Opinion ID: 792259
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Failure to Object to Government's Summation

Text: 8 Defendant argues that he was deprived of effective assistance of counsel, first, because his trial counsel failed to object to part of the Government's argument in summation regarding the identity of defendant's alleged co-conspirator(s). Referring to Shtoukhamer, who already had pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute ecstacy in a companion case, the Government argued to the jury: 9 You have to find that the defendant conspired with at least one person other than Nadav Dagan[, a government cooperator who, by law, would not have qualified as a member of the alleged conspiracy, see, e.g., United States v. Medina, 32 F.3d 40, 43-45 (2d Cir.1994)]. Now, clearly you have Eli [Shtoukhamer] here. The defendant is conspiring or agreeing to commit these crimes with Eli. And we submit to you there are also other people overseas, but, of course, we don't know what their names are, who they are. But at the very least you have the defendant conspiring or agreeing with Eli to commit the crimes charged in the indictment. 10 Trial Tr. 844 (emphasis added). 11 Defendant contends that his counsel's failure to object to the italicized statement above, and to request a curative instruction in response, constituted ineffective assistance because [o]n the only facts elicited at this trial, there was no legal basis for the jury to convict [defendant] of conspiring with anyone in Belgium . . . to import Ecstasy pills into the United States, let alone to possess those pills in the United States with intent to distribute those pills in the United States. Appellant's Br. 19. In support of the assertion that there was no legal basis for his conspiracy convictions, defendant argues that (1) there may be Due Process Clause, other Constitutional, or international law limitations on what Congress can make a crime regarding conduct outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, id. at 19 n.17; and (2) even assuming jurisdiction was appropriate in this case, there was no evidence that anyone in Belgium had any intent to be involved, let alone have a stake, in the charged distribution and importation scheme, id. at 20. 12 Defendant's arguments fail for several reasons. First, we are aware of no principle, and none has been brought to our attention, that supports defendant's casual invocation of constitutional or international law limitations on the extraterritorial application of federal laws designed to combat the distribution and importation of drugs into the United States. See United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 86 (2d Cir.2003) (emphasizing that in fashioning the reach of our criminal law, Congress is not bound by international law and that [i]f it chooses to do so, [Congress] may legislate with respect to conduct outside the United States, in excess of the limits posed by international law) (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also id. at 92 ([W]hile customary international law may inform the judgment of our courts in an appropriate case, it cannot alter or constrain the making of law by the political branches of the government as ordained by the Constitution.); cf. United States v. Gatlin, 216 F.3d 207, 211 n. 5 (2d Cir.2000) (noting that, due to the nature of the offenses involved, [s]tatutes prohibiting crimes against the United States government may be applied extraterritorially even in the absence of `clear evidence' that Congress so intended). 13 Indeed, of those courts that have directly considered the extraterritorial application of either 21 U.S.C. § 846 or § 963—the statutory bases for the conspiracy counts at issue here—each has rebuffed attempts to limit the territorial reach of these provisions. See United States v. MacAllister, 160 F.3d 1304, 1308 (11th Cir.1998) (Logic dictates that Congress would not have passed a drug conspiracy statute that prohibits international drug smuggling activities, while simultaneously undermining the statute by limiting its extraterritorial application.); United States v. Palella, 846 F.2d 977, 980 (5th Cir.1988) (The power to control efforts to introduce illicit drugs into the United States from the high seas and foreign nations is a necessary incident to Congress' efforts to eradicate all illegal drug trafficking.) (internal quotation marks omitted); United States v. Wright-Barker, 784 F.2d 161, 167 (3d Cir.1986) (Congress undoubtedly intended to prohibit conspiracies to import controlled substances into the United States, and intentions to distribute such contraband there, as part of its continuing effort to contain the evils caused on American soil by foreign as well as domestic suppliers of illegal narcotics.); Chua Han Mow v. United States, 730 F.2d 1308, 1311 (9th Cir.1984) (stating that [t]here is no constitutional bar to the extraterritorial application of penal laws and that [t]his court . . . has regularly inferred extraterritorial reach of conspiracy statutes on the basis of a finding that the underlying substantive statutes reach extraterritorial offenses); see also United States v. Orozco-Prada, 732 F.2d 1076, 1087-88 (2d Cir.1984) (conspiracy conviction under 21 U.S.C. § 846 proper where evidence showed intent to distribute drugs in the United States, even though vessel was captured in Colombian waters); cf. Yousef, 327 F.3d at 87 (Congress is presumed to intend extraterritorial application of criminal statutes where the nature of the crime does not depend on the locality of the defendants' acts and where restricting the statute to United States territory would severely diminish the statute's effectiveness.). Accordingly, we reject defendant's implied argument that 21 U.S.C. §§ 846 and 963 may not be applied extraterritorially. 