United States v. Martínez

• Citation: 994 F.3d 1
• Decision Date: 07 April 2021
• Docket Number: No. 17-1924,17-1924
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Sally López MARTÍNEZ, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

994 F.3d 1

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Sally López MARTÍNEZ, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 17-1924

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

April 7, 2021

Linda Backiel for appellant.

Thomas F. Klumper, Assistant United States Attorney, Senior Appellate Counsel, with whom W. Stephen Muldrow, United States Attorney, and Mariana E. Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate Division, were on brief, for appellee.

Before Barron and Selya, Circuit Judges, and Katzmann, Judge.^*

BARRON, Circuit Judge.

Sally López Martínez ("López") and nine others were indicted in 2015 in the District of Puerto Rico on various charges relating to public corruption in the Commonwealth. The twenty-five-count indictment included six counts that charged López with various federal offenses pertaining to her actions as an official in the executive branch of the government of Puerto Rico. López ultimately was tried jointly on those six counts with three other individuals who also were charged in the indictment, one of whom was charged in some of the same counts as López as well as in separate counts and two of whom were charged only in separate counts. López was convicted of all six counts that she faced. She now argues that her convictions were not supported by sufficient evidence. She also challenges them on a variety of other grounds, including several relating to the fact that she was tried jointly. We conclude that the evidence in the record does suffice to support her convictions, but we agree with her contention that the District Court's refusal to sever her trial from that of one of her codefendants was an abuse of discretion. In consequence, we hold that each of her convictions must be vacated.

I.

The following facts are not in dispute. In January of 2013, López was nominated by the then-Governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro García Padilla ("García"), to the position of administrator of the Puerto Rico Workforce Development Administration ("ADL"). She held the position of interim administrator at ADL until she was confirmed for the permanent post in June 2013.

During López's tenure as the interim administrator and then as the administrator, ADL held job fairs to bring together unemployed or soon-to-be-unemployed workers and prospective employers. López's responsibilities at the helm of ADL included coordinating the job fairs.

Government contractors carried out much of the work involved in holding the fairs. During López's time running the agency, ADL awarded contracts relating to the fairs to entities affiliated with Anaudi Hernández Pérez ("Hernández"). Hernández had been a fundraiser for García's gubernatorial campaign and had helped bring about López's nomination to be the administrator of ADL. He also provided various gifts to López while she was running ADL and while that agency was awarding contracts to entities that were affiliated with him. During roughly the same time period, both the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority ("AAA")¹ and the Puerto Rico House of Representatives awarded contracts to entities affiliated with Hernández.

In November 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the offices of 3 Comm Global, which was an entity affiliated with Hernández. Thereafter, on December 2, 2015, López, Hernández, and a number of others were charged in a twenty-five-count indictment in the District of Puerto Rico.

The indictment included charges on various federal offenses relating to public corruption involving the awarding of contracts to entities affiliated with Hernández by ADL, AAA, and the Puerto Rico House of Representatives. López was charged in six of the indictment's counts. Hernández was charged in sixteen of them. The six counts that charged López were for: (1) conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 to commit honest services wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346 or federal programs bribery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666 (Count One); (2) conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1349 (Count Two); (3) honest services wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346 (Counts Three, Four, and Five); and (4) receipt of a bribe by an agent of an organization receiving federal funds in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B) (Count Eleven).

The indictment charged eight individuals in addition to López and Hernández. Two were business partners of Hernández -- Javier Muñiz Alvarez ("Muñiz"), a de facto part-owner of JM Professional & Training Group, Inc. ("JMP"); and Carlos Luna Cruz, who was the face of JMP and signed all of the firm's contracts. Three were employees of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives -- Xavier González Calderón ("González"), the Administrator for the House; Víctor Burgos Cotto ("Burgos"), the Director of Technology; and Glenn Rivera Pizarro ("Rivera"), Special Assistant for Administration. Two more worked for AAA -- Ivonne Falcón Nieves ("Ivonne Falcón") was AAA's Vice President and Sonia Barreto Colón ("Barreto") was the agency's Purchasing Director. The last of the eight others named in the indictment was Marielis Falcón Nieves ("Marielis Falcón"), Ivonne Falcón's sister, who was not a public official.

