U.S. v. Laboy-Delgado

• Decision Date: 21 May 1996
• Docket Number: LABOY-DELGAD,D,No. 95-1863,95-1863
• Citation: 84 F.3d 22
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Juanefendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 22

84 F.3d 22

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Juan LABOY-DELGADO, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 95-1863.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Submitted May 6, 1996.

Decided May 21, 1996.

Jose C. Romo Matienzo, San Juan, PR, on brief, for appellant.

John C. Keeney, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Theresa M.B. Van Vliet and Philip Urofsky, Criminal Division, U.S. Dept. of Justice and Guillermo Gil, United States Attorney, Washington, DC, on brief, for appellee.

Before SELYA and CUMMINGS, ^* Circuit Judges, and COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

On November 3, 1993, a federal grand jury empaneled in the District of Puerto Rico indicted defendant-appellant Juan Laboy-Delgado (Laboy) for conspiring to possess cocaine with intent to distribute, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 & 846, attempting to import cocaine and conspiring to that end, 21 U.S.C. §§ 952, 960, & 963, and aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes, 18 U.S.C. § 2. Following Laboy's conviction on all counts and the district court's imposition of a 211-month incarcerative sentence, Laboy prosecuted this appeal. He finds no safe harbor. Determining, as we do, that his assignments of error lack merit, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

We elucidate the facts gleaned at trial in the light most flattering to the jury's verdict. See United States v. Spinney, 65 F.3d 231, 233 (1st Cir.1995). We note at the outset that many of the pivotal facts come from testimony of Sonia Figueroa Sanchez (Figueroa), the former wife of a quondam conspirator Zebedo Maisonet Gonzalez (Maisonet), and from Maisonet himself. ¹

In early 1990, certain individuals, Maisonet included, hatched a plan to import cocaine from Colombia to Puerto Rico by way of St. Maarten. Maisonet testified that a fellow rogue, Papo Montijo, sponsored the appellant for membership in the cabal. Maisonet discussed the venture's prospects with the appellant in the spring of 1990, but forged no enduring alliance.

That summer, the wind shifted. Customs officials detained a conspirator attempting to carry cocaine into Puerto Rico on a commercial airline flight, and mechanical difficulties thwarted a seaborne pickup of cocaine in St. Maarten. As the gang pondered new strategies to transport contraband from St. Maarten to Puerto Rico, Montijo again floated the appellant's name. This time the conspirators approached him and, after haggling over the prospective division of spoils, enlisted his services.

The appellant arranged for his cousin, Hector Guzman Rivera (Guzman), to ferry a shipment of contraband from St. Maarten to Puerto Rico. He (Laboy) and Maisonet planned to travel by boat to St. Maarten to receive the clandestine cargo preliminary to its transshipment. The planning process proved long on bravado and short on security. Figueroa attended the pivotal meeting at which details of the anticipated trip to and from St. Maarten were reviewed. At the government's behest, she also tape-recorded telephone calls in which she, the appellant, and other coconspirators freely discussed the pending smuggle.

Fueled by Figueroa's input, a federal narcotics agent, Victor Ayala, placed Guzman's boat under surveillance on August 9, 1990. At around 11:00 a.m. on August 10, Ayala observed the appellant and a conspirator known only as "Jerry" lugging two heavy suitcases onto the boat. The men stayed aboard for approximately ten minutes and then departed without the suitcases. Late that morning, Guzman and Maria Sostre came aboard carrying a blue rug. Shortly before noon, the appellant reappeared, remained aboard for roughly half an hour, and left carrying a small travel bag. During the afternoon, various persons came and went, some bringing provisions. Near the end of the day the local authorities, fearing that the vessel was being readied for departure, boarded her. They found seventy-three kilograms of cocaine concealed in the ship (under the blue rug that Guzman had brought aboard), and detected traces of cocaine in the now-empty suitcases. The authorities also found four individuals aboard the ship: Edwin Burgos, Fabian Martinez, Maria Sostre, and Miriam Garcia. They arrested Guzman nearby.

The appellant had flown to Puerto Rico that day (sometime after delivering the suitcases) and was arrested there. Indictment, trial, conviction, and sentencing followed apace. This appeal ensued.

