Opinion ID: 2778648
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ripeness/Justiciability

Text: When Defendant pleaded guilty, he waived all defenses except those relating to subject-matter jurisdiction and a narrow class of constitutional claims involving the right not to be hauled into court. See United States v. De Vaughn, 694 F.3d 1141, 1145-46, 1153 (10th Cir. 2012). His guilty plea constitutes a binding admission that he did in fact commit the offenses of conviction. Id. at 1152 n.6. The government contends that Defendant’s ripeness/justiciability objection is nothing more than a belated (and facially dubious) factual-innocence defense barred by his admission of guilt. We agree. The thrust of Defendant’s position is that he committed no crime because the government initiated this prosecution before an obligation to pay a return to defrauded investors arose. If they lost millions of dollars investing in nonexistent wind-farm projects based on misrepresentations by members of the conspiracy, the fault, he insists, lay with the government; nothing criminal could have been done by him and his associates until their fraud ripened into unpaid returns. There are numerous problems with this argument, but it suffices to say that Defendant cites no authority that a criminal conspiracy does not arise until the contemplated substantive crime is committed and the victims of that crime irrevocably incur their losses. Indeed, the law is squarely to the contrary: “One can be guilty of a conspiracy to commit an offense without committing the substantive offense itself.” United States v. Lake, 472 F.3d 1247, 1263 (10th Cir. 2007). -3- Defendant does not challenge the factual basis of his plea, which conclusively established his guilt with respect to the elements of the charged criminal conspiracy.