guilty, but in