Opinion ID: 6330595
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Extortion Conspiracy

Text: We now turn to Gershman’s argument that certain of his convictions for extortionate collection of credit conspiracies violated the Fifth Amendment’s 19 Double Jeopardy Clause. The Double Jeopardy Clause protects against being tried twice for the same offense. This protection bars not only prosecutions for offenses that are literally the same but also prosecutions “when one offense is a lesser included offense of the other.” United States v. Gaskin, 364 F.3d 438, 453 (2d Cir. 2004) (quotations omitted). The latter prohibition is at issue. Gershman claims that some of his convictions for extortionate collection of credit conspiracies toward specific victims count as lesser offenses to his broader conviction for conspiracy to collect credit through extortionate means. Count 3 charged Gershman, Tsvetkov, and Zelinger with an overarching conspiracy from 2015 to November 2016 to collect credit through extortionate means. Gershman was also charged in Counts 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 with shorter duration conspiracies to extort collecting credit from specific victims, John Does 1-5. 6 Gershman argues that Count 3, as the overarching conspiracy, subsumed Counts 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12, and therefore we should set aside his convictions for those five Counts. “[T]he constitutional protection against double jeopardy is a personal right,” Aparicio v. Artuz, 269 F.3d 78, 96 (2d Cir. 2001), and Gershman never raised 6 Tsvetkov and Zelinger were also charged in Count 4. For Counts 6, 8, 10, and 12, Gershman was the only defendant charged. 20 this multiplicity challenge before the District Court. “[I]t is a well-established general rule that an appellate court will not consider an issue raised for the first time on appeal.” Greene v. United States, 13 F.3d 577, 586 (2d Cir. 1994). This rule is not, however, “an absolute bar to raising new issues on appeal; the general rule is disregarded when we think it necessary to remedy an obvious injustice.” United States v. Stillwell, 986 F.3d 196, 200 (2d Cir. 2021). So “[u]ltimately, ‘entertaining issues raised for the first time on appeal is discretionary with the panel hearing the appeal.’” Id (quoting Greene, 13 F.3d at 586) (alteration omitted). Here, the Government unsealed the second superseding indictment, which first charged all of the extortion conspiracies discussed above, almost a year before trial and the final superseding indictment was publicly filed about two-and-a-half months before trial. Any alleged defect in the charges therefore would have been apparent to Gershman well before trial. Under these circumstances, and given that the sentences run concurrently, 7 we do not find an obvious injustice in not reaching the claim. We thus decline to address Gershman’s double jeopardy claim. We need not decide whether a double jeopardy violation in a case involving 7 concurrent sentences, but lacking circumstances like those presented here, would create “an obvious injustice.” Stillwell, 986 F.3d at 200. 21