United States v. de Leon-De La Rosa
| Decision Date | 02 November 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-2067,No. 19-2046,19-2046 |
| Citation | 17 F.4th 175 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Noel DE LEON-DE LA ROSA, Defendant, Appellant. United States of America, Appellee, v. Juan Batista Johnson-Debel, Defendant, Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Fernando O. Zambrana-Avilés, with whom Colon Serrano Zambrana, LLC was on brief, for appellant Noel de Leon-De la Rosa.
Kendys Pimentel-Soto, with whom Kendys Pimentel-Soto Law Office LLC was on brief, for appellant Juan Batista Johnson-Debel.
Mariana E. Bauzá-Almonte, Chief Appellate Division Attorney for the Department of Justice, with whom Gregory B. Conner, Assistant United States Attorney, and W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney were on brief, for appellee.
Before Kayatta and Barron, Circuit Judges, and O'Toole,* District Judge.
Noel de Leon-De la Rosa ("De Leon") and Juan Batista Johnson-Debel ("Johnson") challenge their respective federal convictions in the District of Puerto Rico, as well as the resulting sentences. Those convictions are for destruction of a controlled substance while on a vessel, and conspiracy to destroy a controlled substance while on a vessel. Their prosecutions followed their indictment for these offenses -- as well as for others for which they also were convicted but that are not at issue here -- after U.S. Customs and Border Patrol ("CBP") agents in April 2017 interdicted off the coast of Puerto Rico the small boat that De Leon and Johnson were on at the time. We vacate the convictions that Johnson and De Leon each challenge, though we vacate Johnson's for different reasons than those that lead us to vacate De Leon's.
The following facts are not in dispute. On the night of April 20, 2017, De Leon and Johnson were on a small boat about thirty miles off the northern coast of Puerto Rico, traveling southeast. The boat had no running lights.
At around 9:00 p.m., a CBP agent patrolling those waters by airplane detected the boat on the plane's forward-looking infrared camera. Suspecting drug smuggling, the agent called the Coast Guard and the CPB's marine interdiction unit was dispatched to the boat's location.
The unit interdicted the boat just before midnight. After boarding the vessel, members of the unit determined that there was no contraband on board. CBP agents from the unit then detained Johnson and De Leon and brought the two of them -- along with the boat -- to the CBP facility in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Once onshore at the CBP facility, at around 2:00 a.m., Johnson was interviewed by Francisco Calderón, an agent with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations. Calderón read Johnson the warnings required under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966),1 and Johnson then answered questions that Calderón put to him about what had transpired aboard the boat. Johnson had also been interviewed immediately after the interdiction by Agent Miguel Borges.
The following morning, CBP Canine Enforcement Officer Adriel Castillo brought Honzo, a drug-detection dog, to inspect the boat. As Castillo walked the dog around the boat, Honzo "alerted" to the "[p]ossible contamination of narcotics."
That same day, Maritime Law Enforcement Specialist Matthew Tommie from the U.S. Coast Guard used a machine called an Ionscan 400B to test swabs taken from the vessel. The scan revealed no trace residue of narcotics.
Johnson and De Leon were indicted in the District of Puerto Rico on May 18, 2017, in an eight-count indictment. The indictment set forth the following charges against each defendant:
The indictment also set forth two other counts. Count Seven charged Johnson alone with improper entry by a noncitizen in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a)(1). Count Eight charged De Leon alone with illegal reentry of a removed noncitizen in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) and (b)(1).
Before trial, De Leon moved for severance. He did so on the ground that Johnson's statements to Calderón and Borges following the interdiction, if admitted in a joint trial with him, would violate De Leon's rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as interpreted in Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968). The District Court denied the motion. De Leon moved for reconsideration, which the District Court denied.
De Leon then renewed his request at trial to exclude Johnson's statements to Agent Calderón based on Bruton. The District Court once again denied the request, explaining that "so long as [the confession] is sanitized then it's admissible." In charging the jury, the District Court instructed that the "statements ... made by ... Johnson [to Calderón]. . . can only be considered as evidence against [Johnson]" and "cannot be considered as evidence against [De Leon]."
At both the conclusion of the government's case and the close of evidence, the defendants argued that judgments of acquittal should be entered as to Counts One through Six for each defendant because the government had failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The District Court denied the motions.
The jury convicted Johnson and De Leon separately on Counts Seven and Eight, which set forth their respective immigration charges, and Counts Five and Six, which set forth their respective charges for destruction of property subject to forfeiture while aboard a vessel and conspiracy to commit the same offense. The jury acquitted both defendants of Counts One through Four, which set forth charges against each of them relating to possession with the intent to distribute a controlled substance. The jury verdicts entered on June 24, 2019.
Johnson and De Leon filed written motions for judgments of acquittal under Rule 29 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure as to Counts Five and Six. The motions were denied.
The case proceeded to sentencing. Johnson was sentenced to fifty-seven months of imprisonment on his convictions for Counts Five and Six and three months' for his conviction on Count Seven, to be served consecutively for a total sentence of sixty months'. De Leon was sentenced to seventy-two months of imprisonment on his convictions on Counts Five and Six and twelve months' for his conviction on Count Eight, to be served concurrently.
Judgment entered against each defendant on September 25, 2019, and each filed a timely notice of appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A)(I). We have jurisdiction over their appeals of their convictions under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and over their appeals of their sentences under 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a).
We begin with the defendants' challenges to the District Court's denial of their motions for judgments of acquittal as to their convictions on Counts Five and Six. As we have explained, the latter count was for destruction of property subject to forfeiture while on a vessel, and the former count was for conspiracy to commit the same. See United States v. Godin, 534 F.3d 51, 61 (1st Cir. 2008). De Leon and Johnson each contends that the District Court erred because the evidence in the record does not suffice to support a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as to either offense.
Our review of the defendants' sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenges is de novo. See United States v. Burgos-Montes, 786 F.3d 92, 112 (1st Cir. 2015). In undertaking this review, we must consider the evidence "in the light most favorable to the verdict," United States v. Stewart-Carrasquillo, 997 F.3d 408, 417 (1st Cir. 2021), mindful that "both direct and circumstantial evidence, whether alone or in concert, can sustain a conviction," United States v. Clough, 978 F.3d 810, 816 (1st Cir. 2020).
We have cautioned that in reviewing a sufficiency challenge we may not "stack inference upon inference in order to uphold the jury's verdict." United States v. Guzman-Ortiz, 975 F.3d 43, 55 (1st Cir. 2020) (quoting United States v. Valerio, 48 F.3d 58, 64 (1st Cir. 1995). At the same time, we also have explained that we "may not pursue a divide and conquer strategy," id. (internal quotation marks omitted), that would isolate each piece of evidence without giving due weight to the picture that it helps to create when the evidence is considered as a whole. Instead, we must consider the evidence "in its totality," id. at 54, as the ultimate question that we must answer "is not whether a reasonable jury could have acquitted the defendant, but rather whether a reasonable jury ‘could have found that the government proved each element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.'" Stewart-Carrasquillo, 997 F.3d at 418 (quoting United States v. Paz-Alvarez, 799 F.3d 12, 25 (1st Cir. 2015)...
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