Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-50014/USCOURTS-ca9-13-50014-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Javier Perez
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

JAVIER PEREZ, AKA Ranger,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 13-50014

D.C. No.

2:07-cr-01172-

DDP-32

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

VLADIMIR ALEXANDER IRAHETA, 

AKA Jokes, AKA Slick, AKA the 

Twin,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 15-50241

D.C. No.

2:07-cr-01172-

DDP-25

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2 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

LEONIDAS IRAHETA, AKA Druggy, 

AKA Drugs, AKA Shysty, AKA the 

Twin,

Defendant-Appellant.

Nos. 15-50243

18-50187

D.C. No.

2:07-cr-01172-

DDP-26

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

EDUARDO HERNANDEZ,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 15-50246

D.C. No.

2:07-cr-01172-

DDP-23

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 3

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

EDUARDO HERNANDEZ, AKA Ed 

Garcia, AKA Eduardo Garcia, AKA 

Eduardo Hernadez, AKA Eduardo 

Perez Hernandez, AKA Edward 

Hernandez, AKA Lil Oso, AKA 

Jorge Mateo Martinez, AKA Oso, 

AKA Hernandez Oso, AKA Edward 

Perez, AKA Terco,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 18-50181

D.C. No.

2:07-cr-01172-

DDP-23

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Dean D. Pregerson, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 10, 2020

Pasadena, California

Filed June 11, 2020

Before: Marsha S. Berzon, Richard C. Tallman,

and Ryan D. Nelson, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Tallman

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4 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

SUMMARY*

Criminal Law

In appeals arising from the prosecution of four members 

of the Columbia Lil Cycos clique of the 18th Street gang, the 

panel affirmed the convictions of Eduardo Hernandez, 

Leonidas Iraheta, and Vladimir Iraheta; affirmed in part and 

reversed in part the convictions of Javier Perez; vacated 

Perez’s sentence; and remanded for resentencing.

The panel held that a post-verdict filing made in camera 

by a third party did not contain Brady material, and the 

district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to allow 

Leonidas’s and Hernandez’s attorneys to view it.

Leonidas and Hernandez claimed that the government 

surreptitiously elicited expert testimony from lawenforcement officers in violation of Fed. R. Evid. 701. 

Observing that the district court diligently patrolled the line 

between lay and expert testimony, the panel concluded that 

in the few instances in which admission of the witnesses’ 

testimony was error, appellants suffered no prejudice.

Perez alleged that the district court improperly instructed 

the jury on the extraterritorial application of the Violent 

Crimes in Aid of Racketeering (VICAR) statute. The panel 

explained that VICAR may reach a crime committed abroad 

with sufficient nexus to the conduct of an enterprise’s affairs, 

but if the predicate crimes cannot reach foreign conduct, 

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It 

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 5

neither may VICAR. Because the predicate crimes with 

which Perez was charged—California’s attempted murder 

statute and its definitional components—do not proscribe 

extraterritorial acts, the panel held that the district court erred 

in instructing the jury that it is not necessary for the 

government to prove that any part of the charged crime took 

place within the United States. The panel wrote that this 

error has a constitutional due process dimension: it relieved 

the United States of the burden of proving the required 

connection between American territorial jurisdiction and the 

crimes in the challenged counts for which Perez stood trial 

in the Central District of California. The panel therefore 

evaluated whether the instructional error was harmless 

beyond a reasonable doubt. The panel concluded that the 

instructional error was harmless as to Count Sixteen 

(VICAR conspiracy to murder) because (1) there was 

evidence of the conspiracy’s origin in California; (2) the 

jury’s special finding as to the date that the conspiracy began 

was strong evidence it believed that the plan was hatched in 

California; and, most importantly (3) as to that count, the 

jury was correctly instructed that, in order to convict, it must 

find that “an overt act was committed in this state by one or 

more of the persons” involved. The panel held that the 

instructional error was not harmless beyond a reasonable 

doubt as to Count Eighteen (VICAR attempted murder), 

where no contrary instruction cured the initial error.

The panel rejected sufficiency-of-the-evidence 

challenges to Hernandez’s and the Iraheta brothers’ 

narcotics-conspiracy convictions and Perez’s conspiracy 

convictions. 

At sentencing, the panel held that the district court erred 

in its application of a firearm enhancement to Hernandez, but 

that this error was harmless. The panel rejected Hernandez 

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6 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

and Leonidas’s objections to the district court’s drug-weight 

calculation, application of a threat enhancement, explication 

of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors, and use of judicial factfinding. The panel rejected Leonidas’s objection to a firearm 

enhancement and his argument that the district court violated 

Fed. R. Crim. P. 32. The panel rejected Hernandez’s 

objection to the district court’s application of obstruction-ofjustice and managerial-role enhancements, and rejected 

Hernandez’s and Leonidas’s arguments that their life 

sentences are substantively unreasonable.

COUNSEL

Katherine Kimball Windsor (argued), Law office of 

Katherine Kimball Windsor, Pasadena, California, for 

Defendant-Appellant Eduardo Hernandez.

Lawrence Jay Litman (argued), Riverside, California, for 

Defendant-Appellant Javier Perez.

Phillip A. Treviño, Los Angeles, California, for DefendantAppellant Vladimir Alexander Iraheta.

Timothy A. Scott and Nicolas O. Jimenez, Scott Trial 

Lawyers APC, San Diego, California; for DefendantAppellant Leonidas Iraheta.

Julia L. Reese (argued) and Kevin M. Lally, Assistant United 

States Attorneys; Brandon D. Fox, Chief, Criminal Division; 

Nicola T. Hanna, United States Attorney; United States 

Attorney’s Office, Los Angeles, California; for PlaintiffAppellee.

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 7

OPINION

TALLMAN, Circuit Judge:

This is a criminal appeal from judgments of conviction 

and sentence rendered in the Central District of California 

arising from the prosecution of four members of a violent 

street gang. We affirm the convictions and sentences of 

Appellants Eduardo Hernandez, Leonidas Iraheta, and 

Vladimir Iraheta. We affirm in part and reverse in part the 

convictions of Appellant Javier Perez, vacate his sentence, 

and remand for further proceedings.

I

The Columbia Lil Cycos (CLCS) clique of the 18th 

Street gang controlled drug distribution, committed 

extortion, and engaged in other illegal activities in the 

Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles from at least the 

mid-1990s. CLCS and allied gangs operate under the 

umbrella of the Mexican Mafia (the “Eme”), a prison-based 

gang whose members, once behind bars, continue to oversee 

the street gangs with which they were affiliated before their 

incarceration.

When a street vendor defied CLCS’s extortion regime in 

September of 2007, the gang sent a gunman to murder him 

for his impunity. But one bullet missed the vendor and 

tragically killed 21-day-old Luis Angel Garcia. Baby 

Garcia’s death provoked an outcry for action from the 

community and triggered a massive law enforcement 

response. An initial federal indictment of eighteen CLCS 

members and associates soon issued. The fourth 

superseding indictment—the operative pleading here—

charged a total of twenty-four defendants with twenty-one 

counts of racketeering, drug trafficking, money laundering, 

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8 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

murder, assault, maiming, kidnapping, and various 

conspiracies and attempts to do the same. By the time of 

trial in early 2012, only these four Appellants remained to be 

tried. Their confederates all pleaded guilty, and several—

including former CLCS leaders Sergio Pantoja, James 

Villalobos, and Jose Delaguila—testified for the government 

at Appellants’ trial.

The trial began on February 29, 2012. Appellants were 

tried together on the theory that they were all members of an 

illegal enterprise which carried out its nefarious activities 

through a pattern of racketeering activity. The criminal 

endeavors of Hernandez, Leonidas Iraheta (“Leonidas”), and 

his twin brother Vladimir Iraheta (“Vladimir”), on the one 

hand, and Perez on the other, were different: Hernandez and 

the Iraheta twins were convicted for their roles in running 

CLCS’s narcotics and extortion activities, while Perez’s 

convictions arose out of his participation in a conspiracy to 

kidnap and murder the gunman responsible for baby 

Garcia’s death, Giovanni Macedo, to protect CLCS from 

reprisals by the Eme for the infant’s murder.

The CLCS Enterprise

By the mid-1990s, CLCS had come to dominate the 

Westlake/MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, 

between Beverley Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard (north to 

south) and Alvarado Street and Burlington Avenue (west to 

east). A constituent clique of the broader 18th Street gang, 

CLCS fought the Mara Salvatrucha and, especially, 

Rockwood Street gangs for primacy in Westlake. CLCS ran 

a sophisticated drug-trafficking and extortion racket in its 

territory. Drug wholesalers (“mayoristas”) and street-level 

dealers (“traqueteros”) paid CLCS “rent” for the right to sell 

drugs—mostly crack cocaine—on the street corners near 

MacArthur Park. The dealers were strictly controlled: a 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 9

traquetero who broke CLCS rules by selling outside his 

allotted shift or skimming money off his collections was 

liable to be savagely beaten. Other illegal businesses—

document forgers, gamblers—paid rent to CLCS, too, as did 

many legitimate businesses in the neighborhood, under 

threat of violence.

CLCS ruthlessly defended its territory from 

encroachment. Armed bands of roving, gang-affiliated 

youths (“little homies”) were expected to “put in work” by 

marking CLCS territory with copious graffiti and 

undertaking expeditions into rival neighborhoods to show 

strength and disrespect. Violence abounded: if a rival gang 

passed through CLCS streets or marked them with graffiti, 

gang leaders expected associates to “[j]ump them,” or, as 

one CLCS leader put it, to give them “[a]n ass beating that 

. . . maybe he can’t get up off the floor and . . . sometimes if 

you have a gun or you have a knife . . . you either just stab 

them or you shoot them.”

Witnesses for the government put Hernandez and the 

Iraheta twins at the center of both CLCS “gangbanging”—

meaning tagging, enforcing, and countering rivals—and 

drug distribution. Hernandez led the collection of rents at a 

lucrative drug-dealing hub, Westlake, from Third to Sixth 

Streets, in addition to overseeing gangbanging. One witness 

called him “the ultimate decisionmaker” on “what to do if 

any problems occurred—meaning enemies coming into our 

neighborhood or . . . homeboys going against homeboys or 

whatever.” Leonidas and Vladimir served as Hernandez’s 

“muscle,” assisting him with rent collection and leading 

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10 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

“missions” into rival territory to “go do something to a rival 

gang or to someone else; rob, tag on the walls, anything.”1

CLCS was led by Francisco Martinez, who—despite 

being incarcerated at the “Supermax” federal prison 

complex in Florence, Colorado—maintained control over 

CLCS and other Los Angeles 18th Street cliques from his 

cell. Originally a member of CLCS himself, Martinez was 

convicted of “[r]acketeering and a bunch of murders” in the 

1990s and thereupon joined the Eme, which continues to 

wield control over most of the Hispanic gangs of Southern 

California. Martinez maintained his grip over CLCS with 

the help of disgraced attorney Isaac Guillen, who testified 

for the government in Appellants’ trial. Guillen used the 

shield of the attorney–client privilege to circumvent 

Florence’s security procedures, secreting and passing 

information and orders to and from Martinez and CLCS’s 

street leaders.

