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Parties Involved:
John Haire
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 20, 2003 Decided June 22, 2004

No. 02-3009

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

JOHN HAIRE,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 00cr00426–01)

Edward DeV. Bunn, appointed by the court, argued the

cause and filed the briefs for appellant.

Mary B. McCord, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Roscoe C.

Howard, Jr., U.S. Attorney, John R. Fisher, Elizabeth Trosman, and John Crabb, Jr., Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

 Bills of costs must be filed within 14 days after entry of judgment.

The court looks with disfavor upon motions to file bills of costs out

of time.

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Before: SENTELLE, HENDERSON and GARLAND, Circuit

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SENTELLE.

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge: John Haire appeals from a judgment of conviction entered upon a jury verdict of guilty of two

counts of drug conspiracy in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846 and

963. He assigns errors relating to venue, discovery, and

admission of evidence. Upon review, we conclude that the

district court committed no error and affirm its judgment for

the reasons more fully set out below.

I. BACKGROUND

Appellant stood trial under an indictment charging him

with one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with

intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine, in

violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 and one count of conspiracy to

import five kilograms or more of cocaine in violation of 21

U.S.C. § 963. The evidence at trial disclosed that the investigation leading to appellant’s indictment began with the arrest

of Herbert Leininger in November of 1999 for offenses

involving multiple kilograms of cocaine. Leininger subsequently pleaded guilty and cooperated with law enforcement,

principally giving evidence against his source, Kevin Cleary,

evidence which ultimately led to the conviction of Kevin

Cleary, his brother Michael Cleary, and Kevin Cleary’s

source Terry Colligan. Leininger had never met appellant

Haire and did not know his name, but did give information to

authorities that he knew that one of Colligan’s drivers (apparently Haire) was in Tampa, Florida.

The brothers Cleary thereafter followed Leininger’s path

and pleaded guilty under agreements to cooperate with investigators. Kevin Cleary admitted buying cocaine from Colligan over a six-year period from 1993 to 1999 and selling it to

Leininger, who transported it to the District of Columbia.

Cleary identified appellant as Colligan’s partner in at least

the first two years of the operation, and described appellant

as the person who drove the cocaine from Mexico into the

United States. As part of his cooperation, Kevin Cleary set

up a meeting with Colligan at Cleary’s home. The meeting

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was audio- and video-taped and involved discussion of importing more cocaine from Mexico and Belize. Colligan was

subsequently arrested and, following the by then wellestablished precedent, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate.

As part of his cooperation, Colligan provided evidence

against appellant and testified for the government at his trial.

According to Colligan’s testimony, he met appellant in the

early 1990s in Florida. In 1993, appellant visited Colligan in

Cancun, Mexico, where Colligan lived, and purchased a kilo of

cocaine through a source introduced by Colligan. Thereafter,

Colligan and appellant packaged the cocaine. Appellant flew

with it to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and from there transported

it by car across the border into the United States and back to

Tampa, Florida. This transaction was the beginning of extensive dealing in cocaine by appellant, Colligan, and others.

Colligan’s cooperation with authorities after his own guilty

plea included tape-recording telephone conversations with

appellant. The conversations addressed cocaine smuggling

and eventually resulted in appellant setting up a meeting in

April, 2001, between himself and an undercover detective in

Florida. After that meeting, appellant was arrested and

admitted to extensive drug-related criminal activity.

At trial, in addition to the cooperating defendants discussed

above, the prosecution offered substantial corroborating evidence. The only evidence connecting the conspiracy with

Washington, D.C. was the evidence relating to the obtaining,

possession, and distribution of several kilograms of cocaine in

the District by Herbert Leininger. After presentation of

evidence by the defense, the district court submitted the case

to the jury. The jury found defendant guilty of both counts.

The district court entered concurrent sentences of 240

months incarceration followed by five years of supervised

release on the two counts. Appellant brought the present

appeal.

II. ANALYSIS

Appellant alleges a plethora of errors by the district judge,

lumping them under three headings: venue; discovery and

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cross-examination rights; and, ‘‘inadmissable other wrongs,

irrelevant and prejudicial evidence.’’ While we have reviewed

all of appellant’s allegations of error, and find none of them to

warrant relief, most do not require separate discussion. As

to those that do, none of the assignments states a reversible

error, if, indeed, any of them state error at all.

A. Venue

Defendant first contends that venue in the District of

Columbia was improper. He separately claims that there was

insufficient evidence that the alleged crimes occurred in the

District of Columbia. Stripped of rhetoric, these two claims

are indistinguishable. On the record, they are also meritless.

