Opinion ID: 6333191
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Murder-for-Hire and Trial

Text: Paul Calder LeRoux (“LeRoux”) ran a transnational criminal organization engaged in money laundering, drug and weapons trafficking, and various acts of violence, including murder. The scale and variety of his outrageous criminal conduct defies an easy summary, and includes arms and technology dealings with Iran and North Korea, attempts at minor warlordism in Africa, and the plotting of a coup d’état in the Seychelles. As the District Court has aptly 6 characterized it, he committed “an array of crimes worthy of a James Bond villain.” 4 In September 2012, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) arrested LeRoux in Liberia and he began cooperating with authorities. The DEA used LeRoux’s cooperation to target various other members of his criminal organization. Defendants are among the members of that organization arrested by the DEA and jointly tried on five counts: (1) conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1958(a); 5 (2) murder-for-hire, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1958(a); (3) conspiracy to murder and kidnap in a foreign country, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 956(a); 6 (4) causing death with a firearm during and in relation to a 4 Rule 33 Order, No. 13-cr-521-RA, ECF 796, at 22. 5“Whoever travels in . . . interstate or foreign commerce, or uses . . . the mail or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, with intent that a murder be committed in violation of the laws of any State or the United States as consideration for the receipt of, or as consideration for a promise or agreement to pay, anything of pecuniary value, or who conspires to do so . . . and if death results, shall be punished by death or life imprisonment, or shall be fined not more than $250,000, or both.” 18 U.S.C. § 1958(a). 6 “Whoever, within the jurisdiction of the United States, conspires with one or more other persons . . . to commit at any place outside the United States an act that would constitute the offense of murder [or] kidnapping . . . if committed in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States shall, if any of the conspirators commits an act within the jurisdiction of the United States to effect any object of the conspiracy, be punished [by] . . . imprisonment for any term of years or for life.” 18 U.S.C. § 956(a). 7 crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(j); 7 and (5) conspiracy to launder money, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h). 8 In particular, the Government alleged that in late 2011 and early 2012, Hunter, Samia, and Stillwell conspired to commit murders-forhire, for which purpose they traveled from the U.S. to the Philippines; that while there, Hunter provided Samia and Stillwell with “target packages” of individuals to kill; and that on February 12, 2012, Samia and Stillwell shot and killed Catherine Lee, a Filipino real estate agent. 9 At trial, only Samia (who does not now appeal the District Court’s Rule 33 Order) maintained his actual innocence. Hunter and Stillwell both admitted involvement in Lee’s murder, but argued that the Government had failed to establish the jurisdictional element of 7 “A person who, in the course of a violation of [18 U.S.C. § 924(c)] causes the death of a person through the use of a firearm, shall if the killing is a murder . . . be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(j). 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) provides that “any person who, during and in relation to any crime of violence . . . uses or carries a firearm, or who, in furtherance of any such crime, possesses a firearm, shall, in addition to the punishment provided for such crime of violence[,] . . . if the firearm is discharged, be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than 10 years.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). 8 “Any person who conspires to commit [a money laundering offense] shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the offense the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.” 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h); see 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956(a), 1957(a) (defining relevant money laundering offenses). 9 Joint App’x at 282–83 (Superseding Indictment). 8 the 18 U.S.C. § 956(a) count, by not demonstrating that they had engaged in the conspiracy while in the U.S. 10 The Government’s case advanced various items of evidence to establish the jurisdictional element of that count. In particular, as relevant to the arguments made by Hunter and Stillwell in appealing the Rule 33 Order, the Government submitted evidence that Hunter had flown to the U.S. on Korean Airlines Flight 35 on December 10, 2011, and that he had met with Stillwell and Samia in North Carolina later that month. Further, LeRoux testified that a previous statement he had made to authorities in 2015 as part of a proffer—that Stillwell did not know about the murderous purpose of his trip to the Philippines until after leaving the U.S. (the “2015 Statement”)—had been a lie. Following a jury trial in April 2018, the three Defendants were convicted on all counts and sentenced principally to life in prison. 11 Defendants timely filed their initial appeals. 10 The parties agreed that Counts 1, 2, and 4 of the indictment were predicated on Count 3, the 18 U.S.C. § 956(a) count. Post-Trial Opinion, 2018 WL 4961453, at  n.4. As is relevant to Defendants’ appeal, the District Court instructed that in order to sustain a conviction on that count, the Government had to prove that a defendant “conspired with one or more members of the conspiracy while that defendant was physically present in the United States.” Joint App’x 974 (Trial Tr. 2011:10–13). 11 Hunter was not charged with Count 5. Judgments entered on October 12, 2018 (Stillwell), November 14, 2018 (Samia), and March 25, 2019 (Hunter). 9