CLCS leaders, including Hernandez and both Irahetas, 

would divvy up all the rent collected, section off Martinez’s 

share—usually $5,000 to $17,000 a week—and deliver it to 

Guillen. Guillen would launder the money by investing it in 

a variety of businesses, funneling it to Martinez’s relatives 

in Mexico, or putting it on Martinez’s inmate “books” at 

Florence. This scheme enriched Martinez and enabled him 

to continue to exercise control over this lucrative and violent 

Los Angeles neighborhood.

1 Appellants dispute their roles in CLCS’s narcotics regime; where 

relevant, we address their contentions below. We recount the facts in the 

light most faithful to the jury’s verdict.

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 11

The Garcia Murder and its Aftermath

Francisco Clemente sold black-market goods at a street 

stand in CLCS territory. He got on the wrong side of CLCS 

leaders by acting disrespectfully and refusing to pay rent. In 

the summer of 2007, CLCS leader Pantoja tired of Clemente 

and chased him out of the neighborhood, telling rentcollector Juan Pablo Murillo to “take care of it” if Clemente 

returned. When Clemente did return, Murillo enlisted 

Macedo—then 18 years old—to show Clemente what 

became of those who defied CLCS. Late at night on 

September 15, 2007, Macedo and Murillo made their way to 

Clemente’s stand on Sixth Street, and Macedo fired several 

shots at him. Clemente was wounded but survived. 21-dayold Garcia was not so lucky—he was struck and killed by a 

stray bullet.

When he found out what had happened, Pantoja testified 

that he told Murillo the latter had “fucked up” by killing 

baby Garcia, violating the Eme’s strict code against 

murdering infants and potentially triggering a gang-wide 

“green light” whereby all CLCS members would become 

targets for murder by other Eme-affiliated gangs. Pantoja 

told Murillo that Macedo “had to be dealt with.” Murillo, a 

member of an allied 18th Street clique—South Central—

enlisted the help of fellow South Central member Javier 

Perez. At around 10 p.m. on September 19, Murillo and 

Perez went to the home of another South Central member, 

Flor Aquino, and demanded the use of her Chevrolet Tahoe, 

purportedly to take Macedo to San Diego to hide out. 

Aquino reluctantly agreed, but decided she would do the 

driving. Murillo and another gang member went to 

Macedo’s apartment, ordered him into the car, and drove 

away before informing him they were taking him to Mexico. 

They met up with Aquino and Perez at Aquino’s home, and 

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12 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

together Murillo, Perez, Aquino, and Macedo departed for 

Mexico.

Across the border in Tijuana the next day, Aquino stayed 

with Macedo in the hotel while Murillo and Perez met up 

with Pantoja, who had gone to Tijuana, he said, to ensure 

Macedo was properly taken care of. Murillo assured Pantoja 

he and Perez would “handle it,” and showed Pantoja a gun. 

Perez and Murillo returned to the hotel and took Macedo out 

drinking, then back to the hotel. Later that night, Perez, 

Murillo, Macedo, and Aquino drove toward Mexicali 

through the Sierra Juárez mountains on a cliffside highway, 

with Macedo in the front passenger seat. Perez and 

Murillo—seated in the back seat while Aquino drove—

grabbed a rope, threw it around Macedo’s neck, and began 

to strangle him. Murillo told Macedo he had messed up; 

Perez was less circumspect: he yelled, “Die motherfucker, 

die!”

After strangling Macedo until he was bloodied, Perez 

and Murillo checked to see if Macedo was still alive. 

Believing him dead, Murillo and Perez dragged Macedo out 

of the car and threw him over the cliffside. But Macedo was 

alive: he woke up sliding down the cliff, grabbed a tree root 

to check his fall, climbed back up to the road, managed to 

hail a ride, and returned to the United States. He later 

testified against Perez at trial.

After thirty-one trial days, the case was submitted to the 

jury on May 3, 2012, and after several days of deliberation, 

the jury returned a mixed verdict. Appellants were all 

convicted of Count One (RICO conspiracy, 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1962(d)); Hernandez and the Iraheta brothers were 

convicted of Count Two (narcotics conspiracy, 21 U.S.C. 

§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(A)(iii); id. § 846); and Perez was 

convicted of Counts Sixteen (conspiracy to murder under 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 13

18 U.S.C. § 1959, the Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering 

Statute, known as “VICAR”), Seventeen (VICAR 

conspiracy to kidnap, id.), Eighteen (VICAR attempted 

murder, id.), and Twenty (conspiracy to kidnap, 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1201(a)(1), (c)). The jury hung on the VICAR murder 

count that accused Hernandez and the Iraheta twins of the 

2001 murder of Jose Barajas, Jr., and it acquitted Perez of 

both kidnapping and VICAR kidnapping.

Sentencing 

Prior to sentencing, the United States Probation Office 

completed Presentence Reports (PSRs) for all Appellants. 

All parties filed objections, and an amended PSR was also 

filed for Perez, updating the recommended Sentencing 

Guidelines calculations in response to some of the 

government’s objections. The district court conducted 

separate sentencing hearings for each Appellant. All four 

Appellants were given life sentences; Vladimir is the only 

Appellant who does not challenge the court’s sentencing 

determination.

The court’s calculation of offense levels for Hernandez 

and Leonidas relied upon the quantity of drugs it determined 

were reasonably foreseeable under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1 (2014) 

(the version of the Guidelines relevant to all determinations 

in this case and cited throughout this opinion). Though they 

had separate hearings, there was much overlap in the 

evidence against them, given their identical charges of 

conviction and track record of working together. The court 

used a “multiplier method” to arrive at the conclusion that 

both Appellants were responsible for distributing at least 

25.2 kilograms of crack cocaine, which mandated a base 

offense level of 38. From there, the district court applied 

various sentencing enhancements to one or both Appellants, 

including enhancements for possession of firearms, use of 

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14 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

threats, obstruction of justice, and managerial role in the 

enterprise. Hernandez was calculated to have a final offense 

level of 45, which is above the cutoff for a recommendation 

of a life sentence regardless of criminal history. Leonidas’s 

final offense level was 42 which, coupled with a criminal 

history category of IV, resulted in a recommended 

sentencing range of 360 months to life. The court considered 

the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors, particularly focusing upon 

the need for public safety and deterrence, in determining that 

a life sentence was appropriate for each of them.

Like his co-Appellants, Perez was sentenced to life. 

Given our disposition as to Perez, we do not reach his 

sentencing challenges.

II

We first evaluate each of Appellants’ merits claims, 

beginning with Hernandez and Leonidas’s joint attempt to 

access a sealed filing post-verdict, proceeding to examine 

the same Appellants’ challenge to certain police officer 

testimony and Perez’s extraterritoriality claim, and finishing 

with consideration of all four Appellants’ sufficiency-of-theevidence arguments.

A

Leonidas and Hernandez claim the district court erred in 

blocking their counsel from viewing a post-verdict filing 

made in camera by a third party. They speculate that the 

filing contains “information that could have been used to 

impeach . . . Guillen.” We review for abuse of discretion a 

district court’s denial of a motion to unseal, see United States 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 15

v. Sleugh, 896 F.3d 1007, 1012 (9th Cir. 2018),2 reversing 

only if the denial was “illogical, implausible, or without 

support in inferences that may be drawn from the facts in the 

record,” United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247, 1263 (9th 

Cir. 2009) (en banc).

We have examined the third-party filing at issue and 

determined that the district court acted well within its sound 

discretion in declining to allow Leonidas’s and Hernandez’s 

attorneys to view it. Because of the salacious nature of the 

content, we do not detail the facts here. But we have 

carefully considered the material and the arguments of 

defense counsel, and hold that the suppressed evidence does 

not contain Brady material.

B

Leonidas and Hernandez next assign as error the district 

court’s admission of large portions of testimony from four 

law-enforcement witnesses. Appellants claim the 

government surreptitiously elicited expert testimony from 

the officers—who were testifying as lay witnesses, not 

experts—in violation of Rule 701 of the Federal Rules of 

Evidence. We review a district court’s evidentiary rulings 

for abuse of discretion “and uphold them unless they are 

illogical, implausible, or without support in inferences that 

may be drawn from the facts in the record.” United States v. 

Gadson, 763 F.3d 1189, 1199 (9th Cir. 2014) (internal 

citation omitted). And the plain-error standard governs a 

witness’s opinion not objected to at trial, see id. at 1209: we 

2 The appellant in Sleugh sought the unsealing of the Rule 17(c) 

applications of his co-defendant-turned-government-cooperator. 

896 F.3d at 1011. While those circumstances differ from these—the 

appellants here seek mere in camera review—Sleugh’s logic applies 

here, as does its standard of review.

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16 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

decline to reverse based on an erroneous evidentiary ruling 

unless the district court’s refusal to intervene sua sponte is 

“(1) error; (2) that is plain; (3) that affects substantial rights; 

and (4) . . . seriously affects the fairness, integrity, or public 

reputation of judicial proceedings,” United States v. 

Pelisamen, 641 F.3d 399, 404 (9th Cir. 2011) (citing 

Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 466–67 (1997)). 

Any error in admitting a lay witness’s opinion is harmless so 

long as “in light of the evidence as a whole, there was a ‘fair 

assurance that the jury was not substantially swayed by the 

error.’” Gadson, 763 F.3d at 1208 (quoting United States v. 

Freeman, 498 F.3d 893, 905 (9th Cir. 2007)).

1

The government called officers Joe Guadian, Paul 

Keenan, Manuel Rodriguez, and Daniel Jenks as witnesses 

during its case-in-chief. At the times relevant to their 

testimony, Guadian was a federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) 

investigator, Keenan and Rodriguez were FBI Special 

Agents, and Jenks was an LAPD detective; Keenan was the 

lead case agent for the prosecution. The four officers opined 

on a variety of subjects. Appellants claim that some of this 

testimony, including their opinions on “code words, phone 

calls, graffiti, and tattoos,” was not permissible lay-opinion 

testimony.

Rule 701 of the Federal Rules of Evidence “allows a lay 

witness to offer opinions that are (a) ‘rationally based on the 

witness’s perception,’ (b) ‘helpful’ to the jury, and (c) ‘not 

based on scientific, technical, or other specialized 

knowledge within the scope of’ expert testimony.” Gadson, 

763 F.3d at 1206 (quoting Fed. R. Evid. 701). This rule 

applies with equal force to a law-enforcement witness: a 

police officer may have knowledge derived specifically from 

an investigation, and he may offer opinions based on that 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 17

knowledge, but his employment does not endow him with 

any freestanding license to offer opinions. For instance, he 

may offer interpretations of “ambiguous conversations 

based upon his direct knowledge of the investigation,” 

Freeman, 498 F.3d at 904, or translate the drug jargon used 

by the targets of his investigation, see United States v. Reed, 

575 F.3d 900, 923 (9th Cir. 2009). But he may not “testify 

based on speculation, rely on hearsay or interpret 

unambiguous, clear statements.” United States v. Lloyd, 

807 F.3d 1128, 1154 (9th Cir. 2015) (internal citation 

omitted) (prejudicial error to admit statement that 

“[e]verybody that [the witness had] ever worked with will 

always stretch the truth and make . . . outright lies especially 

in certain techniques”). Guided by these principles from our 

case law, we evaluate each officer’s testimony in turn.

