United States v. Sepulveda
| Citation | 57 F.Supp.3d 610 |
| Decision Date | 06 November 2014 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 1:13–cr–00310–GBL–1. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, v. Edwin Gerardo Figuero SEPULVEDA, Defendant. |
Michael Ben'Ary, Stacey K. Luck, U.S. Attorney's Office, Alexandria, VA, for United States of America.
THIS MATTER is before the Court on Defendant Edwin Sepulveda's Motion for An Advance Ruling on Jury Instruction Defining the Mens Rea Applicable to Counts One, Three, and Four. (Doc. 120.) This case arises from the murder of DEA Special Agent James Terry Watson in Bogota, Colombia on June 20, 2013. The issue before the Court is whether 18 U.S.C. §§ 1116 and 1201 require a defendant to know that they are committing the offenses defined therein against an internationally protected person. The Court DENIES Defendant's motion because (1) the plain language of the statutes do not require a “knowingly” element, (2) the legislative history of the statutes evince no congressional intent to require that the defendant know the victim is an internationally protected person, and (3) the treaties the statutes were enacted to implement were designed to address the murder and kidnapping of internationally protected persons regardless of whether the defendant knew of the victim's status.
On July 18, 2013, a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging six defendants with the murder of DEA Special Agent James Terry Watson. (Doc. 15 ¶ 1.) The murder allegedly occurred on June 20, 2013, in Bogota, Colombia in a taxi cab as part of a scheme to rob taxi riders. (Doc. 15 ¶ 17.) The indictment charged the six defendants, including Defendant Sepulveda, with: Count 1, murder of an internationally protected person and aiding and abetting that murder, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 1116(a), (c) ; Count 3, conspiracy to kidnap an internationally protected person, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1201(c) ; and Count 4, kidnapping an internationally protected person and aiding and abetting that kidnapping, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 1201. (Doc. 15.)
The Court DENIES Defendant's motion because (1) the plain language of the statutes do not require a “knowingly” element, (2) the legislative history of the statutes evince no congressional intent to require that the defendant know the victim is an internationally protected person, and (3) the treaties the statutes were enacted to implement were designed to address the murder and kidnapping of internationally protected persons regardless of whether the defendant knew of the victim's status.
Defendant faces three charges: Count 1, murder of an internationally protected person and aiding and abetting that murder; Count 3, conspiracy to kidnap an internationally protected person; and Count 4, kidnapping of an internationally protected person and aiding and abetting in that kidnapping. Count 1, murder of an internationally protected person, is charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1116(a) and (c), which provide, in relevant part, as follows:
Count 3, conspiracy to kidnap an internationally protected person, and Count 4, kidnapping of an internationally protected person and aiding and abetting in that kidnapping, are charged under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 1201, the relevant provisions of which are as follows:
Accordingly, all three counts turn on identical provisions of law (18 U.S.C. §§ 1116(c) and 1201(e) ) conferring on this Court extraterritorial jurisdiction over certain offenses involving victims who are internationally protected persons. The intended scope of these provisions is the subject of Defendant's motion.
The Court holds that the plain language of the statutes do not include a “knowingly” requirement. When interpreting statutes, courts “must first and foremost strive to implement congressional intent by examining the plain language of the statute.” United States v. Passaro, 577 F.3d 207, 213 (4th Cir.2009). “[I]f a disputed statutory provision has a plain and unambiguous meaning, then the interpretation giving effect to that meaning must be adopted and the statutory construction inquiry ends.” United States v. Mitchell, 691 F.Supp.2d 665, 668 (E.D.Va.2010) (citation omitted); see Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337, 340, 117 S.Ct. 843, 136 L.Ed.2d 808 (1997). If the relevant language is ambiguous, only then are courts “left to resolve that ambiguity” by considering the context in which the disputed language is used, weighing the purpose and structure of the statute in issue, and applying any applicable interpretive canons. Robinson, 519 U.S. at 345, 117 S.Ct. 843 ; see United States v. Monsanto, 491 U.S. 600, 611, 109 S.Ct. 2657, 105 L.Ed.2d 512 (1989). A review of both statutes shows that neither 18 U.S.C. § 1116 nor 18 U.S.C. § 1201 require a defendant to know that they are committing the offenses defined therein against an internationally protected person.
Defendant relies on the Supreme Court's decision in Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 114 S.Ct. 1793, 128 L.Ed.2d 608 (1994), to urge the Court to read a “knowingly” requirement into Counts 1, 3, and 4. (Doc. 120 at 6.) Defendant contends that “statutes that do not specify the mens rea required for conviction, such as 18 U.S.C. §§ 1116 and 1201, are as a matter of law read to have a ‘knowingly’ element.” (Id. ) (citing Staples, 511 U.S. 600, 114 S.Ct. 1793 ). In Staples, the Supreme Court considered a subsection of the National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d), that was silent on the requisite mens rea. 511 U.S. at 603, 114 S.Ct. 1793. Staples was charged with possessing an unregistered machine gun but argued that he did not know of certain after-market alterations made to the gun that qualified it as a machine gun. Id.
In Staples the Court held that the Government must prove that the defendant “knew of the features of his [gun] that brought it within the scope of the Act,” even though the statute contained no explicit mens rea requirement. Id. at 619, 114 S.Ct. 1793. In so holding, the Court stated that it did not believe Congress intended to subject offenders to the “potentially harsh penalty” of up to 10 years' imprisonment if “what they genuinely and reasonably believed was a conventional semi-automatic [weapon] turns out to have worn down into or been secretly modified to be a fully automatic weapon.” Id. at 615–16, 114 S.Ct. 1793 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The Court also held that the mens rea requirement under a criminal statute is a question of law to be determined by courts.
We emphasize that our holding is a narrow one. As in our prior cases, our reasoning depends upon a commonsense evaluation of the nature of the particular device or substance Congress has subjected to regulation and the expectations that individuals may legitimately have in dealing with the regulated items. In addition, we think that the penalty attached to § 5861(d) suggests that Congress did not intend to eliminate a mens rea requirement for violation of the section.
Id. at 619, 114 S.Ct. 1793 (emphasis added). Defendant asserts that Staples requires the Court to read a knowingly requirement into 18 U.S.C. §§ 1116 and 120. The Court declines to do so as Staples is distinguishable from this case for several reasons.
First, in Staples the Court placed great importance on the history of legal gun ownership in this country, declaring that Congress could not have intended to criminalize otherwise innocent conduct. Id. at 610, 114 S.Ct. 1793 (). The Court also compared the maximum penalty under § 5861(d) —ten years' imprisonment—with the actions it criminalized and found that Congress could not have intended such actions to be criminal without a defendant knowing that they were engaging in illegal acts. See id. at 614–15, 114 S.Ct. 1793 (). That is in stark contrast to the offenses criminalized under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1116 and 1201 —murder and kidnapping of an internationally protected person. While the penalties under each are “potentially harsh,” see 18 U.S.C. §§ 1111, 1113, 1201, murder and kidnapping, regardless of the status of the victim, are not “traditionally lawful conduct.” Staples, 511 U.S. at 618, 114 S.Ct. 1793. Instead, these crimes are so symptomatic of a defendant's “vicious will” that “the usual presumption that a defendant must know the facts that make his conduct...
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