Court Opinion

ID: 9471330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:29:25.922269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:21.480023
License: Public Domain

WISDOM, Circuit Judge,
with whom RUBIN, POLITZ and TATE, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. I stand by the panel decision. 702 F.2d 496, 501. There is not a shred of evidence in the record to show that Michelena-Orovio “possessed] with intent ... to distribute” the 365 bales of marijuana carried by the vessel on which he served as a seaman. His function as a seaman in importing the marijuana was to terminate on delivery of the cargo to another vessel on the high seas, before any distribution of the contraband could take place. The sweep of the en banc opinion and the overbroad implications of its reasoning impel me to make the following brief observations.
The en banc opinion rests not on the evidence, but on a figure of speech: a conspiracy is a single chain and each conspirator is a link. This premise is a deceptively appealing shortcut to evidence overcoming the presumption of innocence. The notion that the conspiracy in this case is a chain begs the question. If one accepts the premise, of course each person performing a function relating to handling the contraband — from the grower in Colombia, to the first purchaser, to the middleman, to the crewmen on a ship transporting the contraband, down to the retailer — is guilty of conspiring to import and to “possess with intent to distribute” the contraband. No doubt there are some conspiracies that may aptly be described as a chain in which an individual conspirator is an essential link, although he may not have any idea of details of the scheme and may be unknown to some other conspirators. That is not this ease. Here the United States did not charge a single massive venture to import, sell, and distribute, as it did in United States v. Bruno, 2 Cir., 105 F.2d 921, rev’d on other grounds, 1939, 308 U.S. 287, 60 S.Ct. 198, 84 L.Ed. 257. The indictment has two separate counts, one for importation and another for distribution, because the facts point to two separate conspiracies, at least with respect to some of the participants, the most conspicuous of whom was seaman Michelena-Orovio.
In dealing with the difficult problem of narcotics control, Congress chose to distinguish between the crime of conspiring to import controlled drugs in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 963 (1976) and the-crime of conspiring to possess such drugs with intent to distribute them in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 (1976). This is not to say that the same defendant can never be guilty of both offenses. But the effect of the majority decision is that a violation of section 963 now automatically entails a violation of section 846 — whenever the principal basis for conviction under section 963 rests on the inference that the large amount of contraband seized necessarily shows intent to import on the part of seamen on the vessel carrying the contraband. Such an inference is a non sequitur as to distribution, however, because it fails to take into account the element of intent necessary for proof of the crime.
*758In this case, one may reasonably infer from the size of the cargo knowledge and intent on the part of the defendant to participate in the conspiracy to import the contraband. But that inference cannot do double duty and show as well intent to distribute when the defendant had no role to play in distribution. With deference, I suggest that in the circumstances of this case, considering especially that Michelena-Orovio’s role was to terminate on delivery of the marijuana to another vessel on the high seas, 150 to 200 miles from our shores, the only rational inference that can be drawn is that the defendant did not intend to play any part in any ongoing conspiracy to distribute the marijuana. The distribution in the United States, assuming that it was to take place in the United States, was to be handled by others. As Judge Alvin Rubin pointed out in United States v. Rodriguez:
[Tjhere was literally no evidence with respect to the involvement of Martins and Smigowski [two of the four defendants] in a distribution scheme except what might be inferred from their participation in an agreement to import it. The direct and circumstantial evidence that they were peripheral participants in the importation scheme does not refute, beyond a reasonable doubt, the hypothesis that they had no knowledge of a conspiracy to distribute once it reached these shores.
Unlike Rodriguez and Albernaz, who perforce had to make some arrangements to dispose of their treasure, Smigowski and Martins could each receive his reward and be done with the scheme.... [Possession of a large supply of a prohibited substance may justify the inference that the possessor intended to distribute it, but there was no evidence that Smigowski and Martins had sufficient dominion over or interest in the marijuana to warrant the inference.
5 Cir.1978, 585 F.2d 1234, 1247, aff’d en banc 612 F.2d 906, aff’d sub nom. Abernaz v. United States, 1981, 450 U.S. 333, 101 S.Ct. 1137, 67 L.Ed.2d 275.
“In the case of an inference, the existence of B may be deduced from A by the ordinary rules of reason and logic.” 1 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, Weinstein’s Evidence § 300[01]. The correct drawing of an inference “is based upon logic and experience, not upon law”. Gausewitz, Presumptions in a One-Rule World, 5 Vand.L.Rev. 324, 327 (1952). When there is no evidence that a crew member had a stake in the distribution or an awareness of or interest in the distribution of the contraband, the logical inference is that the crew member joined in a conspiracy to import marijuana for delivery to another vessel on the high seas without any intention to join the conspiracy to distribute. This inference is especially applicable to Michelena-Orovio because he lacked any contacts with the United States. This case is even stronger than Cadena because here the parties stipulated that the defendant, unlike Cadena, was not the captain of the vessel. It is stronger than Rodriguez because the defendants acquitted of the conspiracy to distribute in that case were Americans who were more actively involved than Michelena-Orovio in the conspiracy to import and were seamen on the receiving ship.
