Opinion ID: 185285
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sufficiency of the Factual Proffer

Text: 16 Ahn argues that the Government failed to proffer any facts that would demonstrate a link between the payments he received and any official act. He suggests that, instead, the Government's proffer only establishes that the massage parlors paid him solely because of his position as a police lieutenant. 17 According to Rule 11, when considering a plea, the trial court must make such inquiry as shall satisfy it that there is a factual basis for the plea. FED. R. CRIM. P. 11(f). To establish a satisfactory factual basis, the Government must proffer  'evidence from which a reasonable juror could conclude that the defendant was guilty as charged.'  In re Sealed Case, 332 U.S. App. D.C. 84, 153 F.3d 759, 771 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (quoting Ford, 993 F.2d at 253). Accordingly, the trial court may draw reasonable inferences from the facts proffered by the Government. See United States v. Graves, 106 F.3d 342, 345 (10th Cir. 1997). 18 The Government's factual proffer established that Ahn went to the massage parlors to tell the cooperating witnesses that their parlors were not properly licensed. As a police officer, Lieutenant Ahn had a duty to report the licensing violations and to take such immediate and proper police action as the circumstances may demand. METROPOLITAN POLICE DEP'T GEN. ORDER 401.4, Part I, D(2). The proffer explicitly described how Ahn accepted payments from two cooperating witnesses associated with The Spas rather than reporting the violations. The proffer expressly defined The Spas as businesses whereby male customers purchase massages from female spa workers ... [and] may also purchase sexual acts. In the proffer, the Government identified five different payments from the cooperating witnesses, who were, as the proffer makes clear, associated with The Spas, which by the proffer's own unambiguous definition were engaged in illegal activity. Consequently, the only conclusion that can be drawn from the proffer is that while Lieutenant Ahn received payments from the cooperating witnesses, the massage parlors continued to engage in illegal conduct and Ahn failed to take any immediate and proper police action. 19 Although Appellant is correct that the proffer does not explicitly state a link between the payments and an official act, it does provide sufficient  'evidence from which a reasonable juror could conclude that the defendant was guilty as charged.'  In re Sealed Case, 153 F.3d at 771 (emphasis added) (quoting Ford, 993 F.2d at 253). A reasonable juror could interpret the facts proffered by the Government as demonstrating that the cooperating witnesses paid Ahn as a reward for his not reporting the parlors' violations when he first notified them that they were not properly licensed, as an enticement to continue failing to report them, and as an inducement for not reporting them in the future. Under all of these reasonable inferences, the Government has proffered a sufficient factual basis to establish the link between the payments and an identified official act, or in Lieutenant Ahn's case, an official failure to act. See Sun-Diamond, 526 U.S. at 414; Schaffer, 183 F.3d at 841-42. 20 We find instructive our recent decision in In re Sealed Case, 332 U.S. App. D.C. 84, 153 F.3d 759 (D.C. Cir. 1998). In that case, the defendant pleaded guilty to violating 18 U.S.C. 924(c)(1), which establishes minimum sentences for anyone who uses or carries a firearm during or in relation to a drug trafficking crime. Before the defendant was sentenced, however, the Supreme Court held that to establish the use of a firearm the Government must prove that it was actively employed. See Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137, 144, 133 L. Ed. 2d 472, 116 S. Ct. 501 (1995). The Sealed Case defendant sought to withdraw his plea based on this holding, arguing that the Government's proffer had not established that he had used or carried a weapon. Nevertheless, the proffer did demonstrate that when police officers told the defendant to show his hands, he moved them away from his body and toward the corner, where the police found a gun moments later. In re Sealed Case, 153 F.3d at 772. We held that those facts were sufficient for a reasonable juror to find that the defendant had tossed away the gun and therefore was guilty of carrying. See id. Likewise, in Ahn's case, the Government did not explicitly state that Ahn received the payments for or because of an official act, but the facts it proffered were sufficient for a reasonable juror to infer such a link. 21 In contrast, in cases in which courts have held that there was an insufficient factual basis for a defendant's plea, the government has offered no evidence to support an element of the charge. For example, the defendant in United States v. Ford pleaded guilty to possessing a weapon while under indictment for a felony, see 18 U.S.C. 922(n), and the government omitted the fact that a gun was recovered from [the defendant's] bedroom--the key fact necessary to establish that he possessed a gun. Ford, 993 F.2d at 253. 22 Similarly, in United States v. Sawyer, 74 F. Supp. 2d 88 (D. Mass. 1999), on which Appellant relies, the government's proffer was insufficient to establish a factual basis for a violation of a Massachusetts illegal gratuity statute similar to the one at issue here. 1 In Sawyer, the government only demonstrated that the defendant gave free golf and other entertainment to Massachusetts legislators. Id. at 93 n.6. The court properly ruled that the government failed to allege any link between the entertainment and an identifiable, specific, official act. Id. at 103. More significantly, however, the government failed to identify any official act, instead wholly relying on the fact that gifts were given to state legislators. 23 Ahn argues that in his case, as in Sawyer, the Government believed that it could prosecute him based solely on his status as a police officer. Even if Ahn is correct, this belief is not fatal because the Government here, unlike the prosecution in Sawyer, proffered sufficient evidence linking the payments Ahn received to an official act. The record reveals that the district court substantially complied with the dictates of Rule 11(f), that the factual proffer provided sufficient evidence to establish a violation of the illegal gratuity statute, and, therefore, that the court did not abuse its discretion in denying Ahn's motion to withdraw his guilty plea.