Court Opinion

ID: 9460803
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:00:44.535118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:47.496106
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                 For the Seventh Circuit
                     ____________________
No. 22-1429
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                   Plaintiff-Appellee,
                                 v.

JAMES CONEY,
                                               Defendant-Appellant.
                     ____________________

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the
                    Western District of Wisconsin.
      No. 3:19-cr-00144-jdp-1 — James D. Peterson, Chief Judge.
                     ____________________

      ARGUED APRIL 4, 2023 — DECIDED AUGUST 4, 2023
                 ____________________

   Before EASTERBROOK, WOOD, and HAMILTON, Circuit
Judges.
    HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. A jury convicted James Coney on
multiple charges of sex-traﬃcking minors. The jury reached
its verdicts after about ﬁve hours of deliberation over two
days. The evidence presented at Coney’s trial included what
the district judge described as “the compelling and memora-
ble testimony of the six minor victims.” Coney did not deny
his involvement with these girls, nor did he deny posting
2                                                    No. 22-1429

prostitution advertisements featuring them on Back-
page.com. He oﬀered instead the unusual defense that, al-
though the evidence made it look as if he had run a prostitu-
tion ring, he actually committed only violent robberies, using
the girls to lure men to hotel rooms.
    The issue on appeal arose while the jury was deliberating.
The parties and court realized that the laptop computer that
had been sent back with the jury containing the evidence for
the jury to consider had too many ﬁles on it. The court ordered
the computer removed from the jury deliberation room.
While the parties were attempting to sort out what had hap-
pened, the jury reported that it had reached a verdict. That
verdict was never examined by the court but was destroyed.
After a weekend break to ﬁgure out what had happened,
brieﬁng on the issue, a curative instruction, and more deliber-
ation time, the jury returned its verdict of guilty on all counts.
    Coney then moved for a new trial, and the district court
carefully considered the inadvertently provided evidence that
the defense highlighted as unfairly prejudicial. The court de-
nied the motion for a new trial, ﬁnding no reasonable possi-
bility that the evidence aﬀected the jury’s verdict. We aﬃrm.
I. Factual and Procedural Background
    A. Evidence Presented at Trial
   At Coney’s trial, six women testiﬁed that when they were
minors, Coney posted prostitution advertisements on the
website Backpage.com including sexually explicit photo-
graphs of them. One of these women testiﬁed that Coney
helped her post a Backpage listing but that she ultimately re-
fused to let him “take [her] to calls” because Coney would
then “tak[e] all of [her] money.” The other ﬁve women
No. 22-1429                                                   3

testiﬁed that they did have sex for money on “calls” con-
trolled by Coney. He would receive messages from potential
customers, schedule the time and place of “calls,” drive the
girls to and from the “calls,” set the rates, provide the girls
with drugs, alcohol, and condoms, and take most or all of the
money.
    In addition to the victims’ testimony, the government pre-
sented Backpage.com advertisements, hotel receipts, text
messages, Facebook posts from Coney’s account, as well as
testimony from case agents and witnesses who knew Coney
and the victims and corroborated the victims’ accounts of Co-
ney’s prostitution scheme. One of Coney’s Facebook posts
presented during trial read “I got at least ﬁve hoes cashing me
out.” One text message sent from Coney to his underage girl-
friend and sex-traﬃcking victim read “all I know is how to
get money from hos.” Another message from her to Coney
read “James u had me selling my [body and] takin [sic] all my
money.” Yet another message that Coney sent implored his
girlfriend to help get another girl to participate, not mention-
ing robberies and saying: “We got to get [her] to sell [her
body].”
   One victim testiﬁed that she began a romantic relationship
with Coney when she was sixteen and he was twenty-eight.
The jury heard about the physical and emotional abuse that
characterized the relationship and saw photographs of the
underage girl’s face covered in bruises. She testiﬁed that Co-
ney slapped, punched, kicked, and choked her, sometimes be-
cause she returned from a “call” without money. She testiﬁed
that on one occasion, Coney tied her to a chair and punched
her until blood gushed from her face. Coney would tell her
that “he was going to marry me or kill me, but [there] was no
4                                                    No. 22-1429