Prison Investigator Joe Guadian

Guadian testified on the fourth and fifth days of trial, 

offering background on the Eme before analyzing the 

tattoos, associations, visitations, funds deposits, and 

communications of Eme members incarcerated at Florence, 

particularly Martinez. Guadian expressly based his 

testimony on information gleaned from his investigation of 

the Eme, his personal observations of Martinez, and his 

interaction with other Eme inmates. Leonidas and 

Hernandez posit that much of Guadian’s testimony was 

“classic expert testimony,” but they did not so object at trial; 

their few objections did not serve to bring the competency 

issue to the trial court’s attention.3 Review is thus for plain 

error. See Gadson, 763 F.3d at 1209.

3 A defendant who fails to object to lay-opinion testimony under 

Rule 701 may nevertheless preserve his objection—and trigger abuseCase: 13-50014, 06/11/2020, ID: 11718180, DktEntry: 150-1, Page 17 of 57
18 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

Leonidas and Hernandez assert that, because the sort of 

testimony offered by Guadian has been elicited from expert 

witnesses in other cases, it cannot be lay-opinion testimony 

here. But whether evidence is more properly offered by an 

expert or a lay witness “depends on the basis of the opinion, 

not its subject matter.” United States v. Barragan, 871 F.3d 

689, 704 (9th Cir. 2017). The basis of Guadian’s opinions—

his prolonged and searching scrutiny of the subject 

enterprise—entitled him to opine on most of the subjects of 

his testimony. See Freeman, 498 F.3d at 902 (an officer may 

“interpret ambiguous statements based on his general 

knowledge of the investigation”). Guadian knew about the 

money Martinez received in his inmate account, for 

example, because he tracked the account. And he drew on 

years of investigating CLCS and the Eme in interpreting 

ambiguous terms in Martinez’s letters—jargon like “rent” 

and code phrases like “higher court judge.”

While some of Guadian’s opinions—such as his foray 

into the Eme’s Mayan roots—arguably transgressed Rule 

701’s restrictions, we cannot say that any error meets our 

plain-error standard. That is, even if the district court should 

not have admitted isolated aspects of Guadian’s testimony, 

its error in declining to intervene sua sponte was not “plain,” 

did not “affect[] substantial rights,” and did not “seriously 

affect[] the fairness, integrity, or public reputation” of the 

trial. Pelisamen, 641 F.3d at 404 (internal citation omitted). 

Asked repeatedly at oral argument about what prejudice 

Leonidas and Hernandez suffered because of the admission 

of Guadian’s opinions on the history of the Eme and its 

of-discretion review on appeal—if he objects to “hearsay, speculation, 

and lack of foundation,” which serves to “raise the essence of these 

concerns.” Freeman, 498 F.3d at 904. No such objections were made 

here.

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 19

Mayan roots, counsel was unable to point to a single 

concrete connection between the offending opinions and 

Appellants’ convictions. See, e.g., Tr. of Oral Arg. at 5:36–

5:59; 8:01–8:07; 15:22–16:24.

Counsel’s inability to point to any actual prejudice from 

the district court’s admission of Guadian’s opinions 

reinforces what is obvious: allowing Guadian to testify as 

he did was not plain error.

Special Agent Paul Keenan

Special Agent Keenan, the FBI’s lead case agent, 

testified on the trial’s tenth and eleventh days. Appellants 

repeatedly objected to the relevance and foundation of 

Keenan’s testimony; review is thus for abuse of discretion. 

See Freeman, 498 F.3d at 904.

Keenan testified about activities he observed and 

conducted during the investigation he led into CLCS, 

including surveillance of members’ meetings and drug 

distribution efforts; wiretaps of their phones; controlled 

purchases from gang members; and the results of searches of 

CLCS-affiliated properties. He matched gang members to 

monikers and vice versa, translated gang jargon, and 

identified indicia of drug trafficking, such as small plastic 

bags and digital scales. None of this testimony was 

impermissible under Rule 701. Keenan directly observed 

the communications, meetings, and searches he described. 

And while his comprehension of jargon and knowledge of 

drug trafficking would be suitable subjects for expert 

testimony, his investigation into CLCS was a proper basis 

for offering his lay opinions on these subjects. See Gadson, 

763 F.3d at 1209. The district court did not abuse its 

discretion in allowing Keenan’s testimony.

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20 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

Special Agent Manuel Rodriguez

FBI Special Agent Rodriguez testified on the eleventh 

day of trial. We review the district court’s admission of 

Rodriguez’s testimony for abuse of discretion; Appellants’ 

foundation objection served to raise their concerns to the 

district court. See Freeman, 498 F.3d at 904.

Rodriguez’s testimony mirrored that of Keenan: he 

identified callers on wiretaps by their voices, detailed FBI 

surveillance of the CLCS figures at issue, and matched gang 

members to their monikers and vice versa. He offered a few 

specific opinions that implicate Rule 701: Rodriguez 

interpreted graffiti and opined that when Pantoja asked 

Guillen if Pantoja could “take [his] boy to practice 

tomorrow,” he was really asking if he could deliver drug 

proceeds to Guillen.

Rodriguez’s interpretation of the wiretapped 

conversation between Pantoja and Guillen is just the kind of 

“ambiguous conversation[]” a lay witness with direct 

knowledge of an investigation—and, in this case, long hours 

spent listening to wiretaps and observing meetings—can 

clarify for the jury under Freeman. 498 F.3d at 904. The 

translation of Pantoja’s coded language required no 

technical or specialized knowledge, see Fed. R. Evid. 702—

just familiarity with the subjects. Nor was it paraphrasing 

“unambiguous, clear statements.” Lloyd, 807 F.3d at 1154. 

See also Gadson, 763 F.3d at 1231 (Berzon, J., concurring 

in part and dissenting in part). Likewise, telling the jury that 

he thought the graffiti letters “XVIII” stood for “18”

required no hidden calculus or reliance on hearsay, as 

Appellants allege.

Even if the district court abused its discretion in allowing 

Rodriguez’s testimony, we are convinced the error was 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 21

harmless. Most of Rodriguez’s testimony—like that of the 

other officers—simply provided the jury with informative 

but only tangentially relevant information about CLCS’s 

overall activities and the means by which the police 

investigated them. We cannot imagine that the jury’s 

hearing that “XVIII” meant “18,” for example, had any 

discernible effect on their verdict as to whether Appellants 

conspired to distribute narcotics. We have no difficulty in 

rejecting Appellants’ challenge to Rodriguez’s testimony.

Detective Daniel Jenks

Finally, LAPD Detective Jenks testified on the twentyfourth trial day. Jenks summarized the content of 

(1) wiretapped calls made by Murillo, including translations 

of gang slang, (2) jail phone calls made to Perez, and 

(3) searches, interviews, and arrests conducted after baby 

Garcia’s murder. Leonidas and Hernandez challenge 

Jenks’s opinions on the Murillo and Perez calls as improper 

under Rule 701. But Leonidas and Hernandez said nothing 

at trial about the Perez calls; it was Perez’s counsel who 

objected to their introduction, and only after Jenks offered 

his opinion on the contents of the Murillo calls. The district 

court therefore lacked timely notice of Appellants’ objection 

to Jenks’s opinions on the Murillo calls—which Leonidas 

and Hernandez now press on appeal—until after Jenks had 

finished opining on them. The Perez calls have nothing to 

do with Leonidas and Hernandez. Allowing Jenks to offer 

his opinion on them did not affect Leonidas and Hernandez 

in any way. That leaves the Murillo calls. Because there 

was no relevant objection until after Jenks had already 

opined on their meaning, we evaluate whether the court’s 

failure to intervene sua sponte to prevent the testimony was 

plain error.

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In a few places, Jenks’s testimony approached the line of 

permissibility under Rule 701. For instance, the jury was 

played a recording of a conversation between Murillo and a 

friend, in which Murillo, describing the requirement that 

those who sold drugs in CLCS territory pay rent, told the 

friend, “[‘C]ause I mean ain’t . . . nobody doing no dope 

slanging for free, dog. I don’t care who.” Jenks told the jury 

this meant “that nobody gets to sell for free; they’re going to 

have to pay, basically, a tax or a fee to sell narcotics.” This 

approaches the line Judge Berzon warned about in her partial 

concurrence in Gadson: rather than translating slang or 

ambiguous conversations, Jenks simply paraphrased 

Murillo’s words in a way that made their incriminating 

nature clearer. See 763 F.3d at 1231 (Berzon, J., concurring 

in part and dissenting in part).

But even if Leonidas and Hernandez might properly have 

objected to the admission of Jenks’s opinions at trial, this is 

plain-error review—and they come nowhere close to 

alleging plain error. The line between lay and expert 

testimony in this context, we have acknowledged, “is a fine 

one.” Freeman, 498 F.3d at 904. Even granting, for sake of 

argument, that any error in admitting Jenks’s opinions 

should have been plain to the district court, Leonidas and 

Hernandez cannot show that allowing the jury to hear those 

opinions affected their substantial rights or the fairness of the 

proceedings. A thorough examination of the transcripts of 

Murillo’s phone conversations reveals they do not so much 

as mention any Appellant’s name or moniker, nor do they 

pertain in any way to Leonidas’s or Hernandez’s roles in 

CLCS. There was no plain error in allowing this testimony.

2

Appellants concede that other lay witnesses—former 

CLCS members—properly corroborated nearly all the 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 23

officers’ challenged testimony,4 but argue that those 

witnesses—Pantoja, Delaguila, Alexander Serrano, 

Villalobos, and Guillen—were “inherently suspect because 

they were testifying in exchange for sentence reductions.” 

But Appellants’ counsel deftly elicited the cooperators’ 

incentive to deceive on cross-examination; the jury was well 

aware of the sentence reductions each was in line to receive, 

and it chose to credit their testimony anyway. There is no 

rule in our Circuit that a criminal conviction may not, as a 

matter of law, rest on the testimony of government 

cooperators. In our system, “[i]t is up to the jury . . . to 

determine the credibility of a witness’ testimony.” United 

States v. Weatherspoon, 410 F.3d 1142, 1147 (9th Cir. 

2005). We decline Appellants’ invitation to intrude on the 

province of the jury.

And Appellants ignore the import of the agents’ 

testimony, which was not primarily to implicate Appellants 

in illicit activity, but rather to prove the existence of a 

criminal enterprise, which conducted its business through a 

pattern of racketeering activity, including a conspiracy to 

distribute narcotics. Dozens of other witnesses—lay and 

expert, law enforcement and gang member—established 

4 For example, Pantoja corroborated Guadian’s testimony as to the 

meanings of 18th Street and Eme tattoos. Guillen deposited the money 

in question in Martinez’s account and attested to that fact and others 

regarding the inmate-funds system. Guillen also authenticated and 

provided firsthand testimony about several of the letters Guadian 

identified. Several witnesses corroborated Guadian’s testimony 

regarding the Eme’s structure and authority. Keenan’s moniker opinions

were echoed by nearly everyone who took the stand, and while his 

description of searches was novel, testimony about what those searches 

uncovered—namely, narcotics—pervaded the trial. Jenks’s testimony 

relating to Murillo’s calls—which did not so much as mention 

Hernandez or Leonidas—was confirmed by numerous witnesses who 

testified about CLCS’s drug dealing and gangbanging activities.

