Opinion ID: 808712
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Count 2: Conspiracy to commit a RICO violation

Text: 8 Cornelius’s sufficiency challenge to his conviction on Count 2 is peculiar insofar as he does not argue directly that there was insufficient factual proof to support a conviction. Rather, he relies upon an inference from the jury’s failure to reach a verdict on Count 1—racketeering under RICO—which he claims is inconsistent with his conviction on Count 2—conspiracy to commit a RICO violation—such that either a directed acquittal or a new trial is warranted vis-à-vis Count 2. Cornelius first asserts that the RICO conspiracy charge in Count 2 as well as the substantive RICO charge in Count 1, requires a finding of, among other elements, the existence of an enterprise at the time of the offense.3 He then argues that the jury’s acquittal on Count 1 must have been based on a finding that no enterprise in fact existed. Cornelius concludes, therefore, that the evidence must have been insufficient as to Count 2, since conviction on that charge also required the jury to find the same element of the actual existence of a criminal enterprise that it found lacking under Count 1. 3 The RICO statute provides: It shall be unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt. 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c). Subsection (d) of § 1962, in turn, declares it “unlawful for any person to conspire to violate any of the provisions of subsection (a), (b), or (c) of this section.” 9 Cornelius’s inconsistent-verdicts argument fails without even reaching the question of whether the existence of an enterprise is an essential element of a RICO conspiracy charge under 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d). It is a longstanding principle that “[c]onsistency in the verdict is not necessary. Each count in an indictment is regarded as if it was a separate indictment.” Dunn v. United States, 284 U.S. 390, 393 (1932); see also id. at 394 (“That the verdict may have been the result of compromise, or of a mistake on the part of the jury, is possible. But verdicts cannot be upset by speculation or inquiry into such matters.”); United States v. Swafford, 766 F.2d 426, 429-30 (10th Cir. 1985) (applying the rule in Dunn to an allegedly inconsistent conspiracy verdict). See generally 18 A.L.R.3d 259 § 30[a] (“As a general rule, the fact that contrary verdicts are returned as between a conspiracy count and a count charging a substantive offense presents no such inconsistency as requires reversal.”). Hence, even if the jury were required to find the existence of an enterprise under both Counts 1 and 2, mere inconsistency between the guilty verdict on Count 2 and the non-verdict on Count 1 would not warrant reversal of the conviction. Cornelius has not made any additional arguments on appeal with respect to his conviction on Count 2. Cornelius’s enterprise argument fundamentally also fails, in addition to the reason discussed above, because the Government was not required to prove the actual existence of an enterprise under 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d)—a legal point we clarify today in United States v. Harris, No. 10-3173, -- F.3d -- (10th Cir. 2012). Reviewing the record de novo and making all reasonable inferences in favor of the 10 Government, see Jameson, 478 F.3d at 1208, we determine that the Government produced sufficient evidence from which a rational trier of fact could have found all the elements of the RICO conspiracy charged in Count 2 beyond a reasonable doubt, see Dobbs, 629 F.3d at 1203. 2. Count 28: Conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine Cornelius argues that the jury could not reasonably have convicted him on Count 28 because the Government failed adequately to prove the interdependence element of conspiracy. “To obtain a conspiracy conviction, the government must prove: ‘(1) an agreement by two or more persons to violate the law; (2) knowledge of the objectives of the conspiracy; (3) knowing and voluntary involvement in the conspiracy; and (4) interdependence among co-conspirators.’” United States v. Foy, 641 F.3d 455, 465 (10th Cir. 2011). The interdependence prong is “a focal point” of this conspiracy analysis. United States v. Caldwell, 589 F.3d 1323, 1329 (10th Cir. 2009) (quotation marks, citation omitted). To that end, we ask whether the “coconspirators intend[ed] to act together for their shared mutual benefit within the scope of the conspiracy charged.” Id. (internal quotation marks, citation omitted). The Government need not “prove ‘the conspirators know the identities or details of each scheme or have connections with all other members of the conspiracy.’” Foy, 641 F.3d at 465 (citation omitted). “Circumstantial evidence alone is often sufficient” to demonstrate interdependence, and “a single act” can constitute sufficient proof. Caldwell, 589 F.3d at 1329. 11 Cornelius contends that his conviction on Count 28 rests upon “an impermissible stacking of inference upon inference” and improper “guilt by association” reasoning. Aplt. Br. at 26. He claims that even if he did buy cocaine from, or sell cocaine to, other Crips, there is no evidence that any two of those occasions were connected, or that any common drug-supplying goal existed between them. He also asserts that “other defendants could have continued with any effort to distribute cocaine even if [he] had not been involved.” Id. at 29. However, the Government did put forth evidence from which a reasonable jury could infer interdependence. It is true that the “existence of a buyer-seller relationship, without more, is inadequate to tie the buyer to a larger conspiracy.” United States v. McIntyre, 836 F.2d 467, 471 (10th Cir. 1987). However, the buyer-seller principle only shields mere end-user consumers like the defendant in McIntyre, who