Opinion ID: 606126
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Interstate Transport of Explosives with Intent to Injure or Kill

Text: 70 The jury instruction concerning unlawful transportation of explosives under 18 U.S.C. § 844(d) listed the following requirements: that the jury find that Rafael and Luis Sanchez knowingly and willfully caused an explosive device to be transported in interstate commerce with knowledge and intent that it be used to kill Nelson Seda and to damage a vehicle. 71 Appellants do not argue that their conviction of unlicensed transport and their conviction of interstate transport with intent to injure or kill, both charged in the Southern District of Florida, must fall under the Double Jeopardy Clause, and we believe that such a claim could not succeed. 20 As with unlicensed transport, the transportation focus of the § 844(d) charge differentiates it from the unlawful acts prosecuted in Puerto Rico: the unlicensed possession and use of that item. The transport of explosives with intent to injure or kill does not address the same conduct as Articles 26 and 27 of the Puerto Rico Law on Explosives. 72 Under the circumstances of this case, the § 844(d) charge most closely resembles the charge of attempted murder, not the other explosives charges. Both § 844(d) and attempted murder focus on the inchoate stages of murder, the assembling of materials and initial steps toward the death of another. Under Puerto Rico law, attempt is a crime which must be supported by an overt act. P.R.Laws Ann. tit. 33 § 3121 (An attempt shall exist when the person commits acts or makes omissions unequivocally directed to the execution of an offense....). Had Puerto Rican authorities relied upon interstate transport of explosives as the overt act of the attempt charge, subsequent prosecution of the appellants might well have run afoul of the Double Jeopardy Clause. In this case, however, Rafael and Luis were charged with attempted murder because of the placement and accidental detonation of a bomb near Seda's home. The Puerto Rico charge reads: 73 Rafael and Luis Sanchez ... carried out acts unequivocally aimed at causing the death of the human being Nelson P. Seda, such acts consisting in the fact that they tried to place an explosive device on the property of the aforementioned Nelson P. Seda, and said device exploded as they tried to place it, without causing the attempted death due to circumstances beyond the control of the defendants. 74 The conduct addressed in the attempted murder prosecution was the actual bungled assassination attempt. Other than this charge, and the detonation charge under Article 26 of the Law on Explosives, Appellants were not prosecuted for this culmination stage of their plan; instead, they were charged only with possessing and detonating the bomb without proper licensing and charged with murder for the death of Brian Williams. The Double Jeopardy Clause does not forbid holding criminal defendants responsible, in separate prosecutions, for distinct stages of a single criminal enterprise. The murder and explosives charges necessarily resemble one another closely because they relate to a single assassination attempt, carried out through a single medium. This similarity of charges cannot, however, detract from the fact that Appellants committed a number of unlawful acts and may be punished for each of those acts, subject only to the dictates of the Constitution. Because we find that the conduct prosecuted as attempted murder in Puerto Rico differed from the conduct prosecuted in Florida as interstate transport of explosives with intent to injure or kill, we AFFIRM Appellants' conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 844(d). 75