We note at the outset that ‘‘the government bears the burden

of establishing by a preponderance of the evidence that venue

is proper with respect to each count charged against the

defendant.’’ United States v. Lam Kwong–Wah, 924 F.2d

298, 301 (D.C. Cir. 1991). Therefore, we review the sufficiency of the evidence, doing so ‘‘in the light most favorable to the

government,’’ id., as with any other sufficiency question on

appeal. Appellant’s argument, as we understand it, is that

the government proved not one but several conspiracies; if

appellant was involved in any conspiracy, it was with Colligan’s roommate and had no nexus to the District of Columbia.

The government counters that there is one continuing conspiracy linking the co-conspirators from their Mexico purchases to their Washington, D.C., sales and possession for

sale. As to whether the evidence proved a single conspiracy

or multiple conspiracies, we have held that issue ‘‘is primarily

a question of fact for the jury.’’ United States v. Childress,

58 F.3d 693, 709 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (internal quotation marks

and citations omitted). Appellate review is ‘‘limited to whether there is sufficient evidence—when viewed in the light most

favorable to the government—to support a jury finding of a

single conspiracy agreed to by the individual appellants.’’ Id.

The evidence at trial, taken in the light most favorable to

the prosecution, supported a jury finding of what is commonly

called a ‘‘chain’’ conspiracy.

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As we have observed before, under a chain-conspiracy

analysis:

the government need not prove a direct connection between all the conspirators. A single conspiracy may be

established when each conspirator knows of the existence

of the larger conspiracy and the necessity for other

participants, even if he is ignorant of their precise identities. When the conspirators form a chain, each is likely

to know that other conspirators are required.

United States v. Tarantino, 846 F.2d 1384, 1392 (D.C. Cir.

1988). As we held in Tarantino, this Circuit’s landmark

decision on the subject of chain conspiracies, ‘‘[a] single

conspiracy is proven if the evidence establishes that each

conspirator had the specific intent to further the common

unlawful objective.’’ Id. More generally, the existence of

such a vertically integrated, loose-knit combination may raise

the inference that each conspirator had agreed with the

others (some whose specific identity may be unknown) to

further a common unlawful objective, e.g., distribution of

narcotics. Id. at 1393. As in Tarantino, as in Childress, and

as in other chain-conspiracy cases, the government offered

evidence in Haire’s trial from which a reasonable jury could

find, as alleged in Count One, that such a vertically integrated

loose-knit combination existed; that part of the objective of

the conspiracy was to distribute drugs in Washington, D.C.,

and that this objective was accomplished. That said, we then

recognize the ‘‘well established rule’’ that prosecutions for

conspiracy ‘‘may be brought in any district in which some

overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy was committed by

any of the co-conspirators.’’ Lam Kwong–Wah, 924 F.2d at

301 (citing cases) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

As to Count Two, the case for affirmance is even stronger.

Under 18 U.S.C. § 3237(a), Congress expressly provided that,

subject to exceptions not here relevant, ‘‘any offense TTT

involving TTT the importation of an object TTT into the United

States is a continuing offense and TTT may be inquired of and

prosecuted in any district from, through, or into which such

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TTT imported object moves.’’ The ‘‘object’’ in Count Two is

the imported cocaine, at least some of which moved into the

District of Columbia. In short, appellant’s argument that

there was insufficient evidence of venue, more specifically,

that the evidence would not support a conspiracy that involved both the defendant and the District of Columbia, does

not constitute reversible error or indeed error at all.

B. The Failure to Instruct on Venue

Appellant also alleges error in the failure of the district

court to instruct the jury on the ‘‘element’’ of venue. He

makes no claim that he requested such instruction but offers

the rather breathtaking proposition that ‘‘the government had

the burden of proving venue and requesting the jury instruction thereon.’’ Appellant’s Br. at 17. Certainly the government had the burden of proving venue, but this falls far short

of assigning the government the burden of requesting an

instruction. Undaunted by the lack of precedent, appellant

asserts that ‘‘if the government fails to request the instruction

and it did, and if the court fails to instruct the jury on venue

and it did, the case must be reversed.’’ Id. For this proposition, appellant cites United States v. Lam Kwong–Wah, 924

F.2d at 301–02. In that case, however, the court’s discussion

of the government’s failure to obtain a proper jury instruction

had to do with a much more discrete question than the

sweeping theory advanced by appellant in the present case.

