Opinion ID: 866196
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Sufficiency of the Evidence on the Conspiracy

Text: Charge To make out a case for conspiracy, the government had to show that there was an agreement between Ramirez and someone else to distribute meth. See United States v. Lennick, 18 F.3d 814, 818 (9th Cir. 1994). Even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, there was no such agreement here. See United States v. Dann, 652 F.3d 1160, 1168 (9th Cir. 2011). 12 UNITED STATES V . RAMIREZ To prove conspiracy, the government had to show more than that Ramirez sold drugs to someone else knowing that the buyer would later sell to others. It had to show that Ramirez had an agreement with a buyer pursuant to which the buyer would “further distribute the drugs.” Lennick, 18 F.3d at 819. “In the end, what we are looking for is evidence of a prolonged and actively pursued course of sales coupled with the seller’s knowledge of and a shared stake in the buyer’s illegal venture.” United States v. Thomas, 284 F.3d 746, 752 (7th Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks omitted); cf. United States v. Mincoff, 574 F.3d 1186, 1194 (9th Cir. 2009). As in Lennick and Thomas, the government presented ample proof that the defendant possessed and sold drugs. See Lennick, 18 F.3d at 818; Thomas, 284 F.3d at 751. After all, three of the four meth sales the government engineered took place with Ramirez and the undercover in sight of each other. However, “[t]he sale of large quantities of controlled substances, without more, cannot sustain a conspiracy conviction.” Lennick, 18 F.3d at 819 n.5 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). And the government presented no evidence indicating that Ramirez had any kind of involvement in Bejaran’s drug sales. Cf. United States v. Webster, 623 F.3d 901, 907 (9th Cir. 2010). Arguing in the alternative, the government advances an even weaker conspiracy theory: that Ramirez was working for a mysterious “Mark Johnson” who supplied Ramirez with meth on credit. The government didn’t pursue this theory at trial and consequently can identify only one place in the record where it mentioned Johnson’s name—when the prosecutor moved bank records with Johnson’s name on them into evidence without comment. Tellingly, Johnson wasn’t UNITED STATES V . RAMIREZ 13 named in the indictment, and when the government summarized its conspiracy case in its closing statement, it discussed only the Ramirez-Bejaran relationship. As the district judge summarized, “there is no evidence concerning this individual Mark Johnson other than a name in some records.”