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24 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

CLCS’s narcotics and racketeering endeavors. Given “the 

overwhelming evidence” that the enterprise and conspiracy 

existed based on other witnesses’ testimony, Lloyd, 807 F.3d 

at 1168, we have more than “a fair assurance that the jury 

was not substantially swayed by the error,” Gadson, 

763 F.3d at 1208 (internal quotation marks and citation 

omitted).

The district court diligently patrolled the line between 

lay and expert testimony. In those few instances in which 

admission of these four witnesses’ testimony was error, 

Appellants suffered no prejudice. We decline to disturb 

Appellants’ convictions on this basis.

C

Perez challenges his convictions on four counts, alleging 

the district court improperly instructed the jury on the 

extraterritorial application of the VICAR statute at issue. 

We review de novo both a district court’s determination of a 

statute’s extraterritorial reach, see United States v. Ubaldo, 

859 F.3d 690, 699 (9th Cir. 2017), and jury instructions 

“challenged as misstatements of law,” United States v. 

Kleinman, 880 F.3d 1020, 1031 (9th Cir. 2017) (internal 

citation omitted).

1

Federal statutes are presumed to apply only within 

American territorial jurisdiction. See Foley Bros., Inc. v. 

Filardo, 336 U.S. 281, 285 (1949). The so-called 

presumption against extraterritoriality has both descriptive 

and normative justifications: it is based in part on “the 

commonsense notion that Congress generally legislates with 

domestic concerns in mind,” Smith v. United States, 507 U.S. 

197, 204 n.5 (1993), and it serves to prevent “unintended 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 25

clashes between our laws and those of other nations which 

could result in international discord,” EEOC v. Arabian Am. 

Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 248 (1991). Unless a statute gives “a 

clear, affirmative indication that it applies extraterritorially,” 

it covers only domestic conduct. RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. 

European Cmty., 136 S. Ct. 2090, 2101 (2016).

RJR Nabisco lays out a two-step process for determining 

whether a statute has extraterritorial effect. First, we ask 

“whether the presumption against extraterritoriality has been 

rebutted.” Id. The presumption “can be rebutted only if the 

text provides a ‘clear indication of an extraterritorial 

application.’” WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp., 

138 S. Ct. 2129, 2136 (2018) (quoting Morrison v. Nat’l 

Australia Bank, Ltd., 561 U.S. 247, 255 (2010)). Second, if 

the statute does not apply extraterritorially, we ask “whether 

the case involves a domestic application of the statute”; that 

is, whether “the conduct relevant to the statute’s focus 

occurred in the United States.” RJR Nabisco, 136 S. Ct. 

at 2101.5

5 Early in this doctrine’s development, the Supreme Court suggested 

that the presumption should not apply equally to “criminal statutes which 

are, as a class, not logically dependent on their locality for the 

government’s jurisdiction.” United States v. Bowman, 260 U.S. 94, 98 

(1922). We have applied the presumption to criminal statutes, albeit 

without mentioning Bowman. See Ubaldo, 859 F.3d at 700. And most 

courts of appeals applying Bowman still require the government to show 

that the presumption against extraterritoriality has clearly been rebutted

by the text of the statute. See, e.g., United States v. Garcia Soto, 948 

F.3d 356, 360 (D.C. Cir. 2020); United States v. Hoskins, 902 F.3d 69, 

96 (2d Cir. 2018); United States v. Vasquez, 899 F.3d 363, 373 n.6 (5th 

Cir. 2018). But see United States v. Leija-Sanchez, 602 F.3d 797, 798 

(7th Cir. 2010) (applying Bowman to hold VICAR applies 

extraterritorially without relying on the text of VICAR to rebut the 

presumption). Because we hold that the question of VICAR’s 

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26 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

2

Perez finds fault in the district court’s instruction to the 

jury on Counts One, Sixteen, Seventeen, and Eighteen of the

indictment. Count One charged a RICO conspiracy, while 

the other three charged VICAR counts: Count Sixteen 

charged conspiracy to murder, Seventeen charged 

conspiracy to kidnap,6 and Eighteen alleged attempted 

murder, all under VICAR’s umbrella.7 In instruction 52, the 

district court told the jury, “The RICO and VICAR statutes 

apply extraterritorially. It therefore is not necessary for the 

government to prove, with respect to Counts One . . .

Sixteen, Seventeen, [and] Eighteen . . . that any part of the 

charged crime took place within the United States.”

That instruction is wrong.8 RJR Nabisco explicitly held 

that RICO, 18 U.S.C. § 1962—the statute charged in Count 

extraterritorial reach is controlled by RJR Nabisco, we do not grapple 

with Bowman.

6 Perez does not challenge his conviction on Count Seventeen 

because the jury found, with respect to Count Twenty’s conspiracy-tokidnap charge, that both the conspiracy’s origin and an overt act in 

furtherance of the conspiracy took place in the United States. See Tr. of 

Oral Arg. at 23:40.

7 Six California Penal Code sections formed the basis of Perez’s 

VICAR convictions: Cal. Penal Code §§ 21(a), 31, 182, 187, 189, and 

664. At the time of trial, § 21(a) defined attempt; § 31 outlined

accomplice liability; § 182 detailed conspiracy; § 187 defined murder; 

§ 189 separated first- and second-degree murder; and § 664 laid out 

punishments for inchoate offenses.

8 Whether it was wrong when the district court gave it in 2012 is 

another question. During the time between final judgment and 

submission after oral argument on appeal, the law of extraterritoriality 

changed at least twice in our Circuit. See United States v. Chao Fan Xu, 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 27

One—may have extraterritorial effect, “but only to the 

extent that the predicates alleged in a particular case 

themselves apply extraterritorially.” 136 S. Ct. at 2102. And 

there is an evident analogy between RICO and VICAR, the 

basis of Perez’s convictions on Counts Sixteen and Eighteen. 

VICAR incorporates RICO’s definition of “racketeering 

activity,” see 18 U.S.C. § 1959(b)(1), and it, too, brings 

under its umbrella some wholly extraterritorial acts, such as 

the federal prohibition on a United States national killing 

another United States national abroad, see id. § 1959(a)(1); 

id. § 1119(b). In light of this authority, then, VICAR at least 

may reach a crime committed abroad with sufficient nexus 

to the conduct of an enterprise’s affairs.

But VICAR does not reach all crimes committed in other 

countries. If the laws of the United States or the States 

cannot reach foreign conduct, neither may VICAR. And the 

predicate crimes with which Perez was charged—

California’s attempted murder statute and its definitional 

components—do not proscribe wholly extraterritorial acts. 

California’s jurisdictional statutes and case law explicitly 

rule out punishing an act committed entirely in another 

country: California may exercise its “territorial jurisdiction 

over an offense if the defendant, [1] with the requisite intent, 

[2] does a preparatory act in California that is more than a de 

minimis act toward the eventual completion of the offense.” 

People v. Betts, 103 P.3d 883, 887 (Cal. 2005). See also Cal. 

Penal Code § 778a(a).

706 F.3d 965 (9th Cir. 2013) (RICO does not apply extraterritorially), 

abrogated by RJR Nabisco, 136 S. Ct. at 2102 (RICO reaches foreign 

conduct to the extent its predicates do). The district judge here did an 

exceptional job handling this complex case involving multiple 

defendants and multiple counts that would have posed a challenge to 

even the most conscientious jurist.

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28 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

It may well be that California could exercise its 

jurisdiction over the conduct charged here: even though the 

California murder statute does not cover wholly 

extraterritorial conduct, the government presented 

substantial evidence that Perez joined an existing conspiracy 

to murder Macedo formulated in the United States, and that 

his conduct thus came within the statute’s domestic “focus.” 

See RJR Nabisco, 136 S. Ct. at 2101; Cal. Penal Code 

§ 778a(b) (allowing criminal sanction for a person who 

“within this state, kidnaps another person . . . and thereafter 

carries the person into another state or country and commits 

any crime of violence or theft against that person”). See also 

People v. Brown, 109 Cal. Rptr. 2d 879, 881–83 (Cal. Ct. 

App. 2001) (California had jurisdiction to prosecute a doctor 

who caused victim’s death through botched amputation 

performed in Mexico—but who picked the victim up and 

received payment in California). The government presses 

this point on appeal, arguing that “conduct relevant to the 

statute’s focus clearly occurred in the United States.” But 

the jury deciding Perez’s guilt was instructed that it could 

convict Perez without finding any of his conduct occurred in 

the United States. Because California requires the 

formulation of criminal intent—and a non-de-minimis act in 

furtherance of the crime’s commission—in California, the 

district court’s instruction was in error.

3

Even though the extraterritoriality instruction to the jury 

misstated the law, “[a]n improper jury instruction does not 

require reversal if the error is harmless.” United States v. 

Garcia, 729 F.3d 1171, 1177 (9th Cir. 2013). See also 

Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24 (1967). A 

“constitutional” error is only harmless if we are satisfied 

“beyond a reasonable doubt that the . . . instruction . . . did 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 29

not contribute to the guilty verdict.” Kleinman, 880 F.3d at 

1035. Whether a jury-instruction error is constitutional is 

sometimes “not clear.” United States v. Hernandez, 

476 F.3d 791, 801 (9th Cir. 2007). Where that error lies in 

defining the offense, we have required harmlessness to be 

proven beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., Neder v. 

United States, 527 U.S. 1, 19–20 (1999) (error subject to 

harmless-error review where the instruction omitted an 

element of the offense); Garcia, 729 F.3d at 1177–78 

(erroneous definition of manslaughter was constitutional 

error). While the district court’s misstatement of 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1959’s geographic reach was not the omission of an 

element (like the errors in Neder and Garcia), it was 

tantamount to such an error.

That error incorrectly described the district court’s 

authority to hail Perez before the court and to punish him for 

conduct occurring outside its physical jurisdiction. Like the 

statutory elements in Neder and Garcia, a nexus between 

American territory and Perez’s participation in the crimes 

alleged is a necessary condition for his conviction where, as 

here, the statute does not reach Perez’s purely extraterritorial 

criminal conduct. As a result of the error, the jury was 

wrongly told it could find him guilty for crimes occurring 

solely in Mexico. We think this error has a constitutional 

due process dimension: it relieved the United States of the 

burden of proving the required connection between 

American territorial jurisdiction and the crimes in Counts 

One, Sixteen, Seventeen, and Eighteen for which Perez 

stood trial in the Central District of California. See United 

States v. Davis, 905 F.2d 245, 248–49 (9th Cir. 1990) 

(framing extraterritorial application of a statute in due 

process terms); cf. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970) (proof 

of a criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt required by 

due process). We therefore evaluate whether the 

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30 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

instructional error as to those Counts was harmless beyond a 

reasonable doubt.

