Opinion ID: 486363
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Colon Berrios

Text: 64 The indictment charged Colon Berrios with three counts of perjury allegedly committed during his January 16, 1980 deposition in the civil action brought by Rosado's and Soto Arrivi's survivors. At trial, following the government's case-in-chief, Colon Berrios moved for a judgment of acquittal pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 29. The district court denied the motion, an action it repeated when Colon Berrios renewed his motion after defendants rested. After two days of deliberations, the jury acquitted Colon Berrios on Count 36, but returned verdicts of guilty on Counts 37 and 38. He asserts on appeal that the government produced insufficient evidence to support his convictions under the two counts. Because our analysis of Count 37 depends in part on whether the conviction under Count 38 stands, we shall begin with the latter.
65 In his deposition, after being asked who was your normal supervisor, Colon Berrios responded Lieutenant Gonzalez. (Emphasis added.) Colon Berrios then answered no when asked whether Gonzalez [had] anything to do with the operation at Cerro Maravilla, a contention the government alleges is perjurious. As stated in the indictment, Nelson Gonzalez Perez was present at Cerro Maravilla on July 25, 1978, when the shots were fired which killed Carlos Soto Arrivi and Arnaldo Dario Rosado. Although the indictment assumed that Lieutenant Gonzalez and Nelson Gonzalez Perez were the same person, an assumption shared by the government at trial, we are unable to draw such a conclusion in the absence of a sufficient evidentiary foundation. 66 The government's evidence clearly established that Nelson Gonzalez Perez was a member of the Police of Puerto Rico assigned, at the time of the Cerro Maravilla shootings, to the same section of the force as was Colon Berrios, the intelligence division. As did other government witnesses, Jose Montanez Ortiz, a police officer present when the independentistas were shot, testified that Nelson Gonzalez Perez was at Cerro Maravilla on July 25, 1978. Thus, Colon Berrios perjured himself in responding that Lieutenant Gonzalez did not have anything to do with the Cerro Maravilla operation provided the government proved that, by Lieutenant Gonzalez, Colon Berrios meant Nelson Gonzalez Perez and not someone else. 67 The record, however, does not afford such proof. The government has directed us to no document or witness which, when mentioning Nelson Gonzalez Perez's rank, calls him anything but sergeant. 22 By itself, this disparity would not be fatal, if the record as a whole permitted a fair inference that Nelson Gonzalez Perez was one and the same as Lieutenant Gonzalez. But the mystery of the true Lieutenant Gonzalez is deepened, and rendered in the end inexplicable, by evidence of another Lieutenant Gonzalez, different from Nelson Gonzalez Perez, who was also in the intelligence division. Antonio Mendez Rivera, a former Second Lieutenant in the intelligence division, testified as follows: 68 Q. Who were the other second Lieutenants, if you recall? 69 A. Lieutenant Sebastian Ortiz, Lieutenant Jaime Quiles, and I am not sure if by that time there was Lieutenant Francisco Gonzalez. 70 Given the above, the indication that Nelson Gonzalez Perez may have been a sergeant, and the government's total failure to present easily obtained clarifying evidence--for example, to show that Colon Berrios's supervisor was in fact Nelson Gonzalez Perez--the record lacks sufficient evidence, even when construed most favorably to the government, to allow a rational trier of fact to find Colon Berrios guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Drougas, 748 F.2d 8, 15 (1st Cir.1984); United States v. Marolda, 648 F.2d 623, 624 (9th Cir.1981).
71 In his January 16, 1980 deposition, Colon Berrios was asked if he had discussed the Cerro Maravilla incident with fellow officers Bruno Gonzalez or Reveron Martinez since the time it happened. Colon Berrios replied, in part, I have not made any comments like that. When examined on whether he had discussed the incident with any of the other defendants in the civil suit, Colon Berrios once again said no. The government alleges that these are perjurious statements in that Colon Berrios met with Juan Bruno, Luis Reveron, Jose Rios Polanco, Rafael Torres and others at Cerro Maravilla on August 2, 1978, and discussed the events of July 25, 1978. 72 The most damaging evidence against Colon Berrios was offered by Modesto Delgado Garcia, an employee of the corporation that owned the Channel 7 tower that Rosado and Soto Arrivi were allegedly intending to sabotage. He testified that on August 2, 1978, Colon Berrios came to Cerro Maravilla along with Rios Polanco, Reveron Martinez, Rafael Torres, and a number of district attorneys. 23 Although the evidence indicates that the district attorneys discussed the shootings with each of the defendants present, and that the defendants may have talked among themselves, the government offered no evidence that Colon Berrios, although present, participated in the discussions. 73 The government, moreover, produced no evidence, with the exception of the August 2 episode, showing that Colon Berrios talked at any other time with any of the defendants. Although such a meeting could perhaps be inferred if Colon Berrios had engaged in perjury closely related to that of other defendants, the jury convicted Colon Berrios of only one other count of perjury, a verdict we found to be unsupported by sufficient evidence. Given this inadequate record, we reverse the conviction under Count 37.