U.S. v. Medina-Martinez, 03-1503.

• Decision Date: 06 January 2005
• Docket Number: No. 03-1503.,03-1503.
• Citation: 396 F.3d 1
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Julio A. MEDINA-MARTINEZ, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 1

396 F.3d 1

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Julio A. MEDINA-MARTINEZ, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 03-1503.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard November 12, 2004.

Decided January 6, 2005.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Donald R. Furman, Jr., for appellant.

Nathan J. Schulte, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom H.S. Garcia, United States Attorney, Nelson Perez-Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney, German A. Rieckehoff, Assistant United States Attorney, were on brief for appellee.

Before TORRUELLA and HOWARD, Circuit Judges, CARTER,^* Senior District Judge.

CARTER, Senior District Judge.

Defendant Julio A. Medina-Martinez ("Medina") appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico convicting him, after a jury trial, of one count of conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 7(3), 113(a)(3), and 371, and one count of assault, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 7(3), and 113(a)(3). For the reasons set forth below, we affirm Medina's conviction.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Because this appeal follows a conviction, we recite the facts in the light most favorable to the verdict. United States v. Gonzalez-Maldonado, 115 F.3d 9, 12 (1st Cir.1997).

At the time of the events in question, Medina was incarcerated inside the 3-Bravo unit at the Metropolitan Detention Center ("MDC") in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. The 3-Bravo unit is a two story cell block configured in the shape of a "U". The cells form the straight sides of the "U" and the middle of the "U" contains the dining area. The cell blocks on the second floor are reached by stairway.

On February 5, 2002, Gabriel Clemente, a federal corrections officer, heard screaming coming from the dining area of 3-Bravo. Upon investigation, Officer Clemente found inmate Luis Mercado-Fantauzzi beating fellow inmate Steve Parramore with a sock containing a combination lock. Parramore was screaming, unable to fight back. Officer Clemente restrained Mercado, handcuffed him, and passed him to other officers.

At the same time that Parramore was assaulted in the dining area with the sock and combination lock, inmate Luis Medina-Colon ("Medina-Colon") was similarly assaulted in his second floor cell with a sock and combination lock. Appellant Medina and co-defendant Juan Zuniga-Bruno gave Medina-Colon three blows to the head and exited his cell. Immediately following the attack, Zuniga descended the stairs and walked to the dining area. Medina-Colon, his shirt wrapped around his head to control bleeding, walked toward the stairs, pleading to be taken to a hospital.

With Officer Clemente's attention now directed to a bleeding Medina-Colon, Zuniga and inmate Jose Gaztambide-Alicea resumed the assault on Steve Parramore, this time punching him in the face.

While the assault on Parramore was ongoing, or immediately thereafter, inmate Peter Martinez began walking up the stairs to his cell on the second floor. Upon seeing Medina-Colon coming down the stairs, covered with blood, Martinez turned around to get away from the mayhem, but was stopped at the bottom of the stairs by inmate Jose Cosme-Rios. Cosme struggled with Martinez and eventually threw him to the floor. Gaztambide and Zuniga subsequently joined the assault on Martinez and proceeded to hit and kick him while he lay on the floor.

After order was restored to the 3-Bravo Unit, corrections officers recovered two socks outside of cell 202, one with a big hole in it and one containing two padlocks. Another sock containing a lock was recovered in the dining hall area.

On April 25, 2002, a grand jury indicted Mercado, Zuniga, Gaztambide, Cosme, and Medina on conspiracy and assault charges resulting from the incidents in 3-Bravo. Prior to trial, defendants Gaztambide and Cosme pled guilty and the district court accepted the pleas. On the eve of trial, defendant Mercado expressed his intention to change his plea to guilty. After a five-day trial, during which all three victims of the prison assault testified on behalf of the government, the jury found Medina guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit assault and one count of assault on Medina-Colon. ¹ The jury also returned a guilty verdict against defendant Zuniga on three counts: conspiracy to commit assault, assault on Steve Parramore and assault on Medina-Colon. The district court sentenced defendant Medina to a fifty-two month prison term, to be served consecutively with his sentence imposed in a prior unrelated criminal proceeding. This appeal followed. ²

II. ANALYSIS

On appeal, Medina raises two challenges to his conviction. First, Medina contends that no rational jury could have found the existence of a conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt. Second, Medina asserts that the district court committed plain error in failing to adequately instruct the jury at the close of evidence of Medina's Fifth Amendment privileges.