We see three considerations to weigh in our 

harmlessness calculus: (1) the weight of the evidence 

establishing the conspiracy’s beginning in this country; 

(2) the jury’s special finding regarding the date on which the 

conspiracy began; and (3) the court’s instruction on Count 

Sixteen, wherein the jury heard that to convict Perez of 

conspiracy to murder, it must find that “an overt act was 

committed in this state.” On the basis of all three factors 

combined, we find the instructional error harmless as to 

Count Sixteen, but reverse as to Count Eighteen where no 

contrary instruction cured the initial error.

i

Our harmless-error standard emphasizes that where 

evidence of a defendant’s guilt is “overwhelming,” even 

significant jury-instruction error can be harmless. See, e.g., 

United States v. Conti, 804 F.3d 977, 981 (9th Cir. 2015). 

However, failing to instruct on an element of a crime is not 

harmless if there is sufficient evidence that the jury could 

have found in favor of the defendant if properly instructed. 

Neder, 527 U.S. at 19.

At trial, the government presented compelling evidence 

that the conspiracy to murder Macedo began in California 

shortly after Garcia’s death. The jury heard testimony that 

the Eme-mandated “green light”—the authorization for all 

Southern California Hispanic gangs to punish CLCS for 

baby Garcia’s murder—was “automatic” as soon as the 

infant died. Isaac Guillen told the jury that a gang that fails 

to “clean [its] own house” by taking out the murderer of a 

child starts “getting hit” by other gang members in lockup, 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 31

and that other Eme members would expect Martinez to 

green-light CLCS members if they had killed an infant.

Pantoja’s testimony was key. He was repeatedly pressed 

about the origins of the conspiracy to murder Macedo, 

testifying that if Macedo was left alive, all of CLCS would 

come under sustained attack from other gangs. He told the 

jury his plan was to kill Macedo all along, that Macedo’s 

death was necessary to spare CLCS, and that he started 

preparing immediately to kill Macedo. The jury was entitled 

to credit Pantoja’s testimony: the evidence was sufficient to 

support Perez’s convictions. See Part II.D.2, infra.

But sufficient is not overwhelming. As Perez points out, 

Pantoja gave shifting and contradictory explanations for 

bringing $30,000 to Mexico, ultimately telling the jury he 

did not know why he brought the money along. (Perez 

claims the $30,000 was to pay to board Macedo in Mexico—

money that would be unnecessary if the plan were to kill 

Macedo the whole time.) Perez also elicited from Pantoja 

that, despite the latter’s earlier testimony that everyone knew 

a green light automatically attached to the murderer of a 

child, Macedo himself was apparently completely in the dark 

about the ramifications of having killed Garcia.

These inconsistencies bolster the defense theory of the 

case: that Pantoja planned to hide Macedo out in Mexico—

and brought money to board him there—but ultimately 

changed his mind in Mexico and ordered Macedo’s death. 

And Perez made his case plain by hammering Pantoja’s trial 

statements’ inconsistency with Pantoja’s previous proffers, 

in which Pantoja had told the government he ordered 

Macedo taken to Mexico to hide him out, not to kill him. 

Our precedents establish a high bar for finding harmlessness 

beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., Neder, 527 U.S. at 19 

(error not harmless where defendant “contested the omitted 

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32 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

element and raised evidence sufficient to support a contrary 

finding” (emphasis added)). Pantoja was the government’s 

key witness as to the conspiracy’s origins. His credibility 

problem and conflicting accounts of the plan to kill Macedo 

would have given the jury ample ground “to support a 

contrary finding.” Id. Thus, while the weight of the 

evidence cuts in favor of harmlessness, we do not find that

the evidence alone is a sufficient basis for finding the juryinstruction error harmless.

ii

In finding Perez guilty of Count One, the jury made a 

special finding that the conspiracy to murder Macedo began 

“on or about September 15, 2007”—the date of baby 

Garcia’s murder—and continued through “on or about 

September 21, 2007”—the day Perez and Murillo tried to kill 

Macedo. Murillo picked up Macedo in the Los Angeles area 

to take him to Mexico late at night on September 19, and 

they arrived in Tijuana, Mexico, early in the morning on 

September 20—four days after Garcia’s murder and just a 

day before the attempted murder of Macedo.

That the jury found the conspiracy began “on or about 

September 15” is strong evidence it believed the 

government’s case that the plan was hatched in the Central 

District of California. It would be strange indeed for a juror 

who believed Perez’s theory of the case to sign off on this 

finding despite believing it set the conspiracy’s beginning 

five days too early—on a six-day timeline. But, as one of 

the district court’s earlier instructions clarifies, “on or about” 

is flexible: the court told the jury it need only find the crime 

was committed “on a date reasonably near the date alleged 

in the indictment,” not “precisely on the date charged.” Our 

case law holds that eighteen days is “reasonably near” the 

date alleged, see United States v. Hinton, 222 F.3d 664, 672–

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 33

73 (9th Cir. 2000), though two years is not, United States v. 

Tsinhnahijinnie, 112 F.3d 988, 991–92 (9th Cir. 1997). With 

this background in mind, we cannot say we are convinced 

beyond a reasonable doubt that every juror who agreed the 

conspiracy began “on or about September 15” definitively 

ruled out that it began on September 20.

iii

The final piece of this harmlessness puzzle is the most 

important: in its specific instruction regarding Count 

Sixteen—the VICAR conspiracy to murder—the district 

court told the jury that, in order to convict, it must find, 

among other elements, that “an overt act was committed in 

this state by one or more of the persons” involved. The jury 

was thus correctly apprised of the facts necessary to trigger 

California’s jurisdiction over the crime. See Betts, 103 P.3d 

at 887. Because it came immediately after the incorrect 

instruction and more specifically addressed the jurisdictional 

question, jurors deciding Perez’s guilt on that count could be 

left with little doubt that they could not convict Perez solely 

on the basis of his conduct in Mexico. Together with the 

evidence of the conspiracy’s origin in California, and the 

jury’s special finding on Count One, the correct instruction 

on Count Sixteen convinces us that the district court’s juryinstruction error was harmless as to that count, and Perez’s 

conviction for VICAR conspiracy to murder should 

therefore stand.9

9 Because we hold with regard to Count Sixteen—and Perez 

concedes as to Counts Seventeen and Twenty—that his convictions were 

properly based on territorial conduct, we also affirm his conviction on 

Count One, RICO conspiracy. 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d) does not require that 

each conspirator commit two independent predicate offenses. See 

Salinas v. United States, 522 U.S. 52, 65–66 (1997). But a conspirator’s 

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34 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

The same cannot be said for Perez’s conviction on Count 

Eighteen, VICAR attempted murder. No correct instruction 

cured the earlier, wrongful instruction. Indeed, the presence 

of the territorial requirement in Count Sixteen’s instruction 

may have served only to draw the jury’s attention to the lack

of such a domestic requirement on Count Eighteen. Because 

the weight of the evidence and the special finding alone do 

not eliminate all reasonable doubt about what the jury 

determined about the location of the conspiracy’s origin, we 

reverse Perez’s conviction on Count Eighteen. The 

government may elect to retry Perez on that count following 

remand, or, if the government decides not to retry him, the 

district court can simply resentence Perez without Count 

Eighteen.

D

Finally, all four Appellants challenge the sufficiency of 

the evidence underlying their convictions. We review the 

denial of a defendant’s motion to acquit de novo. See United 

States v. Christensen, 828 F.3d 763, 780 (9th Cir. 2015). 

The evidence underlying a conviction is sufficient if, 

“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. Phillips, 929 F.3d 1120, 1123 (9th Cir. 

2019) (internal citation omitted). See also Jackson v. 

Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979).

individually committing multiple predicate offenses is certainly 

sufficient to support a RICO conspiracy conviction where, as here, the 

other statutory requirements are met.

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 35

1

Hernandez and both Iraheta brothers challenge the 

sufficiency of the evidence underlying their convictions on 

Count Two, narcotics conspiracy. All three moved for 

acquittal after the verdict was returned. To convict these 

Appellants for narcotics conspiracy, the government was 

required to show: (1) there existed an agreement between 

two or more persons to possess with intent to distribute or to 

distribute crack cocaine or methamphetamine or both; and 

(2) Appellants joined the agreement knowing of its purpose 

and intending to help accomplish that purpose. Little need 

be said regarding the existence of an agreement to distribute 

drugs: the evidence showed drug distribution was the 

cornerstone of CLCS’s enterprise, its raison d’etre. Nearly 

every witness who took the stand testified to some aspect of 

CLCS’s pervasive regime of crack dealing. The evidence of 

its existence was truly overwhelming.

So too was the evidence of Hernandez’s central role in 

the charged conspiracy. Multiple witnesses referred to 

Hernandez as a “shot caller” or leader of CLCS’s drugtrafficking operation. Alexander Serrano, who was the lead 

rent collector at Eighth and Burlington, testified that 

Hernandez “was the one in charge of [Westlake Avenue] 

collecting rent” in 2000; Villalobos and Delaguila said the 

same. Villalobos’s testimony was particularly informative:

PROSECUTOR: Okay. What role did 

Defendant Hernandez have at Westlake?

VILLALOBOS: [Hernandez] had ultimate 

control of who was going to sell—what 

material is going to be on the street; what 

Mayorista he wants there—all—controlled 

all the narcotics on the streets . . .

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36 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

Westlake was regarded as one of the crown jewels of 

CLCS’s narcotics operation: Pantoja testified that 

Hernandez collected between $5,000 and $8,000 per week 

in rent from the street’s traqueteros and mayoristas, and that 

it was Hernandez’s idea to begin taxing vendors like 

Clemente. Guillen testified that Hernandez was part of 

Martinez’s “legal team”—the “top echelon” of his trusted 

lieutenants, and that Hernandez was charged with delivering 

the proceeds from CLCS’s narcotics sales to Guillen when 

Pantoja was unavailable. There is more, but it is clear that, 

viewing this evidence in the light most favorable to the 

prosecution, a reasonable trier of fact could convict 

Hernandez for his participation in the narcotics conspiracy.

Likewise, Vladimir Iraheta’s participation in CLCS’s 

narcotics operation cannot seriously be questioned. 

Vladimir concedes that “he has been a gang affiliate” with 

“a history of prior arrests for narcotics related conduct.” But 

he claims there was “scant evidence concerning the activities 

of or any acts actually performed by” him. He blames “an 

inflamed jury” for convicting him on the narcotics 

conspiracy because of the evidence of murder presented 

against him.