II. SUFFICIENCY OF THE EVIDENCE

The appellant challenges the sufficiency of the proof adduced against him at trial, insisting that the district court should have granted his timely motion for judgment of acquittal. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 29(a). The standard of appellate review is familiar: like the trial court, the court of appeals must determine whether the evidence proffered, arrayed in the light most favorable to the prosecution, enabled a rational jury to find each element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Valle, 72 F.3d 210, 217 (1st Cir.1995); United States v. Olbres, 61 F.3d 967, 970 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 522, 133 L.Ed.2d 430 (1995). In so doing, we must draw all reasonable evidentiary inferences in harmony with the verdict, see United States v. O'Brien, 14 F.3d 703, 706 (1st Cir.1994), and resolve all disagreement regarding the credibility of witnesses to the government's behoof, see United States v. Taylor, 54 F.3d 967, 974 (1st Cir.1995). As long as the totality of the evidence presented, viewed through this glass, supports the jury's verdict, it is legally irrelevant that a different jury, drawing alternative inferences, might have reached a different result. See United States v. Gifford, 17 F.3d 462, 467 (1st Cir.1994).

The appellant tries to place his insufficiency challenge into bold relief by emphasizing three points. None has force.

1. The appellant says that the government's case falters because the evidence at trial did not precisely define his "specific role in the criminal enterprise." To be sure, that sort of definition is helpful in setting sentencing ranges, see, e.g., U.S.S.G. §§ 3B1.1, 3B1.2, but to prove a defendant guilty of a narcotics-related conspiracy the government need not specify and prove with particularity the defendant's exact role in the scheme. See, e.g., United States v. Carroll, 871 F.2d 689, 692-93 (7th Cir.1989). Put another way, the government need not prove facts beyond those that are necessary to establish the elements of the crimes charged, see United States v. Staula, 80 F.3d 596, 605 (1st Cir.1996), and neither the elements of a drug-conspiracy charge under 21 U.S.C. § 846 nor an importation charge under 21 U.S.C. § 952 include a definitive specification of the defendant's role in the offense. ² See, e.g., United States v. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d 1161, 1173 (1st Cir.1993) (discussing elements of offense under § 846), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 2714, 129 L.Ed.2d 840 (1994); United States v. Nueva, 979 F.2d 880, 884 (1st Cir.1992) (discussing elements of offense under § 952), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 997, 113 S.Ct. 1615, 123 L.Ed.2d 175 (1993).

2. The appellant next decries the fact that much of the evidence against him came from a cooperating codefendant (Maisonet). The appellant suggests that Maisonet was presumptively untrustworthy because of his strong motivation to say what the government wanted to hear. This sort of suggestion can be molded into a powerful jury argument but it has little potency on appeal.

The persons most knowledgeable about the inner workings of criminal enterprises tend to be the criminals themselves. Thus, the government--which has no choice but to take its witnesses as it finds them--often must rely on blackguards and knaves, whose testimony is admittedly tinged with self-interest, to prove its allegations. Such flaws do not render the testimony inadmissible--it would be a surreal system of justice if only those who were without sin could offer evidence in a criminal case--but a witness' involvement in the crime and his motive for turning on his erstwhile accomplices are fair game for defense counsel. The rules thus permit the witness' credibility to be tested in the crucible of cross-examination. In this instance the appellant vigorously attacked Maisonet's motives at trial, and the resultant credibility choice was for the jury, not for this court. ³ See, e.g., O'Brien, 14 F.3d at 706.

3. Relatedly, the appellant bewails certain contradictions in Maisonet's testimony, concluding that these contradictions rendered his testimony inherently unreliable. The asserted contradictions are mostly of peripheral interest; for example, Maisonet at one point suggested that the appellant invited Guzman to join the conspiracy, yet mentioned, on other occasions, that the conspirators had retained Guzman's services before the appellant hove into view. ⁴ Court cases however, are not choreographed with the precision of a ballet. Some degree of contradiction is commonplace and, for the most part, the judicial system relies upon devices such as the cross-examiner's vigor, the jurors' common sense, and the trial judge's practiced intuition to separate grain from chaff. Those checks and balances were fully in play here and, on this scumbled record, we think that the jury could reasonably have believed Maisonet's testimony despite the asserted contradictions. See, e.g., United States v. Romero, 32 F.3d 641, 646 (1st Cir.1994) (explaining that the court of appeals "will not secondguess the jury's decision to credit testimony which contains an inconsistency"); see also United States v. Johnson, 55 F.3d 976, 979 (4th Cir.1995); United States v. Jackson, 959 F.2d 81, 82-83 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 852, 113 S.Ct. 155, 121 L.Ed.2d 105 (1992).

We add an eschatocol of sorts. Rejecting the appellant's insufficiency challenge comes more readily in this case because the evidence against him went far beyond the fingerpointing of a turncoat. Figueroa's testimony was little short of...