A. Sufficiency of the Evidence

Medina moved for judgment of acquittal pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 29 after the government rested and again at the close of evidence.³ The district court denied the motions. We review Rule 29 determinations de novo. United States v. Moran, 312 F.3d 480, 487 (1st Cir.2002). More specifically, we examine "whether any rational factfinder could have found that the evidence presented at trial, together with all reasonable inferences, viewed in the light most favorable to the government, established each element of the particular offense beyond a reasonable doubt." United States v. Richard, 234 F.3d 763, 767 (1st Cir.2000) (quoting United States v. Gabriele, 63 F.3d 61, 67 (1st Cir.1995)); see also United States v. Hernandez, 218 F.3d 58, 64 n. 4 (challenges to denial of Rule 29 motion and to sufficiency of evidence raise the same question).

Medina bears a heavy burden in arguing insufficiency of the evidence. "An appellate court plays a very circumscribed role in gauging the sufficiency of the evidentiary foundation upon which a criminal conviction rests. The [C]ourt of [A]ppeals neither weighs the credibility of the witnesses nor attempts to assess whether the prosecution succeeded in eliminating every possible theory consistent with the defendant's innocence." United States v. Noah, 130 F.3d 490, 494 (1st Cir.1997). We "defer, within reason, to inferences formulated by the jury in the light of its collective understanding of human behavior in the circumstances revealed by the evidence." United States v. Guerrero, 114 F.3d 332, 339 (1st Cir.1997). Accordingly, our inquiry is only whether "the guilty verdict finds support in a `plausible rendition of the record.' "United States v. Echeverri, 982 F.2d 675, 677 (1st Cir.1993) (quoting United States v. Ortiz, 966 F.2d 707, 711 (1st Cir.1992)).

To prove conspiracy in a criminal case, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an agreement existed to commit the underlying substantive offense, and that the defendant elected to join the agreement, intending that the underlying offense be committed. See United States v. Gomez, 255 F.3d 31, 35 (1st Cir.2001); United States v. Barnes, 244 F.3d 172, 175 (1st Cir.2001); United States v. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d 1161, 1173 (1st Cir.1993).⁴ "The conspiratorial agreement need not be explicit and the proof thereof need not be direct." Gomez, 255 F.3d at 35; see also Sepulveda, 15 F.3d at 1173 (explaining that "the agreement may be express or tacit and may be proved by direct or circumstantial evidence"). Proof of Medina's involvement in the conspiracy "may consist of indirect evidence, including reasonable inferences drawn from attendant circumstances." Echeverri, 982 F.2d at 679. "In determining whether a single conspiracy exists, we have considered whether the participants shared a common goal." United States v. Rivera-Ruiz, 244 F.3d 263, 268 (1st Cir.2001). "The jury may infer an agreement circumstantially by evidence of, inter alia, a common purpose ..., overlap of participants, and interdependence of elements in the overall plan." United States v. Martinez-Medina, 279 F.3d 105, 113-14 (1st Cir.2002). Bearing in mind the above recited standards, we turn to the evidence contained in the record.

Medina disputes the existence of a conspiracy, arguing that "there are no facts and no circumstances, other than fanciful imaginings, that lead a rational person to logically conclude that Mr. Medina-Martinez's assault on Luis Medina-Colon was part of an overarching conspiracy involving four other perpetrators in assaults on two other victims." App. Br. at 30. Medina relies on trial testimony from Officer Clemente that assaults are regular occurrences in prisons and "most of the time when the inmates assault other inmates with a sock, what they put [in the sock] is a combination lock or something heavy...." Transcript of October 30, 2002, at 92. Medina urges us to conclude that because these types of assaults are commonplace in the prison environment, a rational jury could not find the existence of an agreement.

In contrast, the government claims there was ample evidence to support the conspiracy conviction. We agree. Although there is no evidence of an explicit agreement,⁵ the exceptional factual circumstances of the case are clearly sufficient for a finding of a tacit agreement. The assaults on Medina-Colon and Parramore occurred on the same day, at approximately the same time, all within the 3-Bravo unit of the MDC. The attackers used the same weapons, socks containing padlocks, and both victims were attacked from behind. ⁶ The testimony indicates that Medina and Zuniga together arrived at Medina-Colon's cell and jointly assaulted him, each using a lock and sock. This alone is sufficient to find an agreement for the assault on Medina-Colon. The evidence, however, also provides ample support for the jury's conclusion that Medina was a participant in a larger conspiracy.

Appellant's assertion that the attack on Medina-Colon was an isolated incident is unavailing. In...