Court Opinion

ID: 9475695
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:35:58.768195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:52.928640
License: Public Domain

GENE CARTER, District Judge,
dissenting.
I am pleased to'concur fully in Parts I and III of the court’s opinion in this matter. I cannot, however, concur in Part II of the opinion in which the court discusses the appellant’s sufficiency of the evidence argument concerning the January 14, 1985 charge. I conclude that the evidence was indeed insufficient to convict the appellant of the charged offense on January 14, 1985.
As the majority correctly notes, evidence is sufficient if a reasonable person could fairly find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government. United States v. Gibson, 675 F.2d 825, 829 (6th Cir.1982). When the evidence is predominately circumstantial, the test is “ ‘whether the total evidence, including reasonable inferences, when put together is sufficient to warrant a jury to conclude that defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ” United States v. Mehtala, 578 F.2d 6, 10 (1st Cir.1978) (quoting Dirring v. United States, 328 F.2d 512, 515 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 377 U.S. 1003, 84 S.Ct. 1939, 12 L.Ed.2d 1052, reh’g denied, 379 U.S. 874, 85 S.Ct. 27, 13 L.Ed.2d 83 (1964)).
Although the standard to be applied is facially clear, the actual analysis of the evidence in any particular case ultimately depends upon the reviewing court’s determination of what inferences are reasonable, and therefore would support a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and what inferences represent mere conjecture or speculation, and therefore would not support a guilty verdict. I do not disagree with the facts as summarized by the majority; my disagreement flows from my analysis of these facts and what I consider to be the reasonable inferences that the jury could have drawn given the offenses charged.
Two separate indictments, representing crimes committed on two separate dates, charged appellant with the substantive offenses of knowingly or intentionally possessing controlled substances with intent to distribute, 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) (1982), and of importing controlled substances, id. § 952(a). In addition, both indictments charged appellant as an aider and abettor of those substantive offenses. 18 U.S.C. § 2 (1982). As the government apparently concedes in its brief, it has not proved the elements of either importation or possession with intent to distribute with regard to the appellant and the January 14th incident. Instead, the government relies exclusively on its proof that appellant aided and abetted in respect to the offense on that occasion.
The evidence to support the charge of aiding and abetting is totally circumstantial. The government may, of course, prove its case through the use of circumstantial evidence. If it wishes to do so, however, it must produce sufficient evidence to establish that appellant associated himself with the venture, that he partici*893pated in it as something that he wished to bring about, and that he sought by his actions to make the venture succeed. Nye & Nissen v. United States, 336 U.S. 613, 619, 69 S.Ct. 766, 769, 93 L.Ed. 919 (1949).
This court has previously held that certain patterns of behavior do not meet the above standard. For instance, “ ‘[m]ere association between the principal and those accused of aiding and abetting is not sufficient to establish guilt; nor is mere presence at the scene and knowledge that a crime was to be committed sufficient to establish aiding and abetting.’ ” Mehtala, 578 F.2d at 10 (quoting United States v. Francomano, 554 F.2d 483, 486 (1st Cir.1977) (citations omitted)). In both of the cited cases, the appellants were present on a ship later found to be carrying small, readily concealable containers of marijuana. Among the factors the court noted in overturning their convictions for aiding and abetting the importation of marijuana were the appellants’ lack of any previous acquaintance with the captain and other crew members, Francomano, 554 F.2d at 487, their lack of control over the ship or its contents, id., the lack of previous involvement in drug operations, id.; Mehtala, 578 F.2d at 10, and the absence of evidence of any affirmative action to further the venture, Mehtala, 578 F.2d at 10. Because there was a dearth of evidence outside of appellants’ presence on the ship to establish their criminal intent, these two eases may be characterized as straightforward applications of the test set forth in Nye & Nissen. Their cases rested solely on their presence with the contraband at the time the ship was seized.
This court has also identified certain patterns of behavior that are sufficient to meet the above standard. In United States v. Paone, 758 F.2d 774 (1st Cir.1985), the court upheld the appellant’s conviction for aiding and abetting the crime of possession with intent to distribute cocaine. There, the court found that the “[ajppellant was present not at only one encounter between [the principal] and undercover agents, but at several critical steps of the transaction. In light of appellant’s repeated presence at important junctures of this drug deal, it was entirely reasonable for the jury to conclude that his appearances were not coincidental....” Id. at 776. The court went on to note that that case would have been “strikingly similar to Francomano if appellant’s only contact with the transaction had been his presence in the back seat of the car when [the principal] handed over the sample cocaine.” Id. The facts of this case obviously fall somewhere between Francomano and Paone. The question to be faced is whether the circumstances of appellant’s involvement in one drug transaction on January 7th and his appearance on the dock on January 14th with the principal when no drugs were present are enough to support a finding that appellant’s presence at the dock was for the purpose of aiding and abetting the importation of drugs. I conclude that they are not.