way I would be able to walk out of this relationship free.” The
government presented a Facebook message in which Coney
said: “On my dead kids, if I see you again, I’ll beat the dog s***
out of you.” This girl met Coney after her release from a ten-
month stay in a mental health treatment facility following her
father’s death.
    Other victims testiﬁed to similar experiences meeting Co-
ney. Another also met him shortly after her release from a
mental health treatment facility. Another met him shortly af-
ter her father had died and she had run away from home. An-
other met him while she was homeless.
    Two victims testiﬁed that, in addition to making money
from the prostitution scheme, Coney would occasionally
schedule a “call” to interrupt it and to rob the client, some-
times forcing him to hand over his debit card and ATM pin.
The victims testiﬁed that Coney pistol-whipped one man with
a fake gun and choked another until he passed out so that Co-
ney could take his money. One of the women testiﬁed that
Coney robbed a customer once. The other woman testiﬁed
that Coney robbed customers on a few occasions. Both testi-
ﬁed to far more instances of prostitution than robbery.
    Coney’s trial strategy was unusual, to say the least. He ad-
mitted that his relationship with the underage girl involved
domestic violence, but he denied that the violence related to
prostitution. He also admitted to posting the prostitution ad-
vertisements for minors on Backpage.com and scheduling
and facilitating “calls.” He claimed, however, that he always
robbed the customers rather than require the girls to engage
in sex for money. His defense was that he ran a violent rob-
bery and extortion scheme that merely masqueraded as sex-
traﬃcking, so he was not guilty of the sex-traﬃcking charges.
No. 22-1429                                                               5

    B. Mishandling of Evidence Sent to Jury for Deliberations
    The evidence at Coney’s trial included text messages and
photographs from data extractions of his Facebook account
and cell phone. The cell phone extractions totaled over 5,000
pages, with approximately 2,500 of those pages containing in-
accessible videos, audio ﬁles, and metadata. The court admit-
ted these full extractions into evidence. In addressing the
Facebook data, however, the court said that the “mass exhib-
its” would not be sent back to the jury in their entirety for de-
liberations. Only the parts actually shown to the jury during
trial were to be provided. That was the plan, at least.
    But, as they say, “mistakes were made.” The government
loaded the exhibits for the jury deliberations onto a laptop
computer that was to be connected to a larger display screen
in the deliberation room. Instead of providing the jury with
only the exhibits actually shown to the jury during trial, how-
ever, the entirety of the cell phone extraction and parts of the
Facebook extraction that were not meant to be given to the
jury for deliberations ended up on the computer given to the
jury. 1
   Jury deliberations began at 12:10 PM on a Friday. At 2:53
PM, the jury sent a note asking for the “reference numbers” to
ﬁnd certain messages between Coney and one of the victims
that the jury had seen at trial. While looking to provide the
page number references, the court and counsel discovered
that too many documents had been included on computer
given to the jury. The judge immediately ordered the

    1 We share the district judge’s frustration and dismay with the prose-

cution’s errors that led to this mistake, and with the fact that neither the
defense nor the court double checked the exhibits that the jury would see.
6                                                 No. 22-1429

computer removed from the deliberation room and sent a
note to the jury saying the court would “have a response for
you after we review the documents.” Before any further com-
munications and with the computer removed from the delib-
eration room, the jury reported that it had reached a verdict
at 4:35 PM.
    The judge told the jurors that they would need to recon-
vene on Monday to “reconsider” their deliberations with “the
proper evidence.” The court destroyed the ﬁrst verdict sheet.
The parties submitted brieﬁng over the weekend attempting
to identify the improperly provided exhibits. The defense also
moved for a new trial or a mistrial and requested an eviden-
tiary hearing on prosecutorial misconduct. On Monday morn-
ing, the district judge denied those motions and said that if
the jury found Coney guilty, the defense could ﬁle “a more
full-blown motion for a new trial and we will have a hearing
on how this happened.”
   On Monday, the district court provided the jurors with a
curative instruction:
      [S]ome of the documents provided to you had
      not been shown during the trial. As I have in-
      structed you, you must decide the case based
      only on the evidence that I have deemed to be
      appropriate for your consideration. We have
      now provided you with a corrected set of exhib-
      its. I ask you return to your deliberations and
      take a fresh look at the documentary evidence.
      You must base your verdict on the testimony
      presented at trial and the set of exhibits availa-
      ble to you now. You must disregard any
No. 22-1429                                                              7