At trial, the government put on copious evidence that 

Vladimir played an integral role in CLCS’s drug-trafficking 

operation. Like Hernandez, Vladimir was held to be among 

Martinez’s “legal team”—his trusted lieutenants in CLCS 

territory. Serrano characterized Vladimir as Hernandez’s 

“muscle.” Villalobos told the jury Vladimir became 

Hernandez’s deputy overseeing fifteen to twenty traqueteros 

on Westlake Avenue around 2001 or 2002, and that 

Villalobos gave money collected from traqueteros to 

Vladimir to bring to Guillen. Vladimir protests that his mere 

association with CLCS is not enough to convict him for 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 37

participating in the narcotics conspiracy. He’s right: “mere 

gang membership” is not enough to show that a person has 

joined a criminal conspiracy. See United States v. Bingham, 

653 F.3d 983, 997 (9th Cir. 2011). Not every CLCS member 

is guilty of taking part in a narcotics conspiracy by virtue of 

his gang allegiance. Unfortunately for Vladimir, the 

evidence shows far more than “mere gang membership,” or 

mere presence in CLCS territory. The government put on 

evidence sufficient for rational jurors to find Vladimir was a 

core member of CLCS’s drug-trafficking operation. He 

enriched it by supervising drug sales, he protected it with 

violence, and he helped launder its profits.

Vladimir complains that the government’s narcoticsconspiracy case against him largely rested on Villalobos’s 

testimony. Vladimir’s argument goes like this: because 

Villalobos was the chief witness in the government’s murder 

case against him, and because the jury hung on that count, 

the jury necessarily disbelieved Villalobos, so his testimony 

linking Vladimir to the narcotics conspiracy cannot be 

credited. Putting aside that Villalobos was far from the only 

witness who implicated Vladimir in CLCS’s narcotics 

activity, the district court was right when, in denying 

Vladimir’s motion to acquit, it said, “[T]he jury can believe 

Mr. Villalobos on one issue but not other issues.” Indeed, 

the jury’s willingness to credit parts of Villalobos’s 

testimony while disregarding others showcases its 

thoughtful, discerning approach to the case; there is no 

evidence the jury was “inflamed” against Vladimir. It was 

entitled to find him guilty based on the evidence established 

at trial. Vladimir’s narcotics-conspiracy conviction is 

affirmed.

Leonidas Iraheta’s sufficiency claim fails, too. Witness 

after witness identified Leonidas as a core member of 

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38 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

CLCS—one who sold drugs, protected CLCS territory with 

violence, and helped to run its business operations. Like his 

brother, Leonidas was considered part of Martinez’s “legal 

team.” Pantoja testified that, in 2000, Leonidas assisted 

Hernandez in collecting rent from one of CLCS’s Westlake 

crack-dealing locations, and that Leonidas accompanied him 

on missions to intimidate the rival Rockwood gang. 

Crucially, Pantoja also testified that he personally witnessed 

Leonidas selling crack and meth in CLCS territory. 

Villalobos told the jury that Leonidas distributed drugs on 

Westlake Avenue. Delaguila corroborated Pantoja’s 

testimony that Leonidas collected rent from drug sales. As 

with his co-defendants, the evidence that Leonidas willingly 

joined and helped further the purpose of CLCS’s narcotics 

machine is overwhelming. His conviction on this count is 

affirmed.

2

Perez challenges the sufficiency of the evidence giving 

rise to his three conspiracy convictions: Counts Sixteen 

(VICAR conspiracy to murder), Seventeen (VICAR 

conspiracy to kidnap), and Twenty (garden-variety 

conspiracy to kidnap, 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1), (c)). The first 

basis of his challenge is the supposed unreliability of 

Pantoja’s testimony.10 Having addressed that contention and 

found it wanting, see Part II.C.3.i, supra, we will not belabor 

it any further. As with the sufficiency of the evidence 

underlying the other Appellants’ convictions, we review de 

novo the district court’s denial of Perez’s motion to acquit, 

10 The government characterized Perez’s claim that Pantoja perjured 

himself as a due-process challenge under Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 

(1959), and its progeny. Perez expressly disavows a Napue claim, so we 

need not address it.

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 39

affirming the conviction if, “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.” Phillips, 929 F.3d at 1123.

In addition to his attack on Pantoja’s credibility, Perez 

argues that, even if there was sufficient evidence of the 

conspiracy’s originating in the United States, there was 

insufficient evidence that he joined that conspiracy in this 

country.11 Perez does not deny his presence at the Mexicali 

cliffside, nor that he tried to murder Macedo there. But he 

denies that a reasonable jury could have found that he joined 

the conspiracy in California.

The evidence of Perez’s joining the conspiracy in 

California is admittedly less than overwhelming. But 

examining that evidence in the light most favorable to the 

government, it was sufficient to permit a reasonable jury to 

find beyond a reasonable doubt that Perez joined the 

conspiracy in California. Pantoja told jurors emphatically 

and repeatedly that the conspiracy began in California: he 

told them he ordered Murillo to take Macedo to Mexico to 

kill him shortly after Garcia’s death, and that Murillo in turn 

requested Perez’s help. It required no great leap in logic for 

a juror to infer that Murillo informed Perez of the plan’s 

details upon enlisting his help. Other evidence in the record 

also supports this conclusion. Perez took precautions that 

could be interpreted as demonstrating his knowledge that the 

plan was always to murder Macedo: Perez made the group 

stop on the way to Mexico so he could retrieve an 

identification card that would allow him to reenter the 

11 Perez does not challenge the substantive elements of the murder 

or kidnapping charges, just his participation in the conspiracy to commit 

those crimes.

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40 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

United States, but refused to allow Macedo to get his own 

identification card; and Perez told Aquino not to use real 

names or monikers on the trip, indicating that Perez knew 

the purpose of the trip was not benign. Finally, the counternarrative Perez presents is far less plausible. As Perez tells 

it, without more than a few hours’ advance notice, he agreed 

to go along with Murillo, Aquino, and Macedo on a multiday, nonlethal trip to Mexico without clear purpose; 

acquiesced somewhere along the way in a plan to murder 

Macedo; threw a rope around the young man’s neck; and 

yelled, “Die, motherfucker, die!” before casting Macedo’s 

body off a cliff. The evidence does not compel that unlikely 

conclusion—a reasonable jury could conclude otherwise 

from the evidence presented. See Jackson, 443 U.S. at 318. 

Perez’s conspiracy convictions are affirmed.

III

In addition to their merits-based arguments, Hernandez 

and Leonidas challenge their sentences as both procedurally 

erroneous and substantively unreasonable.12 Beginning with 

their procedural challenges, we “review the district court’s 

interpretation of the Guidelines de novo, the district court’s 

application of the Guidelines to the facts of the case for abuse 

of discretion, and the district court’s factual findings for 

clear error,” if the claim was preserved. United States v. 

Treadwell, 593 F.3d 990, 999 (9th Cir. 2010), overruled on 

other grounds by United States v. Miller, 953 F.3d 1095, 

1103 n.10 (9th Cir. 2020). Where the claim was not 

preserved, the district court’s determination is reviewed for 

12 Because Perez’s conviction is reversed as to Count Eighteen, we 

decline to reach his sentencing challenges at this time. See United States 

v. Cortes, 757 F.3d 850, 866 (9th Cir. 2014) (sentencing appeal moot 

where the court was already vacating conviction).

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 41

plain error.13 See, e.g., United States v. Valencia-Barragan, 

608 F.3d 1103, 1108 (9th Cir. 2010). A sentence is 

substantively reasonable if it is “sufficient, but not greater 

than necessary” under the totality of the circumstances and 

§ 3553(a) factors. United States v. Carty, 520 F.3d 984, 

994–95 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc). We do not adopt a 

presumption of reasonableness purely because a sentence is 

within Guidelines, but “when the judge’s discretionary 

decision accords with the [Sentencing] Commission’s view 

of the appropriate application of § 3553(a) in the mine run 

of cases, it is probable that the sentence is reasonable.” Id. 

at 994 (quoting Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 351 

(2007)). We affirm the district court’s sentencing 

determinations as to both Appellants because the court 

correctly computed the applicable Sentencing Guidelines 

and committed no reversible error.

A

Hernandez and Leonidas jointly object to the district 

court’s drug weight calculation under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1; 

application of threat and firearm enhancements under the 

same subsection; explication of § 3553(a) factors; and use of 

judicial fact-finding, which Appellants style as a violation of 

the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Hernandez individually 

objects to the court’s application of obstruction of justice and 

managerial-role enhancements under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1. 

Leonidas individually objects on a Rule 32 basis, claiming 

that the court below did not address his minor-role 

adjustment argument. We hold that the district court’s only 

error was in its application of the firearm enhancement to 

13 Instances where the claim was not preserved are noted in our 

discussion below. The reader should otherwise assume that it was 

preserved.

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42 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

Hernandez, but that this error was harmless and therefore 

does not warrant reversal.

1

Appellants attack the district court’s drug quantity 

calculation on almost every front, but each blow misses the 

mark. The district court properly utilized the multiplier 

method to calculate the amount of drugs Appellants were 

responsible for under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1 in order to set a base 

offense level. See Treadwell, 593 F.3d at 999–1000 (method 

of approximation must be reviewed de novo); United States 

v. Culps, 300 F.3d 1069, 1076–77 (9th Cir. 2002) (multiplier 

method is appropriate where the “amount of drugs seized 

does not reflect the scale of the offense”). “Under the 

multiplier method, the district court accounts for the 

defendant’s behavior over time by determining a daily or 

weekly quantity, selecting a time period over which it is 

more likely than not that the defendant was dealing in that 

quantity and multiplying these two factors together.” Id.

at 1077.

The district court’s multiplier-method calculation 

centered on the evidence adduced at trial, including 

testimony about the amount of money collected weekly from 

the Third and Westlake drug hub and the highest average 

wholesale price of crack cocaine sold during the conspiracy. 

That figure was multiplied to account for the amount of 

drugs sold between 2000 and 2003, when both Hernandez 

and Leonidas were working at the Westlake location on 

behalf of CLCS, according to testimony found credible by 

the court. See U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3, cmt. n.2 (defendant is 

responsible “for all quantities of contraband with which he 

was directly involved and . . . all reasonably foreseeable 

quantities of contraband that were within the scope” of the 

conspiracy). The district court’s final calculation yielded 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 43

more than double the 25.2 kg threshold of crack cocaine 

needed to support the base offense level of 38 that the court 

selected as a result of its computation.

Appellants argue that the district court should have 

applied the clear and convincing standard of proof in making 

drug quantity determinations for sentencing. But we have 

“repeatedly held that sentencing determinations relating to 

the extent of a criminal conspiracy need not be established 

by clear and convincing evidence.” Treadwell, 593 F.3d 

at 1001. Further, we have specifically stated that “factual 

disputes regarding drug quantity” should be resolved via the 

preponderance of the evidence standard. United States v. 

Flores, 725 F.3d 1028, 1035 (9th Cir. 2013). Appellants’ 

challenges to the district court’s drug quantity calculations 

are all factual and/or related to the extent of the conspiracy 

and their involvement therein. While it is not entirely clear 

from the record what standard the district court applied to its 

findings, to the extent that it used the preponderance of the 

evidence standard in its drug quantity determination, there 

was no error.

Somewhat more convincing is Appellants’ argument that 

the dollar figures utilized by the district court were flawed. 

