Court Opinion

ID: 9493581
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:12:13.878789+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:54.913561
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I agree with all of the majority’s well-analyzed opinion, except on the issue of whether Alvarez-Valenzuela is responsible for the gun. As is common in gun cases, the gun charge matters more, five years as compared to one year of prison time, than the underlying crime. The jury’s question about the conspiracy instruction shows that the jurors had a serious concern about the extent of vicarious liability for a cocon-spirator’s gun. And the evidence just was not enough to satisfy a reasonable juror, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Alvarez-Valenzuela knew about the gun or could reasonably foresee it.
Of course like any ordinary reader, I imagine that drug smugglers carry and shoot guns all the time. After all, that is how the movies and television portray them. But this imagined script cannot be substituted for evidence. Neither we nor, I would guess, the scriptwriters, have any personal experience with drug smuggling. They are making it up, and we have a stereotype based on what they have invented. We held in United States v. Castaneda 1 that Pinkerton2 liability could not necessarily support a gun conviction in a drug conspiracy, because “there is no presumption of foreseeability” of a gun.3
So let’s look at the evidence. First, if there was evidence that the marijuana smugglers in that area routinely carry guns, that would have some persuasive force for the proposition that Alvarez^-Valenzuela should have foreseen that one of his coconspirators would also be carrying one. But, surprisingly to one not experienced in the drug smuggling business, the evidence was otherwise. The border patrol agent who found the gun testified that in his year and three months on the smuggler beat along the Arizona border, “this was the first weapon that I found as a border patrol agent.” He went further and testified that the adrenaline produced by this unusually dangerous occurrence of finding a gun was the reason he remembered this particular arrest. That uncon-tradicted testimony would require a jury to have a reasonable doubt about the inference “of course there would be a gun.” If the gun was a surprise to the border patrol agent, a reasonable juror would infer that it might be a surprise to Alvarez-Valenzuela.
El Chore gave the gun to Martines-Renteria. But, the evidence would not allow a jury to infer beyond a reasonable doubt that Alvarez-Valenzuela was there at the time. The government’s cooperating witness, coconspirator Bejarano-Ponce, testified that some hours before they crossed the border El Chore handed the gun to Martines-Renteria, and Mar-tines-Renteria put it in the waistband of his pants. The prosecutor, strikingly, did not ask Bejarano-Ponce who was present when El Chore handed Martines-Renteria *1206the pistol. Bejarano-Ponce was entirely cooperative, so the silence on whether Alvarez-Valenzuela was present at that meeting supports, if anything, an inference that Alvarez-Valenzuela was not there.
As for whether Alvarez-Valenzuela would have seen the gun in Martines-Renteria’s waistband, that seems too speculative to me for a juror to infer beyond a reasonable doubt that he could. The prosecutor did not ask his witness what the smugglers wore, or whether the gun could be seen when Martines-Renteria was carrying it. It had snowed that January day, so a reasonable inference would be that these men dressed for cool weather, not in T-shirts. The gun, a .380 Lorcin, was a trashy, lightweight, six inch long semi-automatic that would not tend to pull one’s pants down or fall down one’s pants, like, say, a good quality revolver. Considering the gun and the weather, a reasonable juror could not infer beyond a reasonable doubt that Alvarez-Valenzuela would have seen the gun. The weather made it likely that Martines-Renteria would be wearing a jacket or warm shirt (the weather was the only evidence elicited which would bear on what clothes were worn), and the gun could easily be concealed in one’s waistband by a untucked shirt or jacket.
The majority points out correctly that there was no reason why the other conspirators would have kept the gun secret from Alvarez-Valenzuela. But there was a reason why Alvarez-Valenzuela might have been absent from the meeting where El Chore handed the gun to Martines-Renteria. If Alvarez-Valenzuela was valued by the others only for his strong back, it might be just as well for him not to recognize El Chore. Bejarano-Ponce testified that Alvarez-Valenzuela was just a mule and did not know “anything.” Counsel had difficulty even drawing out the nickname “El Chore” from Bejarano-Ponce, and El Chore’s real name was never revealed, so jurors could reasonably infer that El Chore did not like his identity to be widely known and that he would not have disclosed it to a mule who had no need to know. Bejarano-Ponce testified that he, not El Chore, made the arrangements with Alvarez-Valenzuela.
These are mere disagreements about applying the law to the facts, not disagreements about what the law is. I agree with the majority on what the law is. And I agree with the majority that our test is highly permissive toward reasonable inferences against Alvarez-Valenzuela. But I just do not see how a reasonable juror could infer that Alvarez-Valenzuela had knowledge or foresaw the presence of a gun beyond a reasonable doubt. By analogy, we reverse conspiracy convictions for insufficient evidence, when the evidence shows no more than presence.4 Here, there is no question that Alvarez-Valenzuela conspired to smuggle marijuana. For that charge he received only one year of prison time. The consecutive five year sentence was for Martines-Renteria’s possession of the pistol. The pistol is attributable to Alvarez-Valenzuela only if it was foreseeable to him or he actually saw the gun, so it matters a great deal whether reasonable jurors could find that on the evidence they had. I do not think they could. Making it too easy to convict on a gun count without any solid evidence from which a reasonable juror could be persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt reduces the reliability of the process. People are likely to be convicted at trial for guns they really did not know about or foresee. And because of the sentencing risk on the gun counts, defendants are likely to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit in exchange for dismissals of gun counts posing a much greater sentencing risk.

.9 F.3d 761 (9th Cir.1993).

. Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 66 S.Ct. 1180, 90 L.Ed. 1489 (1946).

. Castaneda, 9 F.3d at 767.

. See United States v. Vasquez-Chan, 978 F.2d 546, 553 (9th Cir.1992).