U.S. v. Alanis

• Citation: 945 F.2d 1032
• Decision Date: 24 September 1991
• Docket Number: No. 89-2664,89-2664
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Martha ALANIS, Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit)

Page 1032

945 F.2d 1032

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Martha ALANIS, Appellant.

No. 89-2664.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eighth Circuit.

Submitted May 16, 1991.

Decided Sept. 24, 1991.

Timothy J. Doyle, Lincoln, Neb., for appellant.

Alan L. Everett, Lincoln, Neb., for appellee.

Before JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge, and FLOYD R. GIBSON and ROSS, Senior Circuit Judges.

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge.

Martha Alanis appeals from her conviction on two counts of mail fraud under 18 U.S.C.A. § 1341 (West Supp.1991) and one count of wire fraud under 18 U.S.C.A. § 1343 (West Supp.1991), based on her submitting a false insurance claim and causing the proceeds check to be mailed to her. On appeal, Alanis argues that: (1) the evidence was insufficient to support conviction; (2) two of the counts are redundant of each other; (3) one count failed to allege a criminal act; (4) the district court should have declared a mistrial because of improper argument by government counsel; (5) the court should have discharged the jury upon discovery that the government failed to supply exculpatory evidence to the defense; and (6) the district court should have granted Alanis' request for a transfer to the Southern District of Texas. We affirm the judgment of the district court. ¹

In August 1984, Alanis and Jose Humberto Leal met with insurance agent Jose Melendez in McAllen, Texas. Melendez represented the Security Mutual Life Insurance Company of Lincoln, Nebraska. Alanis and Leal, representing themselves to be husband and wife, applied for a life insurance policy with Security Mutual insuring Leal. The policy provided for a $30,000.00 payment to Alanis upon Leal's death, with a double payment in the event of an accidental death.

In mid-September 1988, Hurricane Gilbert struck Mexico, killing many people. On October 3, Marina Melendez, who worked in her husband's insurance office, received a phone call from a woman she believed to be Alanis' sister who stated that Leal had died in the hurricane. Mrs. Melendez reported this news by telephone to Jose, who happened to be at Security Mutual's home office in Lincoln, Nebraska, on that day. Alanis later submitted a written claim for payment, which was received in Security Mutual's home office on October 17, 1988. In support of her claim, Alanis also sent a document that appeared to be a Mexican death certificate attesting to Leal's death. On October 20, Security Mutual's Nebraska headquarters sent Alanis a check for $60,332.40 to settle her claim.

In November 1988, insurance investigator Joe Medina contacted Alanis. Medina had been hired by two other companies--Kentucky Central Life Insurance Company and Southern Life Insurance Company--that had issued life insurance policies on Leal during the summer of 1988. Medina took a written statement from Alanis in which she stated that she had identified Leal's remains through official photographs and his personal effects, but that she had not been able to recover Leal's body because it had been part of a mass burial. She also stated to Medina that she did not know the name of the lawyer who helped her obtain the death certificate. Alanis provided Medina with a Mexican "Inspection of cadaver certificate" in further support of her claim that Leal was dead.

In January 1989, Alanis was charged with three counts of mail fraud and four counts of wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1343 in connection with the insurance policy application to Security Mutual, her submission of a claim under the policy, and the mailing of the proceeds to her.

The government's evidence at trial showed, and Alanis admitted, that the insurance application contained false representations, including the use of Alanis' driver's license number and social security number as Leal's. ² The application stated that Leal was a legal resident of the United States, although he was in fact an illegal alien. The application also stated that no other life insurance policies had been issued on Leal's life, although two other companies had issued policies. Alanis and Leal represented themselves as husband and wife although they had not been formally married; Alanis stated at trial that they had a common-law marriage.

Alanis testified at length in her own defense, stating that she went to Monterey, Mexico on September 21 and 28 searching for her husband's remains. On her first trip, she testified that she did not speak to any authorities and found no evidence of her husband's demise. On her second trip, she testified that she spoke with officials and found a ring that she identified as Leal's among the personal belongings of hurricane victims. Contrary to her statement to Medina, she testified that she had been unable to identify her husband's body in the photographs because the bodies "were beyond the point of recognition." Although she acknowledged that Mexican officials had not accepted her identification of the ring as Leal's, she testified that she was later able to procure a death certificate through the efforts of a Mexican lawyer.