In February of 2016, Muñiz filed a motion under Rule 14² and Rule 8(b)³ of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. He contended under Rule 8(b) that the counts that he faced had been improperly joined with those of others charged in the indictment, though he did not contend that the counts that charged López were improperly joined with his counts. He also contended under Rule 14 that his trial should be severed from that of his codefendants, including López.

López moved to join Muñiz's motion, though seemingly only with respect to his claim of error concerning improper joinder pursuant to Rule 8(b). The District Court ultimately permitted her to do so. It also permitted Barreto, Marielis Falcón, and Rivera to join Muñiz's motion.

While Muñiz's motion was pending, Hernández pleaded guilty on February 18, 2016, to all the charges against him except for those set forth in Counts Sixteen (which alleged extortion in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951 ) and Eighteen (which alleged money laundering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h) ). Hernández was not tried, however, on either of those counts.

Then, on April 21, 2016, the District Court denied the pending motion by Muñiz across the board. The District Court concluded that there was no improper joinder under Rule 8(b), because, taking the allegations in the indictment to be true, "the acts charged [were] part of an over-arching conspiracy" common to all the counts, the purpose of which "was for the defendants to utilize the public officials in positions within the government of Puerto Rico to benefit and enrich themselves through bribery." The District Court also rejected the request for severance under Rule 14 because it "d[id] not clear the high hurdle set in the caselaw," and noted that any risk of spillover prejudice from conducting a single trial could be cured by jury instructions.

Over the next few months, five of the remaining codefendants pleaded guilty. That left only López, the Falcón sisters, and Rivera to be tried together.

Following the denial of the severance motion that Muñiz had first filed, López and the three other remaining defendants repeatedly moved for separate trials, including even after their joint trial had begun. These motions, too, were denied. After twenty-nine days of trial, each of these four codefendants -- including López -- was found guilty on all the charges that he or she faced.

Judgment entered against López on August 31, 2017. She filed a timely notice of appeal on September 13, 2017. See Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A).

II.

One of the grounds on which López challenges her convictions is that they were based on insufficient evidence.⁴ We begin our analysis of her challenges to her convictions on that ground, because, insofar as the sufficiency challenges that she brings have merit, they would preclude her from being retried for the underlying charges. See United States v. Godin, 534 F.3d 51, 61 (1st Cir. 2008).

In considering a challenge to a conviction based on the sufficiency of the evidence to support it, "the relevant question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." United States v. Woodward, 149 F.3d 46, 56 (1st Cir. 1998) (quoting Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979) ). We look to "the totality of the evidence, both direct and circumstantial." Id. (quoting United States v. Czubinski, 106 F.3d 1069, 1073 (1st Cir. 1997) ). We will reverse the conviction only if no reasonable juror could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of all the elements of the offense of conviction. See United States v. Alejandro-Montañez, 778 F.3d 352, 357 (1st Cir. 2015). Our review is de novo. United States v. Negrón-Sostre, 790 F.3d 295, 307 (1st Cir. 2015).

We begin by considering López's challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence as to five of her six convictions -- namely, her convictions on Counts Three through Five and Count Eleven, each of which was for a substantive offense, and on Count Two, which was for a conspiracy offense. After explaining why we conclude that the evidence suffices to support each of those five convictions, we then take up her challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence as to her one remaining conviction, which was on Count One and which like Count Two also concerned a conspiracy offense. There, too, we reject her contention that the evidence does not suffice to support the conviction.

A.

To convict López on Count Eleven, which was for federal programs bribery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666, the government was required to prove, among other things, that López accepted a thing of value while "intending to be influenced" by...