Cruzado-Laureano v. United States
| Decision Date | 30 November 2015 |
| Docket Number | Civil No. 3:15–CV–01930 (JAF) |
| Citation | 146 F.Supp.3d 445 |
| Parties | Juan Manuel Cruzado–Laureano, Petitioner, v. United States of America, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico |
Alexander Zeno, Washington, DC, for Petitioner.
ORDER ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF ERROR CORAM NOBIS
“In federal courts, the maxim, ‘if at first you don't succeed, try, try again’ does not apply.” In re Moncier, 488 Fed.Appx. 57, 60 (6th Cir.2012). It is a maxim that petitioner Juan Manuel Cruzado–Laureano (“Cruzado”) has failed to accept. On July 13, 2015, Cruzado petitioned the court under 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a) for a writ of error coram nobis, which the First Circuit Court of Appeals has called the “criminal-law equivalent” of a Hail Mary pass because, like the football tactic, it is “made in desperation at the end of a game, with only a small chance of success.” United States v. George, 676 F.3d 249, 251 (1st Cir.2012). Like most desperate attempts, Cruzado's fails. The facts and the law clearly dictate the outcome, and the court must deny Cruzado's latest attempt to undo the underlying judgment of conviction in Cruzado–Laureano v. United States, 3:01–cr–00690–JAF–1.
“It suffices to say here that Cruzado, the former mayor of Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, was convicted by a jury in June 2002 on charges of embezzlement, extortion, money laundering and witness tampering stemming from conduct undertaken while he was in office, including demanding kickbacks on municipal contracts.” United States v. Cruzado–Laureano, 527 F.3d 231, 233 (1st Cir.2008) (Cruzado III ). Over the next thirteen-odd years, Cruzado and his lawyer, Alexander Zeno, Esq., have generated an avalanche of related federal-court litigation. We will briefly survey this history in order to properly situate Cruzado's new petition.
Cruzado appealed the judgment of conviction three times in a row. In his first appeal, the First Circuit affirmed Cruzado's conviction against challenges to the legal sufficiency of the trial evidence that the Court called “specious,” “little more than an implicit admission of guilt and a plea for leniency,” and “elevat[ing] coincidence to an art form.” United States v. Cruzado–Laureano, 404 F.3d 470, 485–86 (1st Cir.2005) (Cruzado I ). The Court remanded the case for resentencing, nonetheless, because we had erroneously followed the Pre–Sentence Report in using the 2000 Sentencing Guidelines, instead of the 2002 Guidelines, to calculate the appropriate sentencing range.1 Id . at 488–89. On remand, we used the correct guidelines and then “imposed a sentence identical to the one earlier imposed.” United States v. Cruzado–Laureano, 440 F.3d 44, 47 (1st Cir. 2006) (Cruzado II ).
In his second appeal, Cruzado challenged the resentence, including on grounds that the First Circuit found “simply implausible.” Id . at 48 n. 9. In the end, the Court held that we had acted properly in “large part” in imposing the resentence, but had misapplied “two [guidelines] provisions that dealt with [Cruzado's] abuse of his elected office,” and so the case was once again remanded for resentencing. Id . at 45. In sending the case back to us, the Court underscored that it did “not intend to intimate that the length of the sentence should necessarily be changed; what matters is that the premise as to the Guideline range must be correct.” Id . at 50.
On remand, we corrected the guidelines range and once again imposed the same sentence, including restitution and fine. Cruzado III, 527 F.3d at 234. But, at that third sentencing proceeding, Cruzado wanted to achieve much more. In particular, he “sought to present witnesses to prove that he was ‘actually innocent,’ that he had been subject to malicious prosecution, and that there were no victims of his crime—and hence no need for restitution—because no loss had occurred.” Id . Rather than allow the proceeding to devolve into several mini-trials that would have gone far beyond our mandate, we let Cruzado submit the prepared direct examinations of the nine witnesses he had wanted to call, submit an audit report from the municipality that purportedly disagreed with our specific findings of loss in the restitution order, and submit an outline of the argument he would have made if he had fully questioned all nine witnesses. Id . at 238. When we permitted Cruzado to call four character witnesses to testify on his behalf, “only two of [them] turned out to know him personally.” Id . Even then, they spoke mostly in platitudes, calling Cruzado a “good citizen” and “person” whose failings, if any, were “perhaps” caused by a “lack of orientation.” Id .