Jorge Silva and Hector Zarate, two Mexican officials who supervised the identification of Hurricane Gilbert victims in the region of Mexico where Leal purportedly perished, testified on behalf of the government. According to Zarate's testimony, the death certificate furnished to Security Mutual by Alanis had numerous irregularities. No bodies were classified as identified until the person making the identification had spoken personally to Silva or Zarate. They stated that no body was identified as that of Jose Humberto Leal, and that it would not have been possible for anyone to obtain a valid death certificate in the manner that Alanis described.

Silva also testified that he spoke to Alanis, but not until the last half of October when she came to Mexico still looking for a body to identify. At that point, Alanis had already submitted her written claim and alleged death certificate to Security Mutual. In her testimony, Alanis denied making a trip to Mexico in October.

The jury acquitted Alanis on one count of mail fraud and three counts of wire fraud, but found her guilty of two counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1343, respectively. ³ This appeal followed.

I.

Alanis argues that the evidence is insufficient to support a finding of guilt under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 or 1343. ⁴ Both of these statutes require that the defendant have "devised or intend[ed] to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises...." 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1343.

Alanis contends that there is insufficient evidence to support a finding that she devised a criminal scheme, in light of the facts that many of the victims of Hurricane Gilbert were never identified, that rapid decomposition made identification of the bodies difficult, that the government produced no evidence that Leal was alive following his trip to Mexico, and that the "irregular" nature of the documents submitted by Alanis to establish Leal's death could not be considered surprising in the wake of such a catastrophe.

In a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, we review the evidence in its entirety and in the light most favorable to the verdict. Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 80, 62 S.Ct. 457, 469, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1942); United States v. Lee, 743 F.2d 1240, 1250 (8th Cir.1984); United States v. LaGuardia, 774 F.2d 317, 319 (8th Cir.1985). Moreover, "[a]ll conflicts in the evidence and all reasonable inferences must be resolved in favor of the jury's verdict." LaGuardia, 774 F.2d at 319 (citation omitted). We uphold the conviction if it is sufficient to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. Id.

The government alleged that Alanis devised a scheme to defraud Security Mutual, and that as part of this scheme, she submitted a fraudulent application for insurance and a fraudulent claim for payment. Although some of the evidence is directly relevant to the false application counts on which the jury acquitted Alanis, we may consider that evidence in determining the sufficiency of the evidence as to the counts on which she was convicted. United States v. Liebo, 923 F.2d 1308, 1311 (8th Cir.1991). See United States v. Powell, 469 U.S. 57, 67, 105 S.Ct. 471, 478, 83 L.Ed.2d 461 (1984).

Alanis admitted at trial that the insurance application misrepresented Leal's social security and driver's license numbers and erroneously stated that he was a legal resident and that no other insurance policies had been issued on his life.

Much of the trial testimony focused on Alanis' efforts to gather evidence that Leal had perished and to collect the insurance proceeds. Medina, the insurance investigator, testified that Alanis told him that she had identified Leal's body from a photograph, but that she had been unable to recover his remains because he was buried in a common grave with other victims.

Zarate, who supervised the identification of unknown bodies in the State of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, in the aftermath of Hurricane Gilbert testified that approximately 170 bodies were brought to his two morgues following the hurricane and that all cadavers were inspected by registered forensic physicians with whom Zarate is personally acquainted. Zarate testified that the physician's name appearing on the purported death certificate, "Dr. Angel Saenz Lira," was not one of the forensic physicians in his department and that no physician by that name was registered as a forensic physician. He further testified that Leal's name did not appear on a list of identified hurricane victims and that none of the unidentified victims had been buried prior to the date on which the alleged death certificate was issued. The certificate stated that Leal had been buried at the municipal cemetery in the City of Guadalupe. Zarate also described...