NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

CHARLES HEAD, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 14-10438 

D.C. No. 

2:08-cr-00093-KJM-1 

MEMORANDUM*

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

CHARLES HEAD, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 14-10442 

D.C. No. 

2:08-cr-00116-KJM-1 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

JEREMY MICHAEL HEAD, 

No. 14-10493 

D.C. No. 

2:08-cr-00093-KJM-2 

 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

FILED

JUN 27 2017

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
 2 

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of California

Kimberly J. Mueller, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted June 15, 2017

San Francisco, California

Before: THOMAS, Chief Judge, FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judge, and CARNEY,**

District Judge.

Charles Head and Jeremy Michael Head appeal their convictions for 

conspiracy to commit mail fraud and mail fraud, arising from a foreclosure rescue 

scheme in which they targeted and defrauded homeowners in financial distress. 

Defendants allege that the district court committed Speedy Trial Act violations in 

Head I and Head II and failed to provide a specific unanimity instruction in Head 

I. Jeremy Michael also contends that the district court erred in sentencing him, and 

Charles claims that his conviction in Head II violates the prohibition against 

double jeopardy. We affirm the convictions and sentence.

1. The Speedy Trial Act does not require a district court to make an explicit 

“ends of justice” finding; instead, it requires that the trial court set forth in the 

record its “reasons for finding that the ends of justice served by the granting of [a] 

 

** The Honorable Cormac J. Carney, United States District Judge for the 

Central District of California, sitting by designation.
 3 

continuance outweigh the best interests of the public and the defendant in a speedy 

trial.” 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(7)(A) (emphasis added). Section 3161(h)(7)(B) 

provides factors that a judge must consider in deciding whether to grant an “ends 

of justice” continuance. The code at issue here corresponds to those factors, and 

referring to that code therefore provides the reason why the district court found that 

the ends of justice were served by granting a continuance. See United States v. 

Medina, 524 F.3d 974, 986 (9th Cir. 2008) (explaining that a district court’s 

“discussion of the statutory factors [wa]s adequate to support a continuance that 

serve[d] the ends of justice . . . .”). Defendants do not dispute that the

continuances were justified; they acknowledge that the cases were complex and 

that counsel needed time to prepare. 

Moreover, the code used by the district court to explain its reasons for 

continuances was not non-specific or underinclusive in the context of the record in 

this appeal. That various code provisions may be mutually exclusive does not 

mean that the district court erred by relying on those provisions as alternative 

holdings to justify granting a continuance. And that Defendants may not have 

intuitively understood the code is irrelevant, as they were represented by counsel 

and it is clear from the record that their counsel understood the references to the 

code. 

2. The district court did not abuse its discretion in failing to give a specific 
 4 

unanimity instruction because there was no genuine possibility that Defendants 

would be convicted by a non-unanimous jury. See United States v. Lyons, 472 

F.3d 1055, 1068 (9th Cir. 2007) (stating that a specific unanimity instruction is 

required only when there exists a “genuine possibility of jury confusion or [a 

possibility] that a conviction may occur as the result of different jurors concluding 

that the defendant committed different acts” (quoting United States v. Kim, 196 

F.3d 1079, 1082 (9th Cir. 1999))). On this record, no “genuine possibility” exists

that some jurors may have found Defendants guilty based only on the false 

statements to lenders, as opposed to the false statements to homeowners. 

3. The district court did not err in applying the vulnerable victim 

enhancement under United States Sentencing Guidelines § 3A1.1, nor did it 

impose on Jeremy Michael Head a substantively unreasonable sentence. The 

victims here, as a result of their financial background and risk of foreclosure, were 

more likely to succumb to the criminal conduct. See United States v. Peters, 962 

F.2d 1410, 1417 (9th Cir. 1992) (affirming application of vulnerable victim 

enhancement because the defendants had “sought out and targeted . . . only 

individuals whom they believed had poor credit histories”). Moreover, the district 

court downwardly varied from the Guidelines range in imposing Jeremy Michael 

Head’s sentence, and the evidence against Jeremy Michael Head—namely, his 

position as “one of the more culpable” members of the conspiracy—supported the 
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court’s decision not to vary even further downward. 

4. Although the Head I and Head II conspiracies sought to defraud 

homeowners using similar methods, the Head II conspiracy was sufficiently 

different in scope and approach that it was at least not plain error to allow Charles 

Head to be tried in Head II. See United States v. Ziskin, 360 F.3d 934, 944 (9th 

Cir. 2003) (“[S]ome interrelationship between conspiracies does not necessarily 

make them the same criminal enterprise.” (quoting United States v. Guzman, 852 

F.2d 1117, 1121 (9th Cir. 1988))); United States v. Montgomery, 150 F.3d 983, 

990 (9th Cir. 1998) (explaining that the court “examine[s] the evidence in the light 

most favorable to the prosecution to determine if any rational trier of fact could 

have found that more than one conspiracy existed”); United States v. Stoddard, 111 

F.3d 1450, 1454 (9th Cir. 1997) (describing the factors used to analyze whether 

two conspiracy allegations charge the same offense). Because it did not violate the 

Double Jeopardy Clause for Charles Head to have been tried for conspiracy to 

commit mail fraud in Head II, his convictions for mail fraud in Head II likewise 

does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause.

Defendants’ convictions and Jeremy Michael Head’s sentence are therefore 

AFFIRMED.