U.S. v. Holland

• Decision Date: 23 August 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-1204.,03-1204.
• Citation: 381 F.3d 80
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Beverly M. HOLLAND, aka "Candy," Defendant-Appellant.

Page 80

381 F.3d 80

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Beverly M. HOLLAND, aka "Candy," Defendant-Appellant.

No. 03-1204.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: October 23, 2003.

Decided: August 23, 2004.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Vermont, William K. Sessions, III, Chief Judge.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Thomas A. Zonay, Ford & Zonay, P.C., Woodstock, Vermont, for Defendant-Appellant.

William B. Darrow, Assistant United States Attorney (Peter W. Hall, United States Attorney, and David V. Kirby, First Assistant United States Attorney, on the brief), Burlington, Vermont, for Appellee.

Before: WINTER, CABRANES, and SACK, Circuit Judges.

WINTER, Circuit Judge.

Beverly M. Holland appeals from her convictions by a jury before Judge Sessions. Holland was convicted on one conspiracy and seven substantive counts¹ under the Mann Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421, 2422, 2423(a), and the aiding and abetting statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2, based on her interstate transportation of women in the course of her operating a Vermont-New York prostitution ring. On appeal Holland argues that the district court erred by: (i) refusing to instruct the jury that the transportation of coconspirators could not serve as the basis for a Mann Act conviction, (ii) not admitting as evidence filings from the Vermont-New York Mann Act prosecution of another person, and (iii) denying her various motions for judgments of acquittal.² We find no error and affirm.

BACKGROUND

From about April 2000 to January 2001, Holland ran a prostitution business out of her apartments in Burlington, Vermont and the Bronx, New York.³ She recruited young women in Vermont, some of them minors, to travel to New York in order to become prostitutes.⁴ When necessary, Holland falsely represented the purpose of the trips to the women's mothers and assured them of their daughters' safety and well-being. The trips to New York were usually by bus, although sometimes one of Holland's male accomplices drove the females to Holland's Bronx apartment. Once in New York, Holland instructed the women in prostitution, brought them to productive business sites, and monitored them while they solicited customers. On occasion, Holland also arranged for the women to meet customers in apartments. Holland persuaded reluctant women to follow her instructions by telling them that the only way to earn a bus ticket back to Vermont was to work as a prostitute. Holland used the street name "Candy," and called the women she recruited and monitored "Candy's Girls," a term used on Holland's business cards. The phone number on the cards was that of her Bronx apartment.

After initiation as "Candy's Girls," some of the women, namely Judy, Melissa and Lindsay, helped to recruit new prostitutes by putting other young girls in touch with Holland. Also, some of "Candy's Girls," namely, Judy, Sandra, Colleen, and Angel, went to work for a New York-based pimp, Jose Rodriguez, who was also running a Vermont-New York operation.

At trial Holland sought to introduce as evidence the indictment, plea agreement, and judgment from the case against Rodriguez, United States v. Rodriguez, No. 2:01-CR-37-01 (D.Vt). Rodriguez had pled guilty to Mann Act violations involving the transportation of Vermont women to New York, including some ex-"Candy's Girls." Holland argued that the filings in Rodriguez were relevant to show that the testimony of those women against Holland was false because the women were lying to protect Rodriguez. The district court excluded the evidence.

At the conclusion of the evidence, Holland sought judgments of acquittal under Fed.R.Crim.P. 29. She argued that because Counts 2, 9, and 11 involved Holland's transportation of women who had helped her recruit others, the women were "coconspirators" and, therefore, their transportation could not serve as the basis of a Mann Act violation. Holland also requested a jury charge to that effect. The district court denied the motion and rejected the requested charge on the grounds that it makes no difference under the Mann Act whether the individual transported is a coconspirator or not or, alternatively, that the pertinent counts were based on events that pre-dated the recruitment efforts that arguably transformed them into coconspirators. Holland also unsuccessfully sought acquittals on Counts 3 and 9 on the ground that the evidence that she "transport[ed]" the females—namely her buying bus tickets and accompanying them—was insufficient under Section 2421 of the Mann Act to sustain a conviction. See 18 U.S.C. § 2421. Finally, Holland moved for, and was denied, an acquittal on Counts 7 and 8. As to those, she asserted that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to show she "caused" a violation of Section 2423(a). See 18 U.S.C. §§ 2423(a), 2(b).