only shared three cocaine purchases with friends and did not resell the drugs. See, e.g., id. In contrast, as opposed to mere consumers, those who “intend to redistribute drugs for profit, thereby furthering the objective of the conspiracy,” such as “street-level, mid-level, and other distributors,” are not protected by the end-user defense. United States v. Ivy, 83 F.3d 1266, 1286 (10th Cir. 1996). In this case, there was evidence that Cornelius bought and sold drugs in an interdependent distribution scheme. The evidence that Cornelius repeatedly sold cocaine to other drug distributors who in turn sold it to others is sufficient to support a reasonable inference that conspiratorial interdependence existed between Cornelius and other 12 distributors in a conspiracy.4 See United States v. Wright, 506 F.3d 1293, 1299 (10th Cir. 2007) (determining that a “buyer-seller relationship [was] patently an interdependent one” where there was evidence that defendant sold drugs on a recurrent basis to another man, who in turn sold the drugs for profit); United States v. Small, 423 F.3d 1164, 1183 (10th Cir. 2005). Further supporting that conclusion is evidence that Cornelius was an “OG”—a leader within the gang—as that status would tend to establish Cornelius as a “mid-level” dealer, which bolsters a finding of a conspiratorial relationship. See Ivy, 83 F.3d at 128586; Wright, 506 F.3d at 1299. Cornelius’s status as an OG could also suggest that he “was privy to information regarding the [nature and objectives] of the criminal conspiracy,” which supports an inference of interdependence. Small, 423 F.3d at 1183. Also to that end, testimony regarding Cornelius’s attendance at gang meetings supports such an inference, see id. at 1183. 4 See, e.g., R. Vol. 4 at 995, 1018-22 (testimony of Donta Davis, a fellow Crip, indicating that Davis knew Cornelius for a long time and had several marijuana and cocaine dealings with Cornelius; that Cornelius knew how to obtain drugs and would acquire them for Davis; that Davis would meet Cornelius at a “crack house,” where other Crips hung around, to conduct the transactions; that the amounts of drugs Davis would buy from Cornelius at a time—multiple ounces of powder cocaine, to be cooked into crack, and multiple pounds of marijuana—were substantial; and that Davis would in turn sell the drugs to other people); id. at 1801, 1815-16 (testimony of Prentice Byrd, a Crip, indicating that he sold crack cocaine to Cornelius probably twice, never merely gifting drugs to, or sharing drugs with, Cornelius); id. at 2029, 2096-97 (testimony of James Jones, another Crip, indicating that Jones sold crack cocaine to Cornelius from February to September 2006, and that Cornelius had a spot from which Cornelius regularly sold drugs himself). 13 The jury did not need to find that the conspiracy could not have functioned without Cornelius; rather, it is sufficient that Cornelius was an operational link within it. See United States v. Evans, 970 F.2d 663, 670 (10th Cir. 1992). In this case, there was adequate evidence, including the testimony identified above, from which a rational jury could conclude that Cornelius was at least an operational link in the cocaine distribution conspiracy.5 In sum, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Government, there was sufficient evidence to find Cornelius guilty under Count 28. 3. Count 29: Conspiracy to distribute marijuana With respect to Count 29, Cornelius argues that there was insufficient evidence of the necessary respective conspiracy elements of agreement and interdependency. See Caldwell, 589 F.3d at 1329. He asserts that his conviction rested upon an improper guiltby-association rationale, arguing that there was no proof of conspiracy but rather only 5 Our holding in United States v. McIntyre is not to the contrary, as Cornelius suggests. In McIntyre, we reversed a conspiracy-to-distribute conviction on sufficiencyof-the-evidence grounds where the prosecution “failed to show any common goal or larger scheme beyond each single [drug] transaction” and, further, did not “contend that defendant knew of a broad conspiracy or that the relatively small amounts of cocaine he purchased should have alerted him to a conspiracy.” 836 F.2d at 472. Also, the prosecution there had not put forth sufficient evidence to show “that if defendant had failed to possess and distribute drugs on any one of the named occasions, the failure would have had any effect on the success of the other transactions.” Id. The present case is distinguishable because the Government did put forth evidence from which the jury could have concluded that Cornelius—an OG, who re-sold drugs in addition to buying them, unlike the mere end-use consumer in McIntyre—knew of a larger drug-distribution scheme and knew of a broad conspiracy, and that his drug transactions had an effect on the success of other transactions. 14 evidence of his status as a Crip and his intent to distribute marijuana, apart from any agreement with others. Once again, however, the Government did produce evidence that supports a reasonable inference of a conspiracy. Fellow Crip Donta Davis testified, “I was buying and [Cornelius] knew the person to get [marijuana and cocaine] from, [Cornelius] would go get [it] for me.” R. Vol. 4 at 1019; see also id. at 1020 (testimony that Davis would buy two to three pounds of marijuana at a time, at a price of $500-600 per pound, from Cornelius).6 This kind of middleman buyer-seller relationship between two drug dealers, along with Cornelius’s status as an OG (giving him an insider presence and heightened decisionmaking power in the gang), is sufficient to support an inference of both the agreement and interdependency elements of a conspiracy. See Wright, 506 F.3d at 129899. We cannot say that no reasonable jury could have found Cornelius guilty under Count 29.