        document that is not included in the set of ex-
        hibits available to you now.
The jury deliberated for about one more hour on that Monday
before returning verdicts of guilty on all counts: four counts
of sex-traﬃcking a minor, 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a)(1), (b)(2), & (c),
four counts of transporting a minor to engage in criminal sex-
ual activity, 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a), one count of sex-traﬃcking a
minor accomplished by force, fraud, or coercion, 18 U.S.C.
§ 1591(a)(1), (b)(1), & (c), and one count of attempting to sex-
traﬃc a minor, 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a)(1), (b)(2), (c), & 18 U.S.C.
§ 1594(a). The district court sentenced Coney to 330 months in
prison (27.5 years) on each count to run concurrently, fol-
lowed by 25 years of supervised release on each count, also to
run concurrently.
    C. Motion for New Trial
    The district court later held an evidentiary hearing on
whether any prosecutorial misconduct occurred. The court
concluded that the improper evidence was given to the jury
inadvertently. 2 Chief Judge Peterson carefully reviewed each
speciﬁc piece of evidence highlighted by the defense as poten-
tially prejudicial among the thousands of pages inadvertently
placed on the computer that was given to the jury. The court
examined this evidence in “the context of other evidence pre-
sented” and walked through each category of evidence that
the defense identiﬁed as unfairly prejudicial. The court found

    2 Our phrase “improper evidence” summarizes a more nuanced situ-

ation. Everything sent to the jury on the computer had been formally ad-
mitted into evidence, but over objections that the district court overruled
on the condition that only matters actually presented to the jury during
trial would be made available during deliberations.
8                                                   No. 22-1429

no reasonable possibility that the improper material aﬀected
the verdict. The court reached this conclusion “in light of the
compelling testimony of the six victims, much of which was
corroborated by defendant’s own words, taken from the
phone and social media messages properly provided to the
jury.”
II. Analysis
    The parties dispute the proper standard of review. We ad-
dress that disagreement and then proceed to review the dis-
trict court’s holding.
    A. The Remmer Presumption Does Not Apply
    The defense argues that the district court erred in not pre-
suming that Coney was prejudiced by the evidence that was
inadvertently included on the laptop computer for jury delib-
erations. The Supreme Court held in Remmer v. United States
that in criminal cases, “any private communication, contact,
or tampering, directly or indirectly, with a juror during a trial
about the matter pending before the jury is, for obvious rea-
sons, deemed presumptively prejudicial.” 347 U.S. 227, 229
(1954). In Remmer, the Supreme Court ordered an evidentiary
hearing after an unknown person contacted the jury foreman
and said he could proﬁt by returning a verdict favorable to
the defendant. The Remmer presumption of prejudice is not
conclusive. Id.
    The Supreme Court later applied this presumption of
prejudice where a bailiﬀ told two jurors that a defendant was
guilty and that if the jury did not return a guilty verdict, the
Supreme Court would correct their error. Parker v. Gladden,
385 U.S. 363, 365 (1966). This court has applied the Remmer
presumption of prejudice where the child of a juror who was
No. 22-1429                                                      9

incarcerated with the defendant told the juror the defendant
was guilty, Hall v. Zenk, 692 F.3d 793, 795, 804 (7th Cir. 2012),
and where a juror found the word “guilty” written in her trial
notebook by an unknown person, United States v. Vasquez-
Ruiz, 502 F.3d 700, 701, 707 (7th Cir. 2007).
    We have not applied the presumption of prejudice from
Remmer in cases where two hundred transcripts that were ad-
mitted into evidence but not used at trial were sent to the jury
in error, United States v. Magana, 118 F.3d 1173, 1181–83 (7th
Cir. 1997), or where binders produced by the government
highlighting its theory of the case and its best exhibits reached
the jury in error, United States v. Best, 939 F.2d 425, 427–29 (7th
Cir. 1991) (en banc). In Coney’s case, we similarly conclude
that the Remmer presumption of prejudice does not apply. All
of the materials that were improperly sent to the jury were
admitted into evidence. Nothing outside the record reached
the jury, and no person communicated with a juror in an at-
tempt to inﬂuence the outcome of the trial. There is also no
evidence the jurors actually viewed any of the material the
defense claimed was unfairly prejudicial.
   B. Standard of Review
    The district court applied the proper standard in review-
ing Coney’s motion for a new trial. A “new trial is not auto-
matically required whenever a jury is exposed to material not
properly in evidence.” United States v. Sababu, 891 F.2d 1308,
1333 (7th Cir. 1989). The question for the district court was
whether there was a “reasonable possibility” that the im-
proper material aﬀected the verdict. Id., quoting United States
v. Bruscino, 687 F.2d 938, 940 (7th Cir. 1982). This is a fact-in-
tensive inquiry, see id., and the primary responsibility for de-
ciding whether this prejudice occurred lies with the district
10                                                   No. 22-1429