In his third appeal, the First Circuit affirmed the resentence against Cruzado's usual list of complaints, though not without observing that his continuing “refusal to acknowledge that he [had] committed criminal acts ... giv[es] relevant insight into his character and rais[es] concerns about his respect for the law and his future conduct.” Id . at 237. The entire appellate process took more than six years to complete, finally ending in January 2009, when the United States Supreme Court denied Cruzado's petition for a writ of certiorari on his third appeal. See Cruzado–Laureano v. United States, 555 U.S. 1099, 129 S.Ct. 970, 173 L.Ed.2d 108 (2009). Unfortunately, this does not come close to narrating the full history of plaintive litigation that Cruzado's underlying conviction has spawned.
In this District Court alone, Cruzado has sued multiple people, governments, and organizations over the fact that he was ever suspected of criminal conduct, let alone prosecuted and convicted of it. For example, in May 2006, Cruzado filed suit against the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the former Governor and the former Secretary of Justice of the Commonwealth, the political party of the former Governor and Secretary (i.e., the Partido Popular Democrático), the former Secretary of the political party, and a local special prosecutor who had been appointed to investigate Cruzado, seeking damages from them for “malicious prosecution” because they had, among other things, “contemplated bringing charges against [him],” which, he claimed, “adversely affected the outcome of [his 2002] trial before the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, Case No. 01–690(JAF).”2 (3:06–cv–01471–ADC, ECF No. 1 ¶¶ 1, 12–13.) Now Chief Judge Aida M. Delgado–Colón ultimately dismissed the case with prejudice for failing to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. (3:06–cv–01471–ADC, ECF Nos. 67, 71.)
In May 2006, Cruzado also filed suit against the United States of America, the former United States Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, several federal prosecutors and law-enforcement agents who had worked on the case that led to his underlying conviction, and many of the same Commonwealth officers and institutions he had sued in the case pending before Chief Judge Delgado–Colón, seeking damages from them for “malicious prosecution” because they had, among other things, “acted maliciously in instigating the criminal prosecution in that part of their motives was to create the impression that they were fighting corruption, to better their public images, and in the process, [to] inflict upon [Cruzado] as much punishment as possible.” (3:06–cv–01471–ADC, ECF No. 1 ¶¶ 1, 17.) We dismissed the case for failing to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. (3:06–cv–01472–JAF, ECF No. 1 ¶ 40.) Cruzado moved the court to reconsider the dismissal, but we denied the motion as meritless. (Id. at ECF Nos. 45, 49.)
In February 2007, while the above motion to reconsider was pending, Cruzado once again filed suit against many of the same federal and Commonwealth parties from his May 2006 cases, seeking damages yet again for malicious prosecution on virtually the same grounds as before. (3:07–cv–01160–JP, ECF No. 1.) Judge Jaime Pieras, Jr., dismissed the case with prejudice on res-judicata grounds because he had found that Cruzado's new complaint was “identical” to the complaint in the malicious-prosecution case we had just dismissed. (3:07–cv–01160–JP, ECF Nos. 23–24.) The First Circuit summarily affirmed the decision. (Id. at ECF No. 38.)
In December 2009, on the day after his term of supervised release had expired, Cruzado filed a petition with the court, substantially similar to the one now under review, seeking a writ of error coram nobis under 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a).3 (3:09–cv–02303–JAF, ECF No. 1.) We ultimately denied the petition on the ground that Cruzado had failed to allege any “significant, continuing collateral consequences flowing from his conviction” that might warrant relief. (3:09–cv–02303–JAF, ECF No. 31 at 5.) In fact, Cruzado had “failed to allege any collateral consequences separate from his conviction and financial obligation.” (Id. at ECF No. 31 at 8.) At the end of our opinion announcing the denial, we observed that, more than eight years after his conviction, Cruzado has “continue[d] to waste judicial resources [by] bringing frivolous arguments.” (Id. at ECF No. 31 at 9.) We warned Cruzado that he had “horsed around long enough” and that the court possessed “discretionary powers to regulate the conduct of abusive litigants,” including the power to enjoin him from filing more “frivolous and vexatious motions” related to his 2002 conviction. (Id. at ECF No. 31 at 9.) The First Circuit then affirmed our denial of coram-nobis relief. (Id. at ECF No. 39.)
In May 2012, Cruzado sued the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico yet again, alleging that the Commonwealth had violated the constitutional prohibition on bills of attainder and ex-post-facto laws and had violated his equal-protection and free-speech rights by enacting a law that prohibited, from elected public office, anyone previously convicted of a crime of moral turpitude. (3:12–cv–01317–CCC, ECF Nos. 1 ¶¶ 1, 3, 7–8, 11, 15; 1–1.) Cruzado claimed that the law “was enacted in order to forbid [hi...
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...such as during proceedings in the criminal case, on direct appeal, or by a petition under § 2255. See Cruzado-Laureano v. United States, 146 F. Supp. 3d 445, 449-50 (D.P.R. 2015). Although Williams characterizes his claim as ineffective assistance of counsel because his counsel changed his ......