Money Disorder

United States v. Garcia, No. 08-1621-cr (2d Cir. December 1, 2009) (Jacobs, Sack, Lynch, CJJ)

In Cuellar v. United States, 128 S.Ct. 1994 (2008), the Court held that, for the crime of transportation money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2)(B)(i), the government most prove more than that the money was hidden during its transportation. Rather, it must prove that the “purpose,” not merely the effect, of the transportation was to conceal or disguise the nature, location, source, ownership or control of the money. Thus, the government must prove not just how the money was moved, but why it was moved. The Second Circuit has held that this holding applies equally to “transaction” money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 956(a)(1)(B)(i), which makes it a crime to engage in certain financial transactions, including the transfer or delivery of cash, for those same purposes.

Here, the court held that, in light of these principles, Garcia’s guilty plea to transaction money laundering lacked a factual basis.

During his allocution, Garcia admitted that he “went to get some money” that he believed was dirty. But when the judge asked whether he understood that his picking up cash “was in fact part of a larger scheme to conceal or disguise the source or ownership of the funds,” he replied “no.” His counsel then proffered that Garcia agreed to pick up the money and deliver it to someone else knowing that the funds were the proceeds of illegal activity and would not be declared as income. He also proffered that Garcia concealed the funds in a cargo truck that was also carrying legitimate cargo. After confirming that Garcia knew that the packages of money were wrapped so as to conceal their contents, the district judge accepted his plea.

Although Garcia challenged the sufficiency of his plea for the first time on appeal, the circuit vacated the plea. The court first noted that Garcia's acknowledgment of his understanding of the nature of the charge was not enough. The particular charge was “[]complicated and [not] readily understandable by the average layman.” Moreover, Garcia’s allocution “demonstrated actual confusion about the critical concealment element of the offense.” Nothing in his colloquy showed his understanding “that the transaction [had to] be designed to conceal a listed attribute of the funds - or [contained] an admission that Garcia had such a purpose.”

Having found error, the court had no trouble finding plain error here: “the additional elements necessary for Rule 52(b) relief flow naturally under the present circumstances.” Although Cuellar was not decided until after the plea, whether an error is “plain” is “determined by reference to the law as of the time of the appeal,” by which time it was clearly plain. And the error affected Garcia’s substantial rights. The record presented a “reasonable probability that, had Garcia fully understood the nature of the crime he was charged with, he would not have pled guilty.”

For Your Consideration

United States v. Hardwick, No. 04-1369-cr (2d Cir. April 11, 2008) (Winter, Walker, Sotomayor, CJJ)

Glen Hardwick was convicted after a jury trial of conspiracy to commit and aiding/abetting murder-for-hire in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1958. Virtually all of the evidence of the “consideration” element of the offense came from the plea allocution of Hardwick’s brother, which was admitted into evidence over objection, although not a Confrontation Clause objection. The appellate court held that this Sixth Amendment violation was plain error, but that there was legally sufficient evidence on this element. It accordingly did not reverse the conviction; it vacated and remanded for a new trial.

Facts: Most of the action here involved Glenn Hardwick’s brother, Stacey, who had an ongoing drug and gun trafficking relationship with an undercover police officer. At one point, Stacey contacted the UC and asked him to kill someone who had pulled a gun on Glen. The UC of, course, agreed, and there followed a lot of back-and-forth about the terms of the deal. The UC, who had said that he used a gun only once when he did a hit, then would discard it, asked Stacey to supply the gun for this murder. He also asked for a second gun as “payment.” Stacey balked at this; he only wanted to give the UC one gun, although Stacey offered to sell him a second.

Eventually, the UC met with Stacey and Glen, but the brothers had brought only one gun - the one the UC was supposed to use for the job. Shortly after handing the gun over to the UC, the brothers were arrested.

Stacey pled guilty, and in his allocution admitted that there was consideration for the contemplated murder: “The payment for the intended murder was a .32 caliber pistol.” The government admitted this allocution into evidence at trial - which took place before Crawford was decided - subject to a limiting instruction that told the jury that it was free use it as evidence of Stacey’s activities, but could not infer from it that Glen was a member of the conspiracy. In its summation, the government relied on the allocution as proof of the consideration element, and during deliberations the jury had it read back.

The Confrontation Violation: On appeal, the government conceded that the admission of the allocution was error. The circuit agreed and, after a confusing and inconclusive discussion (much of which is relegated to end notes, just to make it as painful as possible) of whether ordinary plain error review or “modified” plain error review should apply, held that it was plain error under either standard.

The error was “plain” because at the time of “appellate consideration” there was an obvious Crawford violation. In addition, the admission of the allocution affected Glen’s substantial rights “because it almost surely influenced the jury’s verdict.” The evidence on the consideration element was very close, and turned entirely on Stacey’s state of mind. But the district court’s limiting instruction expressly permitted the jury to use it for that purpose, and the circuit concluded that the jury must have, in light of the government’s use of it in summation, and the readback.