judge, who “will always be in a better position than the appel-
late judges to assess the probable reactions of jurors.”
Bruscino, 687 F.2d at 941. We will not reverse “unless we have
a very strong conviction of error.” Id.; see also United States v.
Berry, 92 F.3d 597, 602 (7th Cir. 1996) (“These are relatively
unique facts and ones that do not necessarily give the impres-
sion of unfair prejudice. However, our deferential review
leads us to the conclusion that, in light of the record, the dis-
trict court did not abuse its discretion in granting the motion
for a new trial.”). Whether the court grants or denies a new
trial, we ask whether “any reasonable person could agree
with the district court” and aﬃrm if so. Best, 939 F.2d at 429,
quoting Graefenhain v. Pabst Brewing Co., 870 F.2d 1198, 1201
(7th Cir. 1989).
     C. The District Court Did Not Abuse Its Discretion
    Several factors persuade us there was no abuse of discre-
tion here. First, as the district court noted, there was over-
whelming evidence of Coney’s guilt. See United States v.
Paneras, 222 F.3d 406, 411 (7th Cir. 2000) (overwhelming evi-
dence of guilt was “a factor which militates against” ﬁnding
that a new trial was needed after jury saw arguably prejudi-
cial information). A total of six women provided consistent
testimony that Coney traﬃcked or attempted to traﬃc them
while they were minors. The defense tried to impeach their
credibility through cross-examination, but the district judge
called their testimony “vivid” and “compelling,” and the jury
seems to have agreed. Plus, to agree with Coney’s defense the-
ory that he engaged “only” in violent robberies would have
required jurors to believe the victims’ testimony about a few
robberies yet not believe those same victims’ testimony that
No. 22-1429                                                  11

far more encounters with customers involved actual prostitu-
tion.
    In addition to the victim testimony, text messages written
by Coney discussed facilitating prostitution without mention
of robbery. For instance, Coney messaged his underage girl-
friend (who testiﬁed that she engaged in prostitution con-
trolled by him) urging her to get another girl “to sell [her
body]” and become involved in the prostitution scheme. In
another message, Coney said “I got at least ﬁve hoes cashing
me out,” matching the number of victims who testiﬁed that
he pimped them. Coney did not introduce any messages or
evidence corroborating his claim that he always robbed those
who responded to the Backpage.com advertisements rather
than allow the agreed-upon prostitution to take place. His de-
fense was to ask the jury to believe, based on impeachment of
the victim witnesses, that they were lying—but only in part—
and that, despite the appearance of his conduct, his minor vic-
tims never actually exchanged sex for money.
    Second, it was not an abuse of discretion for the district
court to ﬁnd no reasonable possibility that the evidence at is-
sue aﬀected the jury’s verdict given how few messages and
photographs were identiﬁed by defense counsel as even pos-
sibly prejudicial. Those few messages and photographs were
contained among a massive number of pages given to the jury
for a short period of time. The jury spent less than three hours
deliberating before the judge ordered the laptop computer re-
moved from the jury room. Of the over 5,000 pages of material
incorrectly provided to the jury, about half of those pages con-
tained metadata and unreadable content. The defense brieﬁng
submitted over the weekend after the error was discovered
noted that “considering the volume of the materials” and
12                                                            No. 22-1429

quick brieﬁng turn around, “Coney does not have enough
time to go through all of the unfair prejudice” that could exist
in the documents. Likewise, with a maximum of three hours
in the room with the evidence on one laptop computer, it
would not have been feasible for jurors to see, let alone ab-
sorb, more than a fraction of the messages and photographs.
The ﬁnal number of messages and photographs identiﬁed by
the defense as unfairly prejudicial was also low, as discussed
next. 3
    The third reason we are comfortable aﬃrming the denial
of a new trial is that the court carefully analyzed each cate-
gory of challenged evidence and explained why the evidence
would be unlikely to have swayed a juror in this case. Defense
counsel found four photographs containing guns. Of those
four, one of Coney holding a gun with his arm around his un-
derage girlfriend was properly shown to the jury during trial.
The district court found little risk of prejudice from the other
three photographs because evidence properly shown to the

