United States v. Maryea

• Decision Date: 15 January 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11–2239.,11–2239.
• Citation: 704 F.3d 55
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Lynette MARYEA, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

704 F.3d 55

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Lynette MARYEA, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 11–2239.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Jan. 15, 2013.

W. Daniel Deane, with whom Nixon Peabody LLP, was on brief for appellant.

Seth R. Aframe, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom John P. Kacavas, United States Attorney, was on brief for appellee.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, TORRUELLA and BOUDIN,^* Circuit Judges.

TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge.

Defendant–Appellant Lynette Maryea (“Maryea” or “Defendant”) was charged with one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to unlawfully distribute Oxycodone, Oxycontin, Suboxone, Lorazepam and Ativan in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846. On August 18, 2010, a jury found Maryea guilty on that count. She now appeals her conviction on various grounds. Maryea first challenges the district court's denial of her Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3161, claims in her motion to dismiss on the basis that the exclusion of time for her co-defendant's continuance was unreasonable as to her. Maryea also asserts that the district court's failure to order a mental competency evaluation after she sustained an injury during trial was an abuse of discretion. Finally, she argues that the government's evidence at trial established a prejudicial variance from the charges listed in the superseding indictment against her. After careful consideration, we affirm in all respects.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

Maryea was originally charged with fourteen co-defendants for their collective involvement in a scheme to unlawfully procure, smuggle into and distribute narcotic controlled substances within the Rockingham County House of Corrections (“RCHOC”) in Brentwood, New Hampshire. Since Maryea's appeal follows a conviction, the facts associated with that scheme are recounted “in the light most favorable to the verdict.” United States v. Poulin, 631 F.3d 17, 18 (1st Cir.2011).

In March 2009, Richard Woods (“Woods”)—Maryea's co-defendant in the original indictment and the only remaining co-defendant with Maryea in the superseding indictment—began his incarceration at RCHOC. Woods and his girlfriend, Noreen Durham (“Durham”), both suffered from opiate addictions, and Durham was prescribed Suboxone, an opiate blocker that assists with withdrawal symptoms. Following his incarceration, Woods regularly asked Durham to procure Suboxone for him. Durham testified to having made three deliveries of Suboxone to RCHOC for Woods through a delivery scheme involving placing Suboxone and tobacco into a baggie, putting the baggie inside a Dunkin' Donuts coffee cup, and dropping the coffee cup in a pre-designated trash can in front of a nursing home approximately 100 yards from the jail. The nursing home contained a laundry room where designated inmates (“trustees”) were employed. In July 2009, Durham informed Woods in recorded phone conversations that she would not make any further deliveries of Suboxone outside the nursing home for fear of getting caught and violating her probation for a conviction unrelated to this scheme.

Troy Muder (“Muder”)—another co-defendant in the original indictment and Maryea's boyfriend—had been committed at RCHOC to serve a six-month sentence, and became Woods' cellblock mate on July 8, 2009. Shortly after his incarceration at RCHOC, Maryea made an unsuccessful attempt to smuggle painkillers into RCHOC by dropping pills off in a dump truck parked on the premises of the jail near the nursing home. However, in early July 2009, Maryea reunited with a former acquaintance, Justin Knowles (“Knowles”), who knew Muder and had recently been released from RCHOC. Knowles advised Maryea of a “better way” to smuggle drugs into the jail, namely, by packaging drugs—tobacco, Oxycodone, Oxycontin, Xanax, and other pills—into “slugs,” or containers made from the tip of a latex glove, and dropping off the slugs with the “trustees” working in the laundry department in the nursing home.

Maryea largely procured the drugs included in the slugs by filling fraudulent prescriptions at various pharmacies after stealing blank prescription pads with Knowles and Kerry Noonan (“Noonan”), another co-conspirator. Maryea also created a prescription template on her computer to generate false prescriptions for obtaining the narcotics. Once the drugs were procured, Maryea, Knowles and others would package them into slugs and drive them to the RCHOC facility; Knowles would deliver them to co-conspirator trustees in the laundry department at the nursing home. Between July and September 2009, six such deliveries were accomplished into RCHOC. Muder would receive the slugs once they were delivered to the trustees and smuggled inside the jail, and he would use the pills and tobacco for his own consumption or as currency for bartering within the jail.

