Opinion ID: 152950
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Samuel Diaz-Dumenigo's Claims

Text: Diaz challenges the sufficiency of the evidence for his conviction and argues that the district court erred by permitting a law enforcement officer, Agent Eddie Vidal-Gil, to testify as an expert.
Diaz argues the evidence was insufficient because it did not show he had the requisite knowledge or intent for any of the drug charges. Diaz has conceded that he was responsible for driving the conspirators to and from the drug pickup site at Luquillo, Puerto Rico. But he argues that he believed he was transporting people to a paint job, that he did not know any drugs were involved, and that others hid that fact from him. His defense was ignorance and, so, innocence. To this he adds that he was merely present at the drug scene; that, he says, is not enough to uphold his convictions. We review sufficiency-of-the-evidence claims de novo, taking the evidence and drawing all reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the prosecution. United States v. Rosado-Pérez, 605 F.3d 48, 52 (1st Cir.2010). The evidence supports the jury's assessment that Diaz had the requisite knowledge and intent. Diaz testified in his own defense. His implausible version of events was that he twice drove several conspirators to Luquillo from San Juan (some distance), in the middle of the night, for no money other than expenses. He did not question why his passengers failed to do a paint job on the first night or why they had him wait at a motel, for hours, rather than at the purported paint-job site. Nor could he remember most details of the two drives, including who he drove, where he went, where he stopped along the way, at what motel he stayed, and whether he picked anyone up in Luquillo after the November 17-18 raid. Diaz's statements and actions, as established by other testimony and the wiretap recordings, were more consistent with his knowing participation in a drug delivery. On November 10, when Jiménez invited Diaz to drive the van, Jiménez told Diaz that Jiménez was planning a movida. Jiménez testified that Diaz understood this term referred to a drug movement. Diaz's phone conversations with Jiménez, captured on the wiretap, also supported Diaz knew he was involved in a drug movement. For example, after the November 12 delivery was canceled, Diaz reported to Jiménez no, they didn't move. In these conversations Diaz used vague code words, supporting the conclusion he was trying to conceal his participation in illegal drug activity. Diaz, tellingly, never mentioned paint. José's testimony supported that Diaz knew that federal agents had tracked and intercepted an illegal drug shipment and that the passengers he had brought to Luquillo had later fled arrest. José testified that Diaz knew agents followed his van; that José called Diaz for help after the raid; that Diaz picked up José on November 18; and that Diaz, José, and Jiménez discussed the raid and its aftermath. Diaz argues that no one explicitly told him the operation involved drugs; he points out that Jiménez admitted never saying so expressly when they met in person and that neither Diaz nor Jiménez mentioned drugs in their wiretapped phone conversations. But Jiménez testified that while he never spoke explicitly about drugs to Diaz, Diaz should know and must know that their conversations were about drugs. It is hardly surprising that drug conspirators never explicitly spelled out what they were doing in conversation. A reasonable jury could have concluded that Diaz knew and intended to participate in a drug delivery.
Diaz argues the district court erred when it denied his motion to preclude Police Officer Eddie Vidal-Gil from testifying as an expert on the price of drugs and the nature of drug organizations. We review this preserved objection for abuse of discretion. United States v. Reynoso, 336 F.3d 46, 49 (1st Cir.2003). As Diaz concedes, government officers may, depending on the facts, be qualified as experts on how drug organizations work and similar data. E.g., United States v. García-Morales, 382 F.3d 12, 18-19 (1st Cir.2004). But he argues the court should not have admitted this expert testimony for two reasons. First, Diaz claims that Vidal's expert testimony about the nature of the conspiracy and, particularly, the street price of drugs was irrelevant and did not assist the jury. See Fed.R.Evid. 702 (permitting expert testimony that will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or determine a fact at issue); Garcia- Morales, 382 F.3d at 18 ([E]xpert testimony . . . must be relevant to the task at hand and helpful to the jury in its deliberations.) (quoting United States v. Lopez-Lopez, 282 F.3d 1, 14 (1st Cir.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted)). Second, he argues that testimony about the nature of drug organizations was cumulative because government cooperators had already described this organization in detail and so allowance of expert testimony, to boot, was unfairly prejudicial. Both aspects of Vidal's testimony were relevant and helpful to the jury. The price of drugs helped the jury understand the vast amounts of money the conspirators could hope to make and the sheer volume of drugs involved. For example, Vidal testified that a kilogram of cocaine was worth $16,000 on the street in Puerto Rico in 2005. The 300-kilogram delivery was therefore worth $4.8 million. The conspiracy's three attempted deliveriesof 88, 27, and 300 kilograms of cocainehad a street value of $6.64 million. Drug smugglers handling such valuable drugs are unlikely to involve unknowledgeable outsiders. Vidal's testimony was not cumulative; none of the other witnesses explained how drug conspiracies work generally and, in that context, how the government understood this particular conspiracy operated. Even if Vidal's testimony was cumulative, which it was not, Rule 403 gave the trial court wide discretion to determine whether testimony was unfairly prejudicial or needlessly cumulative. See Fed.R.Evid. 403; see also United States v. Jimenez, 507 F.3d 13, 18 (1st Cir.2007). It did not abuse that discretion here.