Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/83/55/586482/
Timestamp: 2019-10-21 18:16:42
Document Index: 486153254

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 841', '§ 924', '§ 846', '§ 841', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924']

United States of America, Appellee, v. Jose Pimentel, Defendant-appellant, 83 F.3d 55 (2d Cir. 1996) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › Second Circuit › 1996 › United States of America, Appellee, v. Jose Pimentel, Defendant-appellant
United States of America, Appellee, v. Jose Pimentel, Defendant-appellant, 83 F.3d 55 (2d Cir. 1996)
US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit - 83 F.3d 55 (2d Cir. 1996) Argued Feb. 23, 1996. Decided May 8, 1996
Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Robert P. Patterson, Jr., Judge, convicting defendant of narcotics offenses, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a) (1), 841(b) (1) (C), and 846, and a firearm offense, 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c) and 2.
Before: NEWMAN, Chief Judge, KEARSE, Circuit Judge, and BURNS, District Judge* .
Defendant Jose Pimentel appeals from a judgment entered in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York after a jury trial before Robert P. Patterson, Jr., Judge, convicting him of conspiracy to traffic in narcotics, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 (1994); distribution of, and possession with intent to distribute, narcotics, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a) (1) and 841(b) (1) (C) (1994); and possession and use of a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c) and 2 (1994). He was sentenced principally to 10 years' imprisonment, to be followed by four years' supervised release. On appeal, Pimentel contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction on the firearm count and that the trial court's instructions to the jury on that count were erroneous. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
To the extent pertinent here, § 924(c) provides for a five-year term of imprisonment for any person who "during and in relation to any ... drug trafficking crime ... uses or carries a firearm." 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (1). Although until recently this Court had interpreted the "use" prong of § 924(c) to encompass the strategic placement of a gun in a narcotics trafficking location where it could reasonably be inferred that the defendant kept the gun on hand for use, if necessary, in connection with a drug transaction, see generally United States v. Giraldo, 80 F.3d 667 (2d Cir. 1996) (discussing cases), the Supreme Court in December 1995 ruled in Bailey v. United States, --- U.S. ----, 116 S. Ct. 501, 133 L. Ed. 2d 472 (1995) ("Bailey "), that the term "use" in § 924(c) means the "active employment " of the gun in some way, id. at ----, 116 S. Ct. at 505 (emphasis in original), and that " [i]f the gun is not disclosed or mentioned by the offender, it is not actively employed, and it is not 'used,' " id. at ----, 116 S. Ct. at 508. The government concedes that, in light of Bailey, there was insufficient evidence to convict Pimentel of "using" the gun.
Pimentel also argues that, from his position in the front passenger seat of the car, he could not open the compartment or reach inside to get the gun and that there was thus insufficient evidence to convict him under the "carrying" prong of § 924(c). Whether or not Pimentel himself could open the compartment or reach the gun, however, the evidence was ample to convict him of carrying the gun on a Pinkerton theory of liability, see Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 646-48, 66 S. Ct. 1180, 1183-85, 90 L. Ed. 1489 (1946). Under Pinkerton, a coconspirator who does not directly commit a substantive offense may be liable for that offense if it was committed by another coconspirator in furtherance of the conspiracy and was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the conspiratorial agreement. In United States v. Giraldo, we held that a defendant had committed the substantive offense of carrying a firearm within the meaning of § 924(c) when he drove to the site of a planned narcotics transaction with a gun concealed in a compartment in the car, the compartment was easily accessible to him from the driver's seat, and there was evidence from which it could be inferred that he had knowledge of the car's contents. See 80 F.3d at 678.
Even if we view the instruction as treating these concepts separately, any error was harmless. As to the "carrying" prong, the only "carrying" that a rational jury could possibly have found was the act of transporting the gun in the compartment on the back of the front passenger seat. To the extent that the jury was advised that it could convict Pimentel of "carrying" even if the gun had not been fired, brandished, or displayed, the instruction was not incorrect, because a gun can be "carried" within the meaning of § 924(c) when it is concealed in a location that is immediately accessible to a perpetrator of a drug offense. While the court's "carrying" instruction did not mention a requirement of immediate accessibility in haec verba, that concept was adequately communicated by the court's accompanying explanation that a defendant could be found to have "transported," "conveyed," or "possess [ed]" the gun only if he had, inter alia, the "power ... to exercise control over" it. In sum, read as a whole, the instructions adequately informed the jury of what it needed to find in order to conclude that Pimentel had "carried" the gun in violation of § 924(c).
Although as an instruction on "using," the court's language lacked the active-employment connotations required by Bailey, we conclude that the error was harmless because the language that was flawed with respect to "using" properly described "carrying," and the evidence was ample to support a finding of carrying. (We need not decide whether the error would have been harmless if the gun had been located elsewhere--for example in the trunk of the car, while the narcotics and cash were in the passenger compartment--a variation that could raise a question as to whether the evidence was sufficient to permit a conviction even for "carrying.") The Supreme Court has instructed that courts may examine an erroneous instruction in light of other instructions and the evidence to determine what findings the jury necessarily made and whether such findings are the "functional equivalent" of required findings. See Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 280, 113 S. Ct. 2078, 2082, 124 L. Ed. 2d 182 (1993); Carella v. California, 491 U.S. 263, 271, 109 S. Ct. 2419, 2423, 105 L. Ed. 2d 218 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). In the present case, even if the jury may have thought it was finding Pimentel guilty of "using," the fact that the instruction with respect to "using" properly described "carrying" made the jury's verdict the functional equivalent of a finding of "carrying."
This equivalence distinguishes the present case from United States v. Garcia, 992 F.2d 409 (2d Cir. 1993), in which we stated that if any of the disjunctive theories presented to the jury was "legally insufficient, then the verdict must be reversed," id. at 416. In Garcia, we were concerned with instructions that were legally insufficient in the sense that two of the three theories presented to the jury did not, in light of a subsequent Supreme Court decision, describe an offense under the statute at issue. If, under the court's instructions, a jury could have returned its verdict of guilty on the basis of acts that do not constitute a criminal offense, the conviction ordinarily must be vacated because there is no assurance that the error was harmless. In the present case, in contrast to Garcia, the district court's instruction, though improperly broad with respect to the "using" prong of § 924(c), adequately described the offense of "carrying" under the same section. The jury's verdict of guilty on the § 924(c) count, therefore, necessarily meant that the jury found facts that constituted the offense of "carrying" within the meaning of that provision. We thus have no doubt that the error was harmless and that no new trial is required.