Opinion ID: 569341
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: michael morrison

Text: 13 Morrison claims on appeal that the district court erred in denying his motion for a mistrial following the testimony of Donald Lincoln, a special agent of the DEA. Lincoln testified that Panamanian Defense Force officials told him that they had identified Morrison as a passenger in a small plane that was later suspected of containing cocaine bound for Puerto Rico. The district court sustained Morrison's objection to this testimony on hearsay grounds. Morrison then moved for a mistrial. The court took the motion under advisement, and denied it at the conclusion of the government's case. Andrini-Varga now contends that Lincoln's testimony was so exceedingly prejudicial that the district court erred in denying his mistrial motion. 14 We review the district court's ruling on Morrison's mistrial motion under an abuse of discretion standard, United States v. Ashford, 924 F.2d 1416, 1423 (7th Cir.1991), and will reverse its ruling only if the circumstances compel a district court to grant a mistrial. United States v. Kwiat, 817 F.2d 440, 446 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 924, 108 S.Ct. 284, 98 L.Ed.2d 245 (1987). In denying Morrison's motion, the court noted both that it had instructed the jury to disregard Lincoln's testimony, and that the substance of Lincoln's stricken testimony--that Morrison helped fly cocaine from Panama to Puerto Rico--was cumulative of testimony offered by other government witnesses. (We detail this evidence below in our treatment of Morrison's sufficiency challenge.) Upon reviewing the record, we conclude that the district court correctly determined that the prejudice inuring to Morrison from Lincoln's stricken statement was de minimis given the other evidence presented by the government tying him to the cocaine flight.
15 Morrison also contends that the government failed to present evidence sufficient to prove him guilty of importing cocaine and conspiring to import cocaine. This claim is meritless. A number of individuals identified Morrison as a passenger on a flight, originating in Panama, that dropped a 250 kilogram package of cocaine in waters off the coast of Puerto Rico. Dennis McCarthy, who together with the conspiracy's acknowledged kingpin, John Roubas, played a significant role in coordinating the activities of the drug ring, and who, after being apprehended, elected to become a government witness, testified that Morrison was on the plane assisting with the air-drop. Morrison assails the credibility of McCarthy, the beneficiary of what he terms a generous plea agreement, but in evaluating Morrison's sufficiency challenges, we may not reassess the credibility of the government's witnesses. The jury decides they are credible when it chooses to convict. United States v. Jackson, 935 F.2d 832, 843 (7th Cir.1991); see also United States v. Klein, 910 F.2d 1533, 1538 (7th Cir.1990). Another co-conspirator, Kevin Cleary, also testified that he was present during a conversation in which Morrison related his involvement in the cocaine air-drop escapade, and another conversation in which Henry Pallais, the plane's other passenger, recounted a similar tale about his cocaine flight with Morrison. Government agents also introduced evidence linking Morrison to the drug flight. Customs inspector Charles Williamson testified that Morrison (or someone using Morrison's name) had registered with ground control authorities as the pilot of a small plane which landed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, around the time the cocaine was air-dropped. Agent Lincoln testified that a small plane with the same tail number had been in Panama shortly before the flight. Another agent testified that stamps in Morrison's passport indicated that he had been in Panama in the days preceding the flight. Finally, the testimony of co-conspirators placed Morrison in the vehicle used to transport the cocaine bundle to Gonzi Marine for packaging, and at Gonzi Marine while the packaging was taking place. We believe this evidence is sufficient to support an inference that Morrison knew of and joined a cocaine importation conspiracy and that he actually participated in the importation of cocaine.
16 Morrison next claims that the government improperly charged him with both conspiring to import cocaine and conspiring to import marijuana. He contends that the evidence at trial established that there was at most, a single conspiracy, and that the government impermissibly parsed the conspiracy to obtain two distinct convictions for the drug ring's marijuana and cocaine importation activities. The question, as we have previously put it, is whether a conspiracy has been subdivided arbitrarily, resulting in multiple indictments for a single illegal agreement. United States v. Castro, 629 F.2d 456, 461 (7th Cir.1980); see also United States v. Powell, 894 F.2d 895, 898 (7th Cir.1990). In determining whether a single conspiracy has been arbitrarily and improperly severed, we look to the commonality of co-conspirators, situs, and overt acts between the two conspiracies and to whether the two conspiracies depend upon each other for success. United States v. Cerro, 775 F.2d 908, 913 (7th Cir.1985) (quoting Castro, 629 F.2d at 461.) We note the rock and the hard place between which we place the government if we are overly exacting in applying this analysis: on the one hand, under Castro and its progeny, the government may not charge multiplicitous conspiracies; on the other, we have not infrequently discouraged the government from indicting too many defendants under the skimpy guise of a single overarching conspiracy. See Townsend, 924 F.2d at 1390-95; United States v. Pallais, 921 F.2d 684, 687 (7th Cir.1990); United States v. Napue, 834 F.2d 1311, 1333 (7th Cir.1987). 17 Although there is considerable overlap between the cocaine and marijuana importation conspiracies--both conspiracies used Gonzi Marine, both utilized almost identical air-drop, pick-up and packaging operations, and both were organized and led by the same two people--we do not believe the government erred in separately indicting Morrison for his involvement in each. The drug ring appears to have engaged in cocaine importation and distribution primarily during the period 1983-85, whereas the vast majority of its marijuana importation activities took place in 1986 and 1987. Moreover, the organization's cocaine operations were limited roughly to a half-dozen individuals, whereas the marijuana conspiracy's operations involved an additional half-dozen or so co-conspirators who, so far as the record reflects, had little or no contact with cocaine-related activities and transactions. Had the government charged a single conspiracy, the latter group would have rightly protested that there were two conspiracies rather than one. We find apt this court's response to a similar challenge raised by Henry Pallais, a co-conspirator of Morrison's, who, in a separate prosecution, was also charged with involvement in both cocaine and marijuana conspiracies: 18 A legitimate business enterprise can have many divisions, programs, activities, contracts; they are not all a single agreement just because a handful of top officers is in charge of the entire firm and some of the lower level employees may work on more than one program or contract. The same is true with a criminal enterprise. The jury properly found two conspiracies. 19 Pallais, 921 F.2d at 687.