The essence of conspiracy is agreement knowingly entered into by the parties. “[P]roof of an agreement to enter a conspiracy is not to be lightly inferred.” United States v. Johnson, 5 Cir., 439 F.2d 885, 888, cert. denied sub nom. Golub v. United States, 404 U.S. 880, 92 S.Ct. 213, 30 L.Ed.2d 161 (1971). In Direct Sales Co. v. United States, 1943, 319 U.S. 703, 63 S.Ct. 1265, 87 L.Ed. 1674, on which the majority opinion relies, a drug manufacturer and wholesaler had supplied large amounts of morphine sulphate to a doctor for several years. The government charged the manufacturer with conspiracy to distribute narcotics unlawfully because the amounts of morphine supplied were so large that the manufacturer must have known that the doctor was distributing the drug illegally. The Court said:
When the evidence discloses such a system, working in prolonged cooperation with a physician’s unlawful purpose to supply him with his stock in trade for his *759illicit enterprise, there is no legal obstacle to finding that the supplier not only knows and acquiesces, but joins both mind and hand with him to make its accomplishment possible. The step from knowledge to intent and agreement may be taken. There is more than suspicion, more than knowledge, acquiescence, carelessness, indifference, lack of concern. There is informed and interested cooperation, stimulation, instigation. And there is also a “stake in the venture” which, even if it may not be essential, is not irrelevant to the question of conspiracy.
319 U.S. at 713, 63 S.Ct. at 1270, 87 L.Ed. at 1682 (footnotes omitted and emphasis supplied). The kinds of facts which justifiably led to an inference of guilt in Direct Sales are singularly lacking here.
The use of one dubious inference to do double duty for two different crimes undermines the presumption of innocence due an accused and interferes with the factfinding process.
The key problem with permissive inferences is that they isolate and abstract a single circumstance from the complex of circumstances presented in any given case, and, on proof of that isolated fact, authorize an inference of some other fact beyond reasonable doubt. Conviction is authorized by the permissive inference in all cases in which the predicate fact appears, even though the correlation between the predicate fact and the element to be inferred is less than perfect. Permissive inferences thus permit juries to avoid assessing the myriad facts which make specific cases unique. Analysis, as Supreme Court opinions demonstrate, is drawn to likelihoods. The thesis pursued here is that any structure which reduces criminal cases to a simplified assessment of what might be called the “chances of guilt” is fundamentally at odds with the concept of reasonable doubt, and hence to be discouraged as a mode of determining the ultimate question of guilt or innocence.
Nesson, Reasonable Doubt and Permissive Inferences: The Value of Complexity, 92 Harv.URev. 1187, 1192 (1979) (footnote omitted).
United States v. Bell, 5 Cir.1982, 678 F.2d 547 (en banc), aff’d, 1983, -U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 2398, 76 L.Ed.2d 638, restated the standard of review in this circuit on the sufficiency of the evidence in a criminal case. That standard is whether a “reasonable trier of fact could [have found] that the evidence established] guilt beyond a reasonable doubt”. Id. at 549. That articulation of the standard for appellate review has not eroded, nor could it, the constitutional requirement of a reasonable doubt standard. I agree with Judges Anderson and Roney, concurring specially: “Judge Vance’s opinion does not change the substantive law of this circuit with respect to the standard of review for sufficiency of the evidence .... [.I]f a hypothesis of innocence is sufficiently reasonable and sufficiently strong, then a reasonable trier of fact must necessarily entertain a reasonable doubt about guilt.” Id. at 550. As I see this case, there was such a strong hypothesis that Michelena-Orovio intended to limit his activities to his seaman’s job in transporting the marijuana to another vessel that a reasonable trier of fact must necessarily entertain a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of the crime of possessing the drug with the intent of distributing it in the United States.
The position I advocate is not contrary to congressional objectives in enacting drug control legislation. The real culprits in this case, as in many similar cases, are the American ringleaders who made arrangements with the grower or broker in Colombia and unquestionably arranged for the purchase, transportation, and distribution in this country. They are guilty of conspiracy to import and conspiracy to distribute and perhaps other conspiracies as well. But Michelena-Orovio, the lowly Colombian seaman on the edge of the conspiracy to import, should not be punished twice by expediently adding a tenuous inference to an attenuated inference. The majority has succumbed to an alluring figure of speech as a substitute for facts and reason.