On August 14, 2009, after Durham informed Woods that she would no longer be making Suboxone deliveries, Woods instructed her in a recorded phone conversation to call Maryea, tell her that he, Woods, “owe[s] her boy” Muder, and deliver the Suboxone to Maryea. Maryea would then, in turn, accomplish the Suboxone delivery to RCHOC. Durham delivered Suboxone pills to Maryea three times in August 2009, and on one occasion, when delivering the pills to Maryea's home, she met Knowles.

On September 20, 2009, Noonan and Knowles were arrested after Noonan drove Knowles to RCHOC and Knowles entered the laundry room of the nursing home. Upon their arrest, a slug was seized from Knowles containing fifteen 15–milligram Oxycodone pills, three 30–milligram Oxycodone pills, twelve Suboxone pills, and sixteen Xanax pills. A pill bottle was also seized from Noonan's purse which contained five 30–milligram Oxycodone pills.

B. Indictments and Pre–Trial Motion Practice

On December 16, 2009, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against Maryea and fourteen other individuals for conspiring to possess with intent to distribute and to unlawfully distribute Oxycodone, Oxycontin, Suboxone, Lorazepam, and Ativan from July 2009 to September 20, 2009, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846 (“Original Indictment”). Following her indictment and detention, Maryea filed motions for release and for release on conditions, indicating that she suffered from bipolar disorder and that she had a “significant medical history which requires medical treatment for pain.” During hearings on these motions, Maryea repeatedly complained about back and neck pain that she claimed was not being addressed by jail officials, and it was also adduced that Maryea had spent time in a state psychiatric hospital for her bipolar disorder.

On July 16, 2010, Woods filed a motion to continue (“Woods' First MTC”), and Maryea objected, providing speedy trial calculations. The district court granted Woods' motion after Maryea's counsel “expressly informed the court that Maryea does not request or desire severance of her case.” In August 2010, a grand jury returned a superseding indictment (“Superseding Indictment”) charging only defendants Maryea and Woods with the same conspiracy as in the Original Indictment, but stating that the conspiracy began in April 2009 instead of July 2009.

During Maryea's arraignment on the Superseding Indictment, the government moved the district court to order a mental health evaluation at a federal medical facility to assess her competency to stand trial. Maryea objected to the government's motion as she had already procured her own mental health evaluation, and the examining physician had concluded that she was competent to stand trial. The district court denied the government's motion for the reasons stated in Maryea's objection.

On September 1, 2010, Woods filed his second motion to continue (“Woods' Second MTC”), requesting a delay in his trial date due to: (1) a companion state matter pending in the Rockingham County Superior Court with a trial scheduled for October 6, 2010, the outcome of which could affect Woods' plea negotiations in the federal criminal matter; and (2) Woods' continuing plea negotiations with the government. The district court granted the continuance on the day it was filed without obtaining Maryea's objection or consent, concluding that “the ends of justice served by granting a continuance outweigh the best interest of the public and the defendant in a speedy trial, 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(7)(B)(iv), for the reasons set forth in the motion.” Trial was rescheduled for January 4, 2011.

Maryea filed a series of motions in late August and early September 2010, including, inter alia, two motions to dismiss the Superseding Indictment for violations of the Speedy Trial Act, a motion to remove counsel and appoint new counsel, and a motion for bail alleging the Bureau of Prisons' failure to properly provide medical care.¹ In her September 20, 2010 Reply Brief to her motion to dismiss, Maryea objected to the granting of the continuance. Relying on the co-defendant exclusion in the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(6) (“Co–Defendant Clause”), Maryea argued that extending her trial date merely on the basis of co-defendant Woods' motion to continue was unreasonable:

It is simply submitted that the Court cannot find the delay caused by Woods' ... motion[ ] to continue to be reasonable as to Maryea.... This is because the Court was no longer dealing with more than two co-defendants and one of the defendants was simply looking for more time to resolve companion state cases.

The district court convened a hearing to address Maryea's objection, where the district court judge stated to Maryea that the court was:

fairly aggravated that you're advancing these arguments that contradict the positions you've taken already in the case, because I've asked you repeatedly every time we've talked about speedy trial if you wanted a severance, and you've stressed to me every single time you do not want a severance. Let me ask you this. Do you want to go...