They argue that the court should have used a higher price for 

crack cocaine—$36,000 per kilogram retail, rather than the 

$20,000 per kilogram wholesale price that it chose—and 

should not have relied on the testimony of a co-conspirator 

witness who provided the $8,000 per week sales figure. But, 

in actuality, more than one witness testified to a similar sales 

figure at trial where they were subject to cross-examination, 

and the district court was entitled to rely on that information. 

See United States v. Alvarez, 358 F.3d 1194, 1213 (9th Cir. 

2004) (three coconspirators’ drug weight estimates were 

sufficiently reliable where they testified under oath and were 

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44 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

subject to cross-examination). Moreover, even if the district 

court had utilized the $36,000 per kilogram figure that 

Appellants prefer, the final quantity calculation would still 

result in more than 25.2 kg of crack cocaine over three years, 

again placing Appellants at a base offense level of 38. The 

district court may have had good reason for choosing the 

wholesale price rather than the retail price for its calculation, 

given that testimony at trial supported the notion that 

Hernandez and Leonidas acted as “wholesaler[s] to the little 

homies,” and any arguable error was harmless. See, e.g., id.

(error in drug calculation is harmless if adjustment to correct 

error does not lead to a lesser base offense level).

Finally, the record supports the district court’s 

determination that both Appellants were continuously 

working at the Westlake drug hub during the selected time 

period of 2000 to 2003, with Hernandez running the show 

and Leonidas and his twin brother acting as muscle. The 

district court cited Appellants’ “long standing participation 

in the scheme,” and found that the drug sales at Westlake 

were “reasonably foreseeable in connection with the scope 

of the defendant[s’] agreement as to the jointly undertaken 

scheme.” See United States v. Ortiz, 362 F.3d 1274, 1275 

(9th Cir. 2004) (conduct of a member of a conspiracy must 

be “both in furtherance of jointly undertaken activity and

reasonably foreseeable” for it to be considered at 

sentencing). Drug sales, and the money flowing from them, 

were evidently consistent during the timeframe selected. See 

Culps, 300 F.3d at 1081 (drug operation must be continuous 

during period of time selected). Because we can find no 

evidence, and Appellants present none, to dispute the time 

period selected by the district court, evidence of the 

continuous nature of the drug sales from the Westlake 

location during that time, and Appellants’ extensive 

connection to those drug sales, the district court did not err 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 45

in its calculation of a base offense level of 38 for Hernandez 

and Leonidas.

2

The district court applied two enhancements to the base 

offense level calculation of both Leonidas and Hernandez: a 

two-level enhancement for firearm possession and a twolevel enhancement for the use or direction of violence or 

credible threats of violence. U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(1)–(2). 

Both may be applied on the same facts. Id. § 2D1.1 cmt. 

n.11(B).

A two-level firearm enhancement is proper if a defendant 

possesses a weapon in furtherance of the drug trafficking 

offense. Id. § 2D1.1(b)(1). In conspiracy cases, we look to 

“all of the offense conduct, not just the crime of conviction,” 

when determining if a defendant possessed a firearm in 

furtherance of a scheme. United States v. Willard, 919 F.2d 

606, 610 (9th Cir. 1990) (citing U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(2)). 

Possession can include constructive possession, which 

applies when there is “a sufficient connection between the 

defendant and the contraband to support the inference that 

the defendant exercised dominion and control over [it].” 

United States v. Boykin, 785 F.3d 1352, 1364 (9th Cir. 2015) 

(internal quotation marks omitted). See also U.S.S.G. 

§ 2D1.1 cmt. n.11(A) (enhancement may be applied if 

weapon “was present, unless it is clearly improbable that the 

weapon was connected with the offense”).

No firearms were recovered in this case, however, and 

none of the evidence cited by the district court indicates that 

Hernandez possessed a firearm that may have been 

connected to any offense. See United States v. Briggs, 

623 F.3d 724, 731 (9th Cir. 2010) (reversal of sentence for 

application of firearm enhancement where “defendant 

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46 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

repeatedly bragged about the guns he had access to, but none 

of these firearms was ever recovered”); United States v. 

Miller, 890 F.3d 317, 328 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (“The District 

Court plainly erred by imposing the enhancement because it 

made no factual finding as to any nexus between those 

firearms and Appellant’s drug convictions . . . .”). The 

district court made no finding about which Appellant 

possessed or controlled the firearm that was used in the 

Barajas murder. Neither did the court explain whether 

Hernandez may have had constructive possession over a 

firearm that was found on a fugitive arrested by LAPD 

officers at Hernandez’s apartment, or whether a firearm that 

Hernandez apparently gave to Pantoja in 2000 for Pantoja’s 

personal protection could in any way link back to 

Hernandez’s possession during the course of the scheme—

we think both situations are improbable. See United States 

v. Kelso, 942 F.2d 680, 682 (9th Cir. 1991) (reversal 

warranted where enhancement was applied to defendant who 

“may have had access to the gun, [but] there is no evidence 

he owned it, or even was aware of its presence”).

Likewise, we cannot place any specific firearm in 

Hernandez’s possession based solely on his general 

involvement in “green-lighting” and “gangbanging.” Cf. 

United States v. Heldberg, 907 F.2d 91, 94 (9th Cir. 1990) 

(recovered gun was possessed during time period of 

importation of drugs). Although the district court’s concern 

about the CLCS tradition of violence is well supported on 

this record, without any actual evidence of a firearm that 

Hernandez may have exercised “dominion or control over,” 

we cannot condone application of the enhancement. 

Compare Briggs, 623 F.3d at 731, with Boykin, 785 F.3d 

at 1364 (enhancement proper where agents recovered 

firearms at defendant’s residence where he also conducted 

drug sales); Willard, 919 F.2d at 609–10 (enhancement 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 47

proper where guns were recovered at defendant’s place of 

business).

The same is not true for Leonidas, however, because the 

district court relied on testimony about his actual handling 

of a firearm. Direct testimony established that Leonidas and 

his brother, Vladimir, terrorized someone with a “12-gauge 

shotgun,” and that Leonidas was seen by another witness 

with two guns during the course of the conspiracy. There 

was also evidence in the record that, in 2002, a police officer 

observed Leonidas removing a stainless-steel handgun from 

his waistband and placing it on the tire of a van shortly 

before fleeing. The handgun was later recovered and 

Leonidas was arrested. From these facts, the district court 

could have reasonably concluded that, during the 

conspiracy, Leonidas had constructive possession of a 

firearm, which may have been used in furtherance of the 

aims of the CLCS enterprise.

There was no error in applying the enhancement to 

Leonidas and, although the district court erred in applying 

the firearm enhancement to Hernandez, such error does not 

require reversal. “When a defendant is sentenced under an 

incorrect Guidelines range—whether or not the defendant’s 

ultimate sentence falls within the correct range—the error 

itself can, and most often will, be sufficient to show a 

reasonable probability of a different outcome absent the 

error.” Molina-Martinez v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1338, 

1345 (2016). But here, even without the two-level firearm 

enhancement, the Guidelines range is the same. The correct 

Guidelines calculation still yields a sentence 

recommendation of life for Hernandez at offense level 43. 

See U.S.S.G. Sentencing Table. The district court also made 

quite clear that a sentence of life imprisonment was 

warranted from the evidence introduced at trial. Any effect 

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48 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

on Hernandez’s sentence was therefore harmless. See 

United States v. Munoz-Camarena, 631 F.3d 1028, 1030 n.5 

(9th Cir. 2011) (per curiam).

Turning to the district court’s two-level enhancement for 

use or direction of threats, we find no error in its application 

to either Hernandez or Leonidas. While it may be based on 

the same underlying circumstances as the firearm 

enhancement, under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(2), a separate twolevel enhancement can be imposed if “the defendant used 

violence, made a credible threat to use violence, or directed 

the use of violence.” Multiple witnesses testified that 

Hernandez was in charge of gangbanging for CLCS, and 

further evidence established that he took young members to 

the neighboring Rockwood community to “put in work,” 

during which time they killed a Rockwood gang member. 

The district court also cited evidence of a threat by 

Hernandez to throw someone off the roof of a building. At 

Leonidas’s sentencing hearing, the district court again cited 

his use of a 12-gauge shotgun to terrorize a witness, and also 

credited testimony that Leonidas went along for a shooting 

mission against the Burlington Locos gang and slashed a 

gang member’s tires “as part of a . . . get-out-of-town 

threat.” At a minimum, this evidence establishes, by a 

preponderance of the evidence, that both Appellants credibly 

threatened violence and that Hernandez also directed the use 

of violence. The district court did not err in applying the 

U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(2) threat enhancement to either 

Hernandez or Leonidas.

3

Hernandez individually challenges the district court’s 

application of an obstruction of justice enhancement under 

U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1 and an aggravated-role enhancement 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 49

under U.S.S.G. § 3B1.1(b) to his overall Guideline 

calculation. We conclude that both were properly applied.

An obstruction enhancement is proper:

If (1) the defendant willfully obstructed or 

impeded, or attempted to obstruct or impede, 

the administration of justice with respect to 

the investigation, prosecution, or sentencing 

of the instant offense of conviction, and 

(2) the obstructive conduct related to (A) the 

defendant’s offense of conviction and any 

relevant conduct; or (B) a closely related 

offense, increase the offense level by 2 levels.

U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1. Application Note 4(A) provides 

examples of obstruction, which include “threatening, 

intimidating, or otherwise unlawfully influencing a codefendant, witness, or juror, directly or indirectly, or 

attempting to do so.” A defendant may be held responsible 

for the actions of others if he “willfully caused” or “aided 

and abetted” those acts. Id. § 3C1.1, cmt. n.9. We have 

often affirmed sentencing enhancements under § 3C1.1 

where the defendant intimidated, or shared information 

about, an individual working as a police cooperator or 

“snitch.” See, e.g., United States v. Scheele, 231 F.3d 492, 

500 (9th Cir. 2000) (defendant used threatening language 

and called police cooperator a “narc”); United States v. 

Jackson, 974 F.2d 104, 106 (9th Cir. 1992) (defendant 

passed around co-defendant’s cooperation agreement with 

the words “rat” and “snitch” written at the top). “Where a 

defendant’s statements can be reasonably construed as a 

threat, even if they are not made directly to the threatened 

person, the defendant has obstructed justice.” Id.

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At trial, a co-conspirator, Villalobos, testified that 

Hernandez visited his home and told Villalobos’s wife that 

he should not cooperate with law enforcement. Villalobos 

also testified that Hernandez effectively called him out as a 

cooperator at a downtown Los Angeles lockup. Hernandez 

argues that these co-conspirator statements are not reliable 

and are hearsay.

As noted earlier, the district court is entitled to rely on 

co-conspirator testimony offered at trial. Alvarez, 358 F.3d 

at 1213. And while a district court may consider “relevant 

information without regard to its admissibility under the 

rules of evidence applicable at trial,” U.S.S.G. § 6A1.3(a), 

Hernandez is correct that “[c]hallenged information is 

deemed false or unreliable if it lacks some minimal indicium 

of reliability beyond mere allegation,” United States v. 