In Lam Kwong–Wah, the government was arguing for venue

on the theory that the appellant therein aided and abetted the

attempted distribution of heroin that occurred in a venue with

which no evidence connected him. Because the government

had not advanced the aiding and abetting theory at all in the

trial court, we reversed the conviction. Indeed, we expressly

stated, ‘‘because the government failed to advance any such

argument or proof or to obtain a proper jury instruction, we

reversed Lam’s conviction on the charge of attempted distribution of heroin.’’ Id. at 302. No such loose end is flapping

in the present case. The government charged conspiracy and

offered evidence of conspiracy. The jurors were instructed

on conspiracy and it is on a conspiracy theory that, the

government argues, the defendant is responsible for acts that

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occurred in the venue of trial. In short, the government had

no duty to request such an instruction. The burden to

request the instruction was the defendant’s. This he did not

do.

The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure expressly prescribe in the version of Rule 30 in effect at the time of Haire’s

trial that:

No party may assign as error any portion of the [jury]

charge or omission therefrom unless that party objects

thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict,

stating distinctly the matter to which that party objects

and the grounds of the objection.

As the Supreme Court has repeatedly noted, this rule of

procedure embodies the historic principle ‘‘that a right ‘may

be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to

make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having

jurisdiction to determine it.’ ’’ Johnson v. United States, 520

U.S. 461, 465 (1997) (quoting United States v. Olano, 507 U.S.

725, 731 (1993)) (other citations omitted).

We pause for further discussion of the absence of instruction on venue only because of occasional references in case

law that ‘‘venue is an element of every offense.’’ United

States v. Perez, 280 F.3d 318, 329 (3rd Cir. 2002) (collecting

cases). But cf. Maldonado–Revera, 922 F.2d 934, 969 (2nd

Cir. 1990) (‘‘venue however is not an element of the offense’’).

There is of course considerable support for the proposition

that the failure to charge on an element of the offense is

error. As the Supreme Court has stated, ‘‘[t]he Constitution

gives a criminal defendant the right to have a jury determine,

beyond a reasonable doubt, his guilt of every element of the

crime with which he is charged.’’ United States v. Gaudin,

515 U.S. 506, 522–23 (1995) (holding that materiality is an

element of false statement prosecutions which must be submitted to the jury). That said, failure to instruct remains

subject to the federal rules and, if forfeited by failure to

request under Rule 30, it would be noticed by us only under

the plain-error standard of Rule 52(b) which allows, ‘‘plain

errors affecting substantial rights to be noticed even though

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there was no objection.’’ Johnson, 520 U.S. at 466. In the

present record, we see no plain error, and we see no error

‘‘affect[ing] substantial rights,’’ as a plain error must be to be

reversible in the absence of a proper objection or request at

trial. Id. at 468.

We would be cutting ourselves totally off from the reality of

criminal trial-practice if we did not recall that the instructions

offered daily by district courts in criminal cases typically do

not detail the element of venue in the absence of a request

from the defense. We will consider then the question, ‘‘When

must an instruction on venue be given?’’ a question explored

at length by the Third Circuit in United States v. Perez,

supra. The Perez court first noted, as referenced above, that

venue is often described as an element of every offense and

that criminal defendants generally have the right to a jury

determination of guilt of every element, and further noted

that courts describing venue as an element ‘‘often distinguish

it from ‘substantive’ or ‘essential’ elements.’’ Id. at 330

(collecting cases). This makes much sense. Indeed, we

agree with the Third Circuit’s further observation ‘‘that while

one might call venue an element, ‘it is an element more akin

to jurisdiction than to the substantive elements of the

crime.’ ’’ Id. (quoting United States v. Massa, 686 F.2d 526,

530 (7th Cir. 1982) (other citations omitted)). We, therefore,

join the Third and Seventh Circuits and hold that ‘‘although

an element strictly speaking, venue does not automatically

present a question for the jury.’’ Id. (citing Massa).

The Third Circuit in Perez offered an educational history of

the various treatments in various circuits of the necessity for

instruction, that is, when the failure to instruct the jury on

venue could constitute reversible error. Without recreating

the excellent discussion by our fellow circuit, we refer the

interested reader to that decision, id. at 330–35, and join in

that Circuit’s conclusion that the instruction is necessary only

when the question of venue is genuinely in issue. We cannot

improve upon that Circuit’s conclusion that venue becomes a

jury question and the trial court must specifically instruct the

jury on venue, in cases where there is no facially-obvious

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defect in the allegations of venue, when the following three

conditions are met:

(1) the defendant objects to venue prior to or at the close

of the prosecution’s case-in-chief, (2) there is a genuine

issue of material fact with regard to proper venue, and

(3) the defendant timely requests a jury instruction.

Id. at 334.

In the case at bar, there is no genuine issue of material fact

as to the commission of acts in furtherance of the offense in

the District of Columbia and the defendant did not request

the venue instruction at trial. We therefore conclude that the

district court did not err in failing to instruct the jury on

venue.