The Sufficiency of the Evidence: The court went on to hold that the evidence was legally sufficient on the consideration element, however. Giving a hit man a gun as payment for his work satisfies § 1958, and Stacey’s allocution clearly indicated that this was his plan. In another confusing and inconclusive discussion of an important issue, again much of which is - maddeningly - relegated to end notes, the court went on to hold that appellate sufficiency review includes the consideration of “improperly admitted evidence.” As for those Second Circuit cases that have excluded improperly admitted evidence from sufficiency review, they did so “sub silencio,” and hence are not “binding precedent.”

Comment: This should have been the end of the story, but it is not. What follows will blow your mind. Judge Winter, writing alone - “my colleagues do not join me in the discussion” - takes it upon himself to “inform the parties of [his] views on the sufficiency issue absent the plea allocution.” His elaborate and completely unconvincing justification for this extraordinary step is - you guessed it - consigned to an end note that it itself spans two pages of text. In the opinion itself, he covers nearly four pages explaining to the government how it should retry the case, mapping out “at least one scenario [that] might reasonably be found by a jury to be sufficient to meet Section 1958's consideration requirement.”

No wonder the rest of the panel passed on this. This was a completely inappropriate thing to do. The case already has at least two prosecutors assigned to it. It does not need a third. It also seems extremely short-sighted, given the problems it is likely to cause down the road. Glen might well be retried and reconvicted, and will surely make a sufficiency argument on his second appeal. What on earth will that panel do with this part of the opinion when that happens?

“Might” Makes Right

United States v. Zhang, No. 05-6662-pr (2d Cir. October 23, 2007) (Winter, Cabranes, CJJ, Korman, DJ)

During a plea allocution, advising a defendant that he might be deported was good enough, even though ICE believed that deportation was mandatory.

Zhang, a chemist, manufactured and sold an illegal bodybuilding supplement, DNP. One of his customers died after taking Zhang’s concoction, while another was in a coma for ten days. Zhang ultimately pled guilty to one count of mail fraud. During the plea allocution, the prosecutor stated that Zhang was subject to “possible” deportation as a result of the plea. The magistrate judge echoed this, saying that the plea “could” result in his deportation. Similar equivocal statements about the possibility of deportation were made by the prosecutor and district judge at Zhang’s sentencing.

Once sentenced, however, Zhang was served a notice by ICE indicating that he faced mandatory deportation as a result of his conviction for an aggravated felony. He filed a 2255 motion that he was affirmatively misled by the prosecutor and the court about the immigration consequences of his plea, a violation of Rule 11. The district court agreed, and vacated the plea.

The circuit had a different view, and reversed the district court, at least on the particular facts presented here. Fraud offenses are only aggravated felonies if the loss to the victim(s) exceeds $10,000. At the time Zhang pled guilty it was “far from clear” that he was pleading to an aggravated felony because and the ultimate loss amount had not yet been settled. Although the plea agreement contained a larger loss amount, Zhang reserved the right to contest it. Thus, telling him that he faced
“possible” deportation was “completely accurate.”

This is a sad case. Zhang came to the United States at the age of seven after his family was granted political asylum. He has lived in the United States for more than twenty years, is married to an American citizen, and is not proficient in Chinese. The circuit has left a door open for him, however; his 2255 also argued that his attorney was ineffective. The court has remanded the case back to the district court for consideration of that claim.

Crawford's Eleven

United States v. Becker, Docket No. 06-1274-cr (2d Cir. September 13, 2007) (Calabresi, Parker, Wesley, CJJ)

At Becker’s stock fraud trial, the government introduced into evidence the plea allocutions of eleven (yes, eleven) of his co-defendants, supposedly for the “limited purpose” of establishing that the conspiracy charged in the indictment existed. The Circuit concluded that this was a Confrontation Clause violation under Crawford and, for the first time, found that such a violation was not harmless.

The court rejected the government’s claim that the district court’s limiting instructions cured the error, finding that the sheer number of allocutions and their repetitive nature suggested that the conspiracy was widespread, “making it plausible for the jury to assume that Becker was a participant simply by association with” the other conspirators, despite the instructions. In addition, the content of the allocutions was “far reaching and detailed” and significantly undermined Becker’s defense that his actions were driven by credulity and inexperience, rather than greed. The court also faulted the limiting instructions themselves, noting that they might have left jurors open to assuming that the allocutions could be considered on the issue of Becker’s intent.

Finally, the court concluded that the other evidence of Becker’s intent and membership in the conspiracy was “far from overwhelming.” Significantly, the court made clear that its finding that evidence as to these issues was legally sufficient did render an error affecting them harmless. This is an important distinction to which the Circuit has not always adhered.

Becker’s case is all the more remarkable in that arose in the context of a 2255 petition, and not a direct appeal, which means that he successfully overcame several procedural hurdles: the law of the case doctrine, since the court had, on his pre-Crawford direct appeal, rejected the Confrontation Clause claim, and a Teague problem. Fortunately for Becker, his case was not yet final (by a mere ten days) when Crawford was decided.

One note: Becker has already served his entire prison sentence and most of his term of supervised release. Let’s hope that the government does the right thing and drops the case entirely.