McGowan, 668 F.3d 601, 606–07 (9th Cir. 2012) (internal 

quotations omitted). Hernandez is also correct that the 

testimony of Villalobos’s wife may well constitute hearsaywithin-hearsay,14 but the lockup incident at the Metropolitan 

Detention Center holding federal prisoners that Villalobos 

himself witnessed firsthand provides a second basis for the 

district court’s holding. Because we conclude that the 

testimony about the lockup incident is not unreliable to the 

degree of any of the cases cited by Hernandez, the district 

court properly relied on it in applying the enhancement. Cf. 

id. at 607–08 (the only evidence was transcript-based 

testimony without opportunity for cross-examination or 

observation for credibility); United States v. Hanna, 49 F.3d 

14 Appellants’ counsel did not object on hearsay grounds when the 

testimony was offered at trial, but it is unclear from the record whether 

Villalobos’s wife is a co-conspirator whose statement would be 

admissible over such an objection, as well as being an admission against 

penal interest of the declarant.

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 51

572, 577–78 (9th Cir. 1995) (the only evidence was 

contradicted testimony, given at the sentencing hearing, of a 

single event by co-defendant who had already pleaded guilty 

and repeatedly invoked Fifth Amendment).

Similarly, there was no clear error in the district court’s 

application of an aggravated-role enhancement to 

Hernandez’s sentencing calculation. See United States v. Yi, 

704 F.3d 800, 807 (9th Cir. 2013). A three-level 

enhancement, as was utilized, is available for a defendant 

who acts as “a manager or supervisor (but not an organizer 

or leader) [where] the criminal activity involved five or more 

participants or was otherwise extensive.” U.S.S.G. 

§ 3B1.1(b). A court should consider “all persons involved 

during the course of the entire offense” when deciding if an 

organization is “extensive.” Id. § 3B1.1(b) cmt. n.3. The 

introductory commentary for U.S.S.G. § 3B also notes that 

the “determination of a defendant’s role in the offense is to 

be made on the basis of all conduct,” including “all 

reasonably foreseeable acts and omissions of others in 

furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity.” See 

United States v. Tankersley, 537 F.3d 1100, 1110 (9th Cir. 

2008) (noting that such considerations are “particularly 

appropriate when sentencing members of a pervasive and 

farranging [sic] criminal enterprise”); Ortiz, 362 F.3d 

at 1275.

During Hernandez’s sentencing hearing, the district 

court cited the testimony of four different co-conspirators to 

support its conclusion that Hernandez was “a manager or a 

supervisor” of the drug conspiracy. This included evidence 

that Hernandez was in charge of the Westlake drug 

distribution hub from 2000 to 2003, in charge of 

gangbanging for an even longer period, and was part of the 

“core group” and “top echelon legal team” of CLCS. 

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Hernandez disputes this characterization of his involvement 

and claims he was in fact a notorious partier who was absent 

from many major gang decisions.

When viewing the conspiracy as a whole, it was clearly 

both “extensive” and involved at least five other 

participants, only one of which is necessary. See U.S.S.G. 

§ 3B1.1(b). The district court was also correct in concluding 

that Hernandez was a “manager or supervisor” because he 

oversaw and exercised some control over one or more of the 

other participants. See Gadson, 763 F.3d at 1222. Evidence 

established that Hernandez played a large role in the 

operation of the Westlake drug hub and was regarded as the 

head of gangbanging. He directly oversaw the actions of the 

two Iraheta brothers and exercised authority over many other 

members of the gang, including traqueteros. See United 

States v. Franco, 136 F.3d 622, 631 (9th Cir. 1998) 

(“manager or supervisor” enhancement supported by proof 

of one other participant running an errand for defendant who 

“set up the final transaction but did not handle the drugs 

himself” and the inference that others also acted at his 

direction). Though Hernandez may not have been present 

for every major sea change in gang leadership and strategy, 

he meets the criteria necessary for the enhancement and we 

reject his request to conclude otherwise.

4

Leonidas individually challenges his sentence on the 

basis that the district court failed to resolve one of his 

objections to the PSR, under Federal Rule of Criminal 

Procedure 32(i)(3)(B) (“Rule 32”). Rule 32 requires that the 

court, at sentencing, “must—for any disputed portion of the 

presentence report or other controverted matter—rule on the 

dispute or determine that a ruling is unnecessary either 

because the matter will not affect sentencing, or because the 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 53

court will not consider the matter in sentencing.” But only 

“factual objections” to the presentence report are considered 

“disputed” for purposes of Rule 32. See United States v. 

Petri, 731 F.3d 833, 840 (9th Cir. 2013). Sentencing 

adjustments “ordinarily do[] not require specific factfinding,” unless a defendant contests “specific factual 

statements made in the PSR.” United States v. Carter, 

219 F.3d 863, 866 (9th Cir. 2000). This issue was not raised 

in the court below and is therefore reviewed for plain error. 

United States v. Christensen, 732 F.3d 1094, 1101 (9th Cir. 

2013).

We reject Leonidas’s Rule 32 argument because he 

failed to contest any factual statements made in the PSR. 

Though the sentencing memorandum filed by his counsel 

included the assertion that Leonidas should receive a twolevel reduction for his minor role in the enterprise, it did not 

contradict any of the facts in the PSR. Leonidas’s 

memorandum simply marshaled additional facts from trial in 

support of his argument that the district court should apply 

the reduction. This kind of challenge does not trigger Rule 

32, and the court was not otherwise obligated to make 

specific findings of fact to justify its decision not to apply 

the reduction. See Petri, 731 F.3d at 841 (rejecting request 

for minor-role reduction where objection was raised but 

defendant “did not allege a factual inaccuracy in the 

presentence report”); Christensen, 732 F.3d at 1102 

(“Because [the defendant] never made specific factual 

objections to the PSR regarding victim impact and loss 

amounts, Rule 32 was never triggered.”). No Rule 32 

violation was committed.

5

Hernandez and Leonidas jointly argue that the district 

court’s explanation of how its sentencing determinations 

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54 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

square with § 3553(a) was lacking because the court did not 

address each of their objections to judicial findings or 

provide “reasons specific to each appellant.” “[A] 

sentencing judge does not abuse his discretion when he 

listens to the defendant’s arguments and then ‘simply [finds 

the] circumstances insufficient to warrant a sentence lower 

than the Guidelines range.’” United States v. AmezcuaVasquez, 567 F.3d 1050, 1053–54 (9th Cir. 2009) (second 

alteration in original) (quoting Carty, 520 F.3d at 995). 

Because the Appellants did not object to the district court’s 

§ 3553(a) findings below, we review the determination 

under the even more deferential plain-error standard. See 

Valencia-Barragan, 608 F.3d at 1108.

After calculating the base offense level, listening to 

arguments—first about the Guidelines calculation, then 

about the § 3553(a) factors—from both sides, and directly 

citing to multiple aspects of the record supporting his 

§ 3553(a) determinations, the district judge gave a withinGuidelines sentence to both Appellants. The court recited 

some of the same concerns at both Hernandez’s and 

Leonidas’s sentencing hearings but provided individualized 

facts that supported its determination as to each. We find no 

error in proceeding in this manner, let alone one that was 

plain.

6

Hernandez and Leonidas argue that the Sixth 

Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause 

prohibited the district court from relying only on judicial 

findings of fact to justify giving them both life sentences. 

Appellants specifically point to the fact that if the court had 

adopted the drug amounts found by the jury, they should 

have been given 150-month sentences, at most. Because 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 55

these arguments were first raised on appeal, we review for 

plain error. See Treadwell, 593 F.3d at 1016.

Appellants’ joint brief ignores the fact that the jury found 

them responsible for possession of 280 grams or more of a 

mixture that contains cocaine base under 21 U.S.C. 

§ 841(b)(1)(A)(iii), which allows for a maximum penalty of 

life imprisonment. This Court has repeatedly stated that the 

Fifth and Sixth Amendments do not limit a judge’s 

discretion to find facts at sentencing, as long as the resulting 

sentence does not exceed the statutory maximum based on 

the facts found by the jury. See Treadwell, 593 F.3d at 1017; 

United States v. Raygosa-Esparza, 566 F.3d 852, 855 (9th 

Cir. 2009) (rejecting Fifth and Sixth Amendment challenges 

because “[t]he revised sentence imposed by the district court 

for each offense does not exceed th[e] statutory maximum. 

Accordingly, no constitutional violation occurred, even if 

the district court did rely on facts not found by the jury.”).

Appellants cite Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 

(2000), but neither that case nor its progeny guard against 

sentences within the prescribed statutory maximum based on 

facts found by the jury. Id. at 490 (jury must decide facts 

increasing statutory maximum penalty); United States v. 

Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 233 (2005) (increasing judicial 

discretion in sentencing by making the Sentencing 

Guidelines advisory to avoid Sixth Amendment problems); 

United States v. Fitch, 659 F.3d 788, 795–96 (9th Cir. 2011) 

(citing these standards as supporting the conclusion that the 

“sentencing judge has the power to sentence a defendant 

based upon facts not found by a jury up to the statutory 

maximum”). As such, Appellants’ constitutional argument 

is without merit.

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56 UNITED STATES V. PEREZ

B

The substantive-unreasonableness claims raised by 

Hernandez and Leonidas also fail. Though Appellants are 

correct that the district court considered the Barajas murder 

during sentencing, finding both Appellants responsible 

under the preponderance of the evidence standard, the court 

explicitly declined to consider that crime in its offense level 

calculation. Instead, the court determined Appellants’ 

offense level using evidence of their drug trafficking 

activities and reserved the Barajas murder for consideration 

among other § 3553(a) aggravating factors. For Hernandez, 

this included: his leadership role, his substantial 

engagement in drug-dealing and gangbanging, his 

promotion of violence, and his use of intimidation tactics. 

For Leonidas, the court cited: his participation in shooting 

missions, general gangbanging in rival territory, violent 

threats, and his allegiance to the gang all the way up through 

trial. Community protection was another important 

consideration cited by the trial judge at both sentencing 

hearings. Appellants’ sentences were within the Guidelines 

range calculated by the court (life for Hernandez and 

360 months to life for Leonidas), and the § 3553(a) 

testimony cited justifies a sentence on the higher end of the 

range for Leonidas. See Carty, 520 F.3d at 993–94. The life 

sentences imposed for Hernandez and Leonidas were not 

substantively unreasonable.

IV

Hernandez’s, Leonidas’s, and Vladimir’s convictions are 

affirmed. Perez’s convictions on Counts One, Sixteen, 

Seventeen, and Twenty are affirmed, but his conviction on 

Count Eighteen is vacated and remanded. The government 

may choose to retry Perez on that count or the district court 

may resentence him without it if no retrial is conducted. 

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UNITED STATES V. PEREZ 57

Though the district court improperly applied the firearm 

enhancement to Hernandez, the error was harmless, and all 

of Hernandez’s and Leonidas’s other sentencing-related 

challenges fail. We hold that there was no error in the district 

court’s decision to give both Hernandez and Leonidas life 

sentences. Because the district court accounted for Perez’s 

Count Eighteen conviction in sentencing him, we remand for 

resentencing if the government elects not to retry him on that 

charge.

AFFIRMED in part, REVERSED and VACATED in 

part, and REMANDED with instructions.

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