20 As noted above in II.B., Dennis McCarthy testified against Morrison. During the course of trial, Morrison discovered that DEA agent Jeanne Tasch, who had interviewed McCarthy before trial, had taken notes of the interview. Upon learning of this, Morrison immediately moved for a mistrial, arguing that the prosecution's failure to disclose the evidence of the notes and to turn them over to the defense was in violation of the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500, and was unduly prejudicial. The district court denied Morrison's motion, and he now appeals that ruling. 21 Under the Jencks Act, the government must, upon motion of the defense, disclose to the defense any statements made by government witnesses prior to their testimony at trial. By statute, such disclosure need only take place after a government witness has testified on direct examination. According to the local open file practice of the Eastern District of Wisconsin, however, the government was obligated to turn over Tasch's notes, if they qualified as statements, before trial. Only certain types of pretrial statements must be produced by the government pursuant to § 3500: (1) written statement[s] made by [a] witness and signed or otherwise adopted or approved by him; (2) stenographic, mechanical, electrical or other recording[s] which are substantially verbatim recital[s] of oral statements made by witnesses; and (3) statements however taken or recorded made by a witness to a grand jury. 18 U.S.C. § 3500(e)(1)-(3). These definitions were intended by Congress to describe material that could reliably and fairly be used to impeach the testimony of a witness. United States v. Allen, 798 F.2d 985, 994 (7th Cir.1986). Agent notes and summaries of witness statements that are neither adopted by the witness nor substantial verbatim recitals of what the witness said are deemed unreliable under the statute and need not be produced. See, e.g., id.; United States v. Gonzalez-Sanchez, 825 F.2d 572, 586-87 (1st Cir.1987); United States v. Griffin, 659 F.2d 932, 936-37 (9th Cir.1981). 22 Agent Tasch's notes were neither signed nor adopted by McCarthy; the only question is whether they were substantially verbatim recitals of McCarthy's oral statements transcribed in some reliable stenographic, mechanical, electrical or other fashion. At trial, the government argued that this was not the appropriate inquiry; it maintained that so long as a subsequent DEA report summarizing McCarthy's statements had been released to the defendants, it was not obligated to release Tasch's rough notes, upon which the released report was based. We find no support for this position. If Tasch's notes were substantially verbatim recitals of McCarthy's statements, then the government was obligated to turn them over. See, e.g., United States v. Lonardo, 350 F.2d 523, 527 (6th Cir.1965); Williams v. United States, 338 F.2d 286, 288 (D.C.Cir.1964). Of course, if Tasch's rough notes were substantially the same as the report released to the defense, the government would have a good argument that any error committed by the district court in failing to compel the production of the notes was harmless. See United States v. Tashjian, 660 F.2d 829, 839 (1st Cir.1981). From the record, we cannot tell if this is so. 23 Early in the course of trial, Magistrate Bittner ruled without explanation that Tasch's notes and the interview notes of other government agents did not qualify as statements whose production was compelled under the Jencks Act. The district court, in turn, relied on Magistrate Bittner's ruling in denying defendants' motion to compel production of Tasch's notes. We take the magistrate's decision to mean that the notes were not substantial verbatim recitals of McCarthy's oral statements, as the other possible definitions of statement are clearly inapplicable to the facts before us. 24 Tasch's testimony suggests that the court's ruling was correct. She indicated that she had several pages of notes from her interview with McCarthy. Her report digesting McCarthy's interview was 37 pages long. This leads us to believe that Tasch's notes could not have been substantially verbatim recitals of McCarthy's interview and thus need not have been produced. Though they challenge the district court's ruling, neither Morrison nor Michael Anderson (who also challenges the government failure to produce Tasch's notes, see III.B. below) have made arguments or presented evidence that suggests otherwise. We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in ruling that the government's failure to produce Tasch's notes did not warrant the declaration of a mistrial.