United States v. Jimenez Recio

• Decision Date: 21 January 2003
• Docket Number: No. 01-1184.,01-1184.
• Citation: 537 U.S. 270
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. JIMENEZ RECIO ET AL.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

537 U.S. 270

UNITED STATES v. JIMENEZ RECIO ET AL.

No. 01-1184.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued November 12, 2002.

Decided January 21, 2003.

Ninth Circuit precedent states that a conspiracy terminates when "`there is affirmative evidence of ... defeat of the object of the conspiracy.'" United States v. Cruz, 127 F. 3d 791, 795 (emphasis added). Here, police stopped a truck carrying illegal drugs, seized the drugs, and, with the help of the truck's drivers, set up a sting. The drivers paged a contact who said he would call someone to get the truck. Respondents Jimenez Recio and Lopez-Meza appeared in a car, and the former drove away in the truck, the latter in the car. After a jury convicted them of conspiring to possess and to distribute unlawful drugs, the judge ordered a new trial because, under Cruz, the jury could not convict respondents unless it believed they had joined the conspiracy before the police seized the drugs, and it had not been so instructed. The new jury convicted respondents, who appealed. The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the evidence presented at the second trial was insufficient to show that respondents had joined the conspiracy before the drug seizure.

Held: A conspiracy does not automatically terminate simply because the Government has defeated its object. Thus, the Ninth Circuit is incorrect in its view that a conspiracy ends through "defeat" when the Government intervenes, making the conspiracy's goals impossible to achieve, even if the conspirators do not know that the Government has intervened and are totally unaware that the conspiracy is bound to fail. First, the Ninth Circuit's rule is inconsistent with basic conspiracy law. The agreement to commit an unlawful act is "a distinct evil," which "may exist and be punished whether or not the substantive crime ensues." Salinas v. United States, 522 U. S. 52, 65. The conspiracy poses a "threat to the public" over and above the threat of the substantive crime's commission—both because the "[c]ombination in crime makes more likely the commission of [other] crimes" and because it "decreases the probability that the individuals involved will depart from their path of criminality." E. g., Callanan v. United States, 364 U. S. 587, 593-594. Where police have frustrated a conspiracy's specific objective but conspirators (unaware of that fact) have neither abandoned the conspiracy nor withdrawn, these special conspiracy-related dangers remain, as does the conspiracy's essence—the agreement to commit the crime. Second, this Court's view is that of almost all courts and commentators but for the Ninth Circuit. No other Federal Court of Appeals has adopted the Ninth Circuit's rule, and three have explicitly rejected it. The Cruz majority argued that the traditional rule threatened "endless" potential liability. But the majority's example illustrating that point—a sting in which police instructed an arrested conspirator to call all of his acquaintances to come and help him, with the Government obtaining convictions of those who did so—draws its persuasive force from the fact that it bears certain resemblances to entrapment, which the law independently forbids. At the same time, the Cruz rule would reach well beyond arguable police misbehavior, potentially threatening the use of properly run law enforcement sting operations. See Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 208-209. Ninth Circuit precedent, whereby the language "`the defendant ... defeated its purpose'" in United States v. Krasn, 614 F. 2d 1229, 1236, was changed to "a conspiracy is presumed to continue until there is ... defeat of the [conspiracy's purpose]" in United States v. Bloch, 696 F. 2d 1213, 1215 (emphasis added), may help to explain the Cruz rule's origin. But, since the Ninth Circuit's earlier cases nowhere give any reason for the critical language change, they cannot help to justify it. Pp. 274-277.

258 F. 3d 1069, reversed and remanded.

BREYER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and O'CONNOR, SCALIA, KENNEDY, SOUTER, THOMAS, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, post, p. 278.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT.

Deputy Solicitor General Dreeben argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Olson, Assistant Attorney General Chertoff, James A. Feldman, and Jonathan L. Marcus.

M. Karl Shurtliff argued the cause for respondents and filed a brief for respondent Jimenez Recio. Thomas A. Sullivan filed a brief for respondent Lopez-Meza.^*

JUSTICE BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.

We here consider the validity of a Ninth Circuit rule that a conspiracy ends automatically when the object of the conspiracy becomes impossible to achieve—when, for example, the Government frustrates a drug conspiracy's objective by seizing the drugs that its members have agreed to distribute. In our view, conspiracy law does not contain any such "automatic termination" rule.