     3 As we noted during oral argument, it would have been helpful to

know which digital documents the jurors opened and viewed during de-
liberations. While Rule of Evidence 606(b) prohibits the court from ques-
tioning jurors about “the effect of anything on that juror’s or another ju-
ror’s vote,” the rule explicitly allows for questioning jurors about
“whether … extraneous prejudicial information was improperly brought
to the jury’s attention.” Fed. R. Evid. 606(b)(1) & (b)(2)(A). Rule 606 would
not have barred an inquiry into which files the jury opened and which
pages they viewed during deliberations. This line of inquiry might have
revealed that there was no possibility that the jury saw the challenged ev-
idence or focused attention on particular items of problematic evidence.
See Haugh v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 949 F.2d 914, 917 (7th Cir. 1991)
(explaining that under Rule 606(b), judge could ask limited questions to
learn whether alleged outside communication was made and what its con-
tents were).
No. 22-1429                                                  13

jury indicated that Coney had held a gun and was generally
“armed and violent.”
    Similarly, the defense identiﬁed ﬁve text messages—
among the thousands of pages of evidence—in which Coney
threatened violence. Some of those messages were threaten-
ing his underage girlfriend, who testiﬁed at trial about how
he had beaten her. In fact, the prosecution showed the jury a
photograph of her injured face. Coney did not deny any of
this violence. He argued instead that although he committed
domestic violence against this girl, it was unrelated to the al-
leged prostitution. None of the identiﬁed messages said any-
thing about prostitution. While these messages should not
have ended up in the jury’s hands, the district court reasona-
bly concluded that they would not have aﬀected the verdict
even if the jurors had seen them.
     The district court also concluded that the twenty-two sug-
gestive photographs of young women of unknown ages on
Coney’s phone were unlikely to aﬀect the jury’s perception of
Coney’s guilt. The jury had properly seen the Backpage.com
listings that Coney admitted he had created using explicit
photographs of girls who he knew were underage. Similarly,
the browser history on Coney’s phone showing views of por-
nography was “simply too minor” to have aﬀected a verdict
in a trial where ﬁve victims testiﬁed that Coney traﬃcked
them for sex while they were minors, and where Coney him-
self admitted to using those girls and explicit Backpage.com
postings of them as bait to rob purported prostitution clients.
   Next, the judge concluded that the one text message that
the defense argued referred to drugs and possible drug deal-
ing was not suﬃciently prejudicial to merit a new trial. The
jury had already heard “ample evidence at trial that Coney
14                                                No. 22-1429

and the victims smoked a lot of marijuana.” The judge also
considered several improperly shared messages suggesting
that Coney and his underage girlfriend were HIV-positive.
The jury had already heard testimony and seen proper evi-
dence at trial indicating that Coney had lied to his underage
girlfriend and others saying that she had transmitted HIV to
him. The court found the related messages unlikely to have
aﬀected deliberations.
    The defense also identiﬁed two text messages among the
thousands of pages of phone data from Coney’s underage
girlfriend saying that he showed her “how to sell” herself. The
court did not ﬁnd these messages likely to aﬀect the jury’s
verdict given the far more extensive testimony (including
from this girlfriend) and evidence of sex-traﬃcking presented
throughout the trial.
     These assessments of the evidence by the district court
were eminently reasonable. They were certainly not outside
the bounds of the district court’s sound discretion based on
its familiarity with the trial. Of the evidence improperly pro-
vided to the jury, nothing stood out individually or cumula-
tively as providing the jury with damaging information about
Coney that the jury did not already learn during the trial. The
items that the defense highlighted as most prejudicial were
few and far between in a sea of thousands of documents. It is
unlikely the jurors had time to view this evidence and, even if
they did, it was largely in line with conduct Coney had admit-
ted at trial.
    Given the deference owed to the district court, the over-
whelming evidence of guilt, and the low likelihood that the
jurors actually saw the challenged messages and photographs
in the mass exhibits improperly provided to them for a few
No. 22-1429                                              15

hours, the district court did not err in denying Coney’s mo-
tion for a new trial. The judgment of the district court is
                                               AFFIRMED.