C. Denial of Discovery and Cross–Examination Rights

Again, appellant lumps a broad range of arguments under a

single heading. Most of these arguments do not warrant

separate discussion, but we have attempted to distill from it

the most discrete contentions of appellant and will discuss

them briefly. To provide the proper context, we will outline

the trial court history of the discovery questions.

Before trial, appellant moved to compel discovery regarding his co-conspirators’ statements, ill-gotten gains acquired

by co-conspirators, and the files and notes relating to the

debriefings of the cooperating witnesses. The trial court held

a hearing on these motions at which the government represented that it would disclose to the defendant all information

that could be used to impeach the government’s witnesses two

days before trial. The trial court carefully ordered, in response to a request by the defense counsel, that if any of the

co-conspirators had failed to name appellant as a coconspirator when they might have been expected to do so in

the original debriefings, the government must present those

to the defense, or at the least hand them over to the court for

in camera inspection. The government fulfilled its promise to

turn over potential impeachment materials at least two days

before trial, excluding two items, which it described to the

court in an ex parte submission. The court reviewed the

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debriefing notes for material discoverable under the Jencks

Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500, or under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S.

83 (1963). The court found no further discoverable evidence.

D. The Law of Criminal Discovery

Discovery in criminal cases, as relevant to the present case,

is largely governed by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16

and the Jencks Act. Rule 16 provides that: ‘‘this rule does

not authorize the discovery or inspection of TTT statements

made by prospective government witnesses except as provided in 18 U.S.C. § 3500.’’ Fed. R. Crim. P. 16(a)(2). Section

3500, the Jencks Act, provides, in pertinent part, that: ‘‘no

statement or report in the possession of the United States

which was made by a Government witness or prospective

government witness (other than the defendant) shall be the

subject of subpoena, discovery, or inspection until said witness has testified on direct examination in the trial of the

case.’’ 18 U.S.C. § 3500(a). It further provides that after a

government witness ‘‘has testified on direct examination, the

court shall, on motion of the defendant, order the United

States to produce any statements of the witness TTT in the

possession of the United States which relates to the subjectmatter as to which the witness has testified.’’ We find

nothing in the appellant’s argument that suggests that the

United States failed to comply with the obligations imposed

by the Jencks Act, the Federal Rules, or any other authority.

Indeed, it appears that the prosecution in fact supplied the

Jencks material before trial, a salutary practice which we

commend but which is not compelled by the statute.

Of course in addition to the statutory obligations, the

Supreme Court has expressly held that the Constitution

requires the prosecution to disclose information that is favorable to the accused and that is material either to guilt or

punishment. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963); see

also Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 154–55 (1972);

United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 676 (1985) (extending

the Brady obligation beyond regular exculpatory evidence to

evidence material to impeachment). Appellant alleges a violation of his Brady rights. However, he has set forth nothing

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that makes out such a violation. Brady does not require that

the prosecutor ‘‘deliver his entire file to defense counsel, but

only [that he] disclose evidence favorable to the accused, that

if suppressed, would deprive the defendant of a fair trial.’’

Bagley, 473 U.S. at 675 (footnote omitted). On appeal, appellant has made no showing that the government suppressed

either exculpatory or impeachment evidence, let alone any

material raising a reasonable probability of a different result

in the proceeding. We will not find error on the mere

speculation that files, such as the debriefing material not

disclosed herein, may contain Brady information. See United

States v. Williams–Davis, 90 F.3d 490, 514 (D.C. Cir. 1996)

(‘‘It is unwise to infer the existence of Brady material based

on speculation alone.’’) (citation omitted).

In short, we hold that appellant has established no error

relating to discovery, or material made available for crossexamination. While appellant also argues that the district

court erred in limiting his cross-examination, we have reviewed the cited portions of the transcript and find nothing

beyond reasonable management of the progress of the trial.

E. Evidentiary Rulings

Haire argues that his ‘‘convictions were the result of inadmissible other wrongs, irrelevant and prejudicial evidence.’’

He argues that the court’s rulings on such evidence violated

the restrictions in Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), which

renders evidence of other crimes, wrongs or bad acts not

admissible to show character or action in conformity therewith. He also argues that the Court’s ruling violated Rule

403, which provides that evidence, though relevant, is to be

excluded if it is substantially more prejudicial than probative.

We have reviewed the cited portions of the transcript and

find that most of the questioned evidence was not 404(b)

evidence at all, but was in fact direct evidence of some acts

connected with the conspiracy. As to that which arguably

may have been covered by that rule, we find neither error nor

abuse of discretion. Likewise, we see no error on the part of

the district court in conducting the balancing between prejudice and relevance required by Rule 403.

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III. CONCLUSION

In sum, we find no reversible error and order that the

judgment on appeal be affirmed.

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