The district court dismissed two of the counts for reasons unrelated to this appeal, and the jury found Holland guilty on eight counts and not guilty on one. The district court sentenced Holland to a total of 235 months' imprisonment and two years of supervised release, and imposed an $800 assessment.

DISCUSSION

a) The Jury Charge

The first issue concerns Counts 2, 9, and 11. As to them, the district court denied Holland a jury instruction that the interstate transportation of coconspirators cannot serve as the basis of a Mann Act conviction. We review jury charges de novo. United States v. Han, 230 F.3d 560, 565 (2d Cir.2000). "A conviction will not be overturned for refusal to give a requested charge ... unless that [requested] instruction is legally correct, represents a theory of defense with basis in the record that would lead to acquittal, and the theory is not effectively presented elsewhere in the charge." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted, alterations in original). Because Holland's requested jury charge is legally meritless, we need not decide whether it had an evidentiary basis in the record.

"The starting point for [the] interpretation of a statute is always its language." Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730, 739, 109 S.Ct. 2166, 104 L.Ed.2d 811 (1989). Holland's argument concerns counts charged under Sections 2421 and 2423 of the Mann Act. Section 2421 relates to the interstate transportation of adult individuals, and provides that "[w]hoever knowingly transports any individual in interstate ... commerce" for prohibited purposes shall be found guilty under the Act. 18 U.S.C. § 2421 (2002) (emphasis added). Section 2423 relates to the interstate transportation of minors, and provides that whoever "knowingly transports an individual who has not attained the age of 18 years in interstate ... commerce" for prohibited purposes shall be found guilty. 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a) (2002) (emphasis added). This language makes no distinction between victims and coconspirators for purposes of imposing liability on the person who transports another; the defendant need only have transported an "individual," either adult or minor depending on the relevant section, to be guilty under the Act.

Holland is correct that the Mann Act distinguishes between victims and coconspirators, but it does so only for purposes of determining the liability of the person who is transported interstate—i.e., the victim. It is the Mann Act's "affirmative legislative policy to leave [the victim's] acquiescence unpunished," Gebardi v. United States, 287 U.S. 112, 123, 53 S.Ct. 35, 77 L.Ed. 206 (1932). The Act does not punish "women who do no more than consent to being transported across state lines for the purpose of prostitution." United States v. Footman, 215 F.3d 145, 151 (1st Cir.2000).⁵ Holland cannot use this distinction to shield her from liability. The distinction between Mann Act coconspirators and those who consent to their transportation was designed to protect pawns in an interstate transportation ring, not the entrepreneurs, like Holland, who operate it.

Accordingly, the district court's refusal to give Holland's requested jury charge was entirely proper.

b) Exclusion of the Rodriguez Filings

Holland next argues that it was error for the district court to exclude from evidence the indictment, plea agreement and judgment in the Mann Act prosecution of Rodriguez. He was a New York-based pimp who, like Holland, ran a Vermont-New York prostitution ring. The district court rejected the proffered evidence on the grounds that the evidence was irrelevant, Fed.R.Evid. 401, and that, alternatively, even if it had evidentiary value, that value was substantially outweighed by its prejudicial impact, Fed.R.Evid. 403. We review a district court's evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. United States v. Jackson, 335 F.3d 170, 176 (2d Cir.2003).

"`Relevant evidence'" is "evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence." Fed.R.Evid. 401. Holland argues that because Rodriguez operated a Vermont-New York prostitution ring during some of the same time that she operated her ring, the evidence would tend to show that women alleged to have been involved in both rings either lied in their testimony against Holland to protect Rodriguez or were confused about who had transported them on particular occasions. At trial, Judy, Sandra, Colleen, and Angel testified for the government that Holland had transported them from Vermont and had introduced them into prostitution. They also testified that a time came when they stopped working for Holland and thereafter worked in Rodriguez's prostitution ring.

The proffered evidence from the Rodriguez prosecution does not tend to undercut the women's testimony against Holland. The women admitted that they had worked for Rodriguez, albeit after their stints with Holland, and the district judge invited cross-examination as to the circumstances of the various employments, which was...