14 Defendant maintains in the alternative that even if §§ 846 and 963 reach acts committed abroad, the evidence presented at trial did not support the Government's suggestion that other people overseas had in fact conspired with defendant to distribute and import ecstasy pills into the United States. This argument, however, is based on a fundamental misreading of the Government's summation. As is apparent from the full context of the Government's remarks quoted above, the Government did not rest its case principally on a theory that defendant had conspired with unnamed individuals in Belgium. Rather, the Government emphasized defendant's relationship with Eli Shtoukhamer, of which there was direct and overwhelming evidence in the form of recorded conversations about drug dealing, 1 arguing that at the very least defendant had conspired with Shtoukhamer, independent of any implied conspiracy with other people overseas. See Trial Tr. 844 (Now, clearly you have Eli [Shtoukhamer] here. The defendant is conspiring or agreeing to commit these crimes with Eli.). 15 Moreover, defendant's contention that there was no evidence supporting the involvement of any co-conspirators in Belgium is not supported by the trial record, which included the testimony of Nadav Dagan that he believed defendant was paying somebody to watch the drugs in Belgium, Trial Tr. 418, defendant's own recorded statement about how much the storage of the drugs in Belgium was costing him, 2 and the commonsense notion that 30,000 ecstasy pills could not have been stored, secured, and imported from a foreign country without the knowing involvement of one or more individuals abroad. See United States v. Harris, 8 F.3d 943, 946 (2d Cir.1993) ([W]here advanced plans are made regarding the sale of narcotics in wholesale quantities, the participants in the transaction may be presumed to know that they are part of a broader conspiracy.) (internal quotation marks omitted); United States v. Medina, 944 F.2d 60, 65 (2d Cir.1991) (doctrine that mere buyer-seller relationship is insufficient to establish distribution conspiracy not applicable where there is advanced planning among the alleged co-conspirators to deal in wholesale quantities of drugs obviously not intended for personal use). We have noted previously that the Government has broad latitude in the inferences it may reasonably suggest to the jury during summation, United States v. Edwards, 342 F.3d 168, 181 (2d Cir.2003) (internal quotation marks omitted), and the Government's comments here, while arguably imprecise, were by no means unreasonable in light of the evidence presented at trial and the nature of the charged distribution and importation scheme. 16 In assessing defendant's claim on appeal, we emphasize that defendant argues not that the Government's summation in itself undermined the integrity of defendant's trial or violated his rights, but rather, that trial counsel's failure to object to that statement constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. However, absent any prejudicial error in the Government's summation, the failure here to raise an otherwise futile objection could not have rendered counsel ineffective. See Cuevas v. Henderson, 801 F.2d 586, 592 (2d Cir.1986) (concluding that because [t]he prosecutor's summation was appropriate. . . . defense counsel's failure to object does not support a conclusion that his performance was not reasonably competent); see also United States v. Eltayib, 88 F.3d 157, 170 (2d Cir.1996) (Given the weight of the evidence, [defendant] cannot demonstrate that his case was prejudiced by his counsel's failure to adopt what was in any event an unpromising defense strategy.) 17 As with trial decisions to offer or stipulate to certain evidence, decisions such as when to object and on what grounds are primarily matters of trial strategy and tactics, see Brown v. Artuz, 124 F.3d 73, 77 (2d Cir.1997) (internal quotation marks omitted), and thus are virtually unchallengeable absent exceptional grounds for doing so. See Gaskin, 364 F.3d at 468 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also United States v. Luciano, 158 F.3d 655, 660 (2d Cir.1998) (noting that appellate courts are ill-suited to second-guess strategic decisions by trial counsel unless there is no strategic or tactical justification for the course taken); United States v. Daniels, 558 F.2d 122, 127 (2d Cir.1977) ([T]he decision whether to object to an arguably improper remark [in the Government's summation] or to wait and attack it in the defense summation [is] strictly a matter of tactics.). In seeking to meet the heavy burden imposed by Strickland, see Gaskin, 364 F.3d at 468, a defendant must not only overcome a strong presumption that counsel's conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance, Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052, but also demonstrate that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different, id. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Given that the evidence of defendant's conspiracy with Shtoukhamer was overwhelming—a point that defendant's appellate counsel effectively conceded at oral argument—we conclude that the failure of defendant's trial counsel to object to a passing and equivocal statement in summation regarding the possible involvement in the conspiracy of other people overseas was neither objectively unreasonable nor prejudicial to defendant's case. See, e.g., United States v. Simmons, 923 F.2d 934, 956 (2d Cir.1991) ([G]iven the plethora of evidence against [defendant], there is little reason to believe that alternative counsel would have fared any better.). Accordingly, defendant's ineffective assistance claim fails.