The government has chosen to rely almost exclusively on the limited knowledge of its central witness, Ms. Castillo. It is clear from her testimony that her knowledge of both crimes extended to only those events in which she had participated. For instance, she never testified to the identity of the intended recipient of the January 14th package. There is no indication in her testimony that Mr. Mendez had ever revealed to her either the scope of his importation operations or any overall pattern of the transactions. Instead, he had told her little more than what she had needed to know to perform the requested tasks. Consequently, her testimony is a series of snapshots of discrete incidents rather than a description of a continuing enterprise. From these discrete snapshots, the jury was asked to infer a pattern of conduct from the January 7th incident. In essence, they were asked to take this inference and to infer from it that the same pattern was repeating itself on January 14th solely because the appellant appeared on the dock on that date and conversed with Mr. Mendez.
In some instances, a pattern of criminality will support a finding of guilt beyond a *894reasonable doubt. In these instances, however, the pattern must remain the same from one incident to another. See United States v. Lewis, 759 F.2d 1316, 1345-46 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 106 S.Ct. 406, 88 L.Ed.2d 357, _ U.S. _, 106 S.Ct. 407, 88 L.Ed.2d 357 (1985) (finding insufficient evidence to support charge of possession of cocaine where certain particulars of the incident differed from pattern that governed previous cocaine transactions). The similarity of portions of the pattern is insufficient to support a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Holder, 560 F.2d 953, 958 (8th Cir.1977) (use of unique packaging of the heroin sold in all three incidents would not support inference from circumstantial evidence that defendant was involved in second and third incident despite that defendant was the actual seller in the first incident).
The majority concludes that the pattern established in the January 7th incident began “all over again, starting with the giving of a large sum of money to Magda ... which the jury could interpret was to be taken to Venezuela to purchase the January 14 load.” My review of the testimony reveals no basis from which the jury could infer either that the money given to Ms. Castillo was to be used to purchase the January 14th package or that a pattern could be established from the January 7th incident. First, the link between the money and either package was never explicitly established. At no time did Ms. Castillo testify as to the purpose of the payment. It may have been an advance payment for the January 14th package. It may just as logically have been payment for the January 7th package which had just been delivered on the date the payment was received. Any conclusion regarding the purpose of this money rests, in my view, more on speculation than on inference.
Second, and most significantly, the government never adequately established a repetitive pattern. Only three aspects of the January 7th incident were repeated with respect to the January 14th incident: one, the cocaine was wrapped in Christmas paper; two, Mr. Mendez gave the package to Ms. Castillo and asked her to carry it onto the ship; and three, Mr. Mendez asked Ms. Castillo to carry the package off the ship and return it to him. All of the other aspects of each incident are unique: Ms. Castillo carried money only once; Mr. Rivera picked up cocaine only once; appellant and Mr. Mendez met at a restaurant only once; appellant and Mr. Mendez met at the dock only once. In addition, there was no testimony regarding any pattern to Mr. Mendez’s activities. The jury did not know whether he sold his goods in advance or arranged the sale after docking. It is not shown whether he sold drugs to more than one person in Puerto Rico. In fact, the only pattern that was apparent was that Mr. Mendez controlled the packages of drugs both before they were brought onto the ship and after they were returned to shore.
The keystone of the government’s case against the appellant with regard to January 14th crimes is the inference that might be drawn from the appellant’s appearance with Mr. Mendez on the dock that morning. The evidence establishes that these two had a conversation at that time. There is no evidence, however, as to the subject of this conversation; consequently, any conclusion regarding the purpose of this meeting is conjecture. For all that the evidence shows, the meeting of the parties on the dock was as likely a chance meeting as a prearranged one. They could have conversed for any purpose; one can only speculate that the purpose was importation of drugs. The meeting on the dock is sharply at variance with the circumstances of the January 7th transaction, so it cannot reasonably be said that any parallelism shows that what was happening was what happened on the prior occasion. Without some additional pieces to this puzzle, it appears to me that appellant’s actual involvement in the January 14th incident must rest on mere speculation.
Appellant in this case may have been the actual or intended purchaser of the cocaine in question. The government has, how*895ever, failed to introduce sufficient evidence to show that appellant sought, by his actions before he appeared on the dock or by being present there, to make the January 14th importation succeed. If the appellant was not present on each occasion when the crimes were committed, the government must produce sufficient evidence to implicate him as a participant in each transaction. Cf. United States v. Anderson, 654 F.2d 1264, 1270 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1127, 102 S.Ct. 978, 71 L.Ed.2d 115 (1981), 454 U.S. 1156, 102 S.Ct. 1030, 71 L.Ed.2d 314 (1982) (finding evidence sufficient to support charge of distribution of drugs even though defendant was not present on occasions when drugs were sold to undercover agents where coconspirator testified regarding defendant’s participation in each transaction). This, in my view, the government has failed to do. I would reverse appellant’s conviction on count two.