Court Opinion

ID: 9781668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 17:01:20.514889+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:14:08.608159
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                            FILED
                    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                        AUG 30 2023
                                                                      MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                        U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                           FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,                       No.    21-10344

                Plaintiff-Appellee,             D.C. No.
                                                2:18-cr-00384-APG-EJY-2
 v.

DEMECIA SHONTRES WASHINGTON,                    MEMORANDUM*

                Defendant-Appellant.

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                            for the District of Nevada
                   Andrew P. Gordon, District Judge, Presiding

                      Argued and Submitted August 15, 2023
                            San Francisco, California

Before: CALLAHAN and BADE, Circuit Judges, and ANTOON,** District Judge.

      Demecia Washington challenges her convictions on seven felony counts

related to the sex trafficking of a 15-year-old runaway girl. Although she failed to

object at trial, Washington now argues that the district court erred by: (1)

admitting expert testimony that Washington contends crossed the line into

      *
             This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
      **
            The Honorable John Antoon II, United States District Judge for the
Middle District of Florida, sitting by designation.
impermissible character evidence; (2) failing to instruct the jury on the elements of

the substantive offenses underlying Washington’s conspiracy charges; and (3)

allowing the Government to dilute the burden of proof and appeal to the jurors’

emotions during closing argument. Washington also challenges her lifetime term

of supervised release as substantively unreasonable. We have jurisdiction under 28

U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

      In the absence of a contemporaneous objection, we review evidentiary

issues, jury instructions, and allegations of prosecutorial misconduct for plain

error. See United States v. Gomez-Norena, 908 F.2d 497, 500 (9th Cir. 1990)

(evidentiary issues); United States v. McCaleb, 552 F.3d 1053, 1057 (9th Cir.

2009) (jury instructions); United States v. Reyes, 660 F.3d 454, 461 (9th Cir. 2011)

(prosecutorial misconduct). Challenges to the “substantive unreasonableness of a

sentence—whether objected to or not at sentencing—[are] reviewed for abuse of

discretion.” United States v. Autery, 555 F.3d 864, 871 (9th Cir. 2009).

      1.     It was not plain error for the district court to allow FBI Agent Landau

to testify as an expert on the “common dynamics that occur in the operation of sex

trafficking.” Such testimony was admissible and did not amount to improper

character evidence. See United States v. Taylor, 239 F.3d 994, 997–98 (9th Cir.

2001). And even if admission of this testimony was erroneous, the error was

harmless in light of the significant evidence of Washington’s guilt. See, e.g.,

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United States v. Ogbuehi, 18 F.3d 807, 812 (9th Cir. 1994).

      2.     Nor did the district court plainly err in its instructions to the jury. The

court did omit the elements of the object offenses from its instructions on the

corresponding conspiracy counts, but Washington was also charged with—and

convicted of—the object offenses themselves. The elements of those offenses

were included in the instructions for those counts. Viewed “as a whole in the

context of the entire trial,” the jury instructions were more than adequate “to guide

the jury’s deliberation.” United States v. Moore, 109 F.3d 1456, 1465 (9th Cir.

1997) (quoting United States v. Perez, 989 F.2d 1111, 1114 (9th Cir. 1993)); see

also United States v. Alghazouli, 517 F.3d 1179, 1188–92 (9th Cir. 2008) (finding

no plain error in a conspiracy case where the elements of the object offense were

omitted from the jury instructions but were made clear to the jury in a separate

special verdict form).

      3.     The Government did not dilute the burden of proof or encourage the

jurors to convict Washington based on emotion during closing argument. On the

contrary, the Government referred to the correct, reasonable doubt standard at least

fourteen times during its closing, and its references to Washington as a mother

were not an improper emotional appeal. Moreover, even if improper, neither of

these purported transgressions—alone or in combination—“tainted the verdict and

deprived [Washington] of a fair trial.” United States v. Weatherspoon, 410 F.3d

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1142, 1151 (9th Cir. 2005) (quoting United States v. Smith, 962 F.3d 923, 935 (9th

Cir. 1992)).

      4.       Finally, having assessed the substantive reasonableness of

Washington’s sentence “in light of all the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors, including

the applicable Guidelines range,” United States v. Cantrell, 433 F.3d 1269, 1280

(9th Cir. 2006), we find no abuse of discretion in the district court’s imposition of

lifetime supervised release to follow Washington’s below-Guidelines-range 216-

month prison term.

           AFFIRMED.

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