I

In United States v. Cruz, 127 F. 3d 791, 795 (CA9 1997), the Ninth Circuit, following the language of an earlier case, United States v. Castro, 972 F. 2d 1107, 1112 (CA9 1992), wrote that a conspiracy terminates when "`there is affirmative evidence of abandonment, withdrawal, disavowal or defeat of the object of the conspiracy.'" (Emphasis added.) It considered the conviction of an individual who, the Government had charged, joined a conspiracy (to distribute drugs) after the Government had seized the drugs in question. The Circuit found that the Government's seizure of the drugs guaranteed the "defeat" of the conspiracy's objective, namely, drug distribution. The Circuit held that the conspiracy had terminated with that "defeat," i. e., when the Government seized the drugs. Hence the individual, who had joined the conspiracy after that point, could not be convicted as a conspiracy member.

In this case the lower courts applied the Cruz rule to similar facts: On November 18, 1997, police stopped a truck in Nevada. They found, and seized, a large stash of illegal drugs. With the help of the truck's two drivers, they set up a sting. The Government took the truck to the drivers' destination, a mall in Idaho. The drivers paged a contact and described the truck's location. The contact said that he would call someone to get the truck. And three hours later, the two defendants, Francisco Jimenez Recio and Adrian Lopez-Meza, appeared in a car. Jimenez Recio drove away in the truck; Lopez-Meza drove the car away in a similar direction. Police stopped both vehicles and arrested both men.

A federal grand jury indicted Jimenez Recio, Lopez-Meza, and the two original truck drivers, charging them with having conspired, together and with others, to possess and to distribute unlawful drugs. A jury convicted all four. But the trial judge then decided that the jury instructions had been erroneous in respect to Jimenez Recio and Lopez-Meza. The judge noted that the Ninth Circuit, in Cruz, had held that the Government could not prosecute drug conspiracy defendants unless they had joined the conspiracy before the Government seized the drugs. See Cruz, supra, at 795-796. That holding, as applied here, meant that the jury could not convict Jimenez Recio and Lopez-Meza unless the jury believed they had joined the conspiracy before the Nevada police stopped the truck and seized the drugs. The judge ordered a new trial where the jury would be instructed to that effect. The new jury convicted the two men once again.

Jimenez Recio and Lopez-Meza appealed. They pointed out that, given Cruz, the jury had to find that they had joined the conspiracy before the Nevada stop, and they claimed that the evidence was insufficient at both trials to warrant any such jury finding. The Ninth Circuit panel, by a vote of 2 to 1, agreed. All three panel members accepted Cruz as binding law. Two members concluded that the evidence presented at the second trial was not sufficient to show that the defendants had joined the conspiracy before the Nevada drug seizure. One of the two wrote that the evidence at the first trial was not sufficient either, a circumstance she believed independently warranted reversal. The third member, dissenting, believed that the evidence at both trials adequately demonstrated preseizure membership. He added that he, like the other panel members, was bound by Cruz, but he wrote that in his view Cruz was "totally inconsistent with long established and appropriate principles of the law of conspiracy," and he urged the Circuit to overrule it en banc "at the earliest opportunity." 258 F. 3d 1069, 1079, n. 2 (2001) (opinion of Gould, J.).

The Government sought certiorari. It noted that the Ninth Circuit's holding in this case was premised upon the legal rule enunciated in Cruz. And it asked us to decide the rule's validity, i. e., to decide whether "a conspiracy ends as a matter of law when the government frustrates its objective." Pet. for Cert. (I). We agreed to consider that question.

II

In Cruz, the Ninth Circuit held that a conspiracy continues "`until there is affirmative evidence of abandonment, withdrawal, disavowal or defeat of the object of the conspiracy.'" 127 F. 3d, at 795 (quoting Castro, supra, at 1112). The critical portion of this statement is the last segment, that a conspiracy ends once there has been "`defeat of [its] object.'" The Circuit's holdings make clear that the phrase means that the conspiracy ends through "defeat" when the Government intervenes, making the conspiracy's goals impossible to achieve, even if the conspirators do not know that the Government has intervened and are totally unaware that the conspiracy is bound to fail. In our view, this statement of the law is incorrect. A conspiracy does not automatically terminate simply because the Government, unbeknownst to some of the conspirators, has "defeat[ed]" the...