Case o' The Week: Hoping Ninth Gets Conjunctive-itus - E.B. Grant on Drug Conspiracy Jury Instructions

 “Or” no more, urge fans of “and.”

United States v. Robert Collazo, No. 15-50509, (9th Cir. Sept. 19, 2019), Ord. granting rehearing e.b., available here.

Players: Court-ordered brief for initial en banc consideration by former Federal Defender of San Diego, Inc. AFD, John Lemon.    

Facts: Appellants in Collazo were co-conspirators convicted of drug man-mins. They also suffered guideline enhancements, based on drugs distributed by co-conspirators in prison. See United States v. Rodriguez, Appellants’ Brief for E.B. Consideration, 2019 WL 3947844 at *1. 

  Defendant Rodriguez argued at trial that he did not distribute over 100 grams of heroin: he was an addict, and explained that he consumed “copious amounts” of the drug smuggled to him in prison. Id. at *4-*5. Rodriguez argued for a jury instruction that required that the heroin attributable to him must have been both jointly undertaken in furtherance of the conspirators’ agreement and reasonably foreseeable (i.e., the “conjunctive formulation.”) Id. at *2. 

  The district court refused. 

  The district court instead instructed in the disjunctive: the amounts of drugs must have either been jointly undertaken or reasonably foreseeable. Id. Using this disjunctive instruction, the jury found Rodriguez guilty of conspiracy, and that 100 grams or more of heroin was attributable to him. Id. at *7. 

  Rodriguez was sentenced to a whopping high-end sentence of 175 months, when the court relied on the jury’s findings on the amounts of heroin attributable to him. Id. 

  After briefing on appeal and oral argument, the Ninth issued an order and asked the parties to “address the proper jury instruction under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b) for determining the drug type and quantity involved in a conspiracy offense.” Id. at *2.

 On September 19, the consolidated Collazo cases went en banc.

Issue(s): How is the Ninth going to “sort the whole mess out”? United States v. Torres, 869 F.3d 1089, 1106 (9th Cir. 2017) (Clifton, J. concurring).

Held: T.B.D.

Of Note: Judge Clifton was right in Torres: the Ninth’s law on drug conspiracy is a “mess.” 

  The most straightforward path to victory is for the Ninth to follow its own (and the Supreme Court’s) clear precedent: guidelines and statutes are supposed to be interpreted consistently. See United States v. Becerra, 992 F.3d 960, 967 (1990); see also Dorsey v. United States, 567 U.S. 260, 264 (2012).

   The Ninth got off track because old guidelines handled drug-attribution in the disjunctive. See Becerra, 992 F.3d at 966. In 1992, however, the guidelines were amended to require the conjunctive. Torres, 869 F.3d at 1097 (“[T]he Sentencing Commission . . . amended the Guidelines in 1992 and adopted a conjunctive approach.”) 

  Despite that amendment, the Ninth never corrected its own law and jury instructions – that will change (we hope) with this en banc decision.

How to Use: Object, obviously, in a drug conspiracy trial, and demand the conjunctive formulation. The current problematic disjunctive language is in the “Special Verdicts” section of Ninth Model Instruction 9.19, available here. 

   Query, moreover, what grand juries have been told, as they’ve returned federal drug conspiracy indictments? Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 6 disclosures of grand jury transcripts may be in order, for drug conspiracy cases heading for trial.

                                               

For Further Reading: The sure win is always the best defense approach: anticipate that Rodriguez will be hammering on the guideline and instruction dissonance in the argument to the en banc court.

  A more interesting argument, however, is Judge Berzon’s very thoughtful concurrence, and compelling conspiracy analysis, in Jauregui, 918 F.3d 1050, 1060 (9th Cir. 2019). Judge Berzon carefully explains how the Ninth’s mélange of conspiracy intent requirements have “muddied an already-confusing area of law.” Id. at 1063.

  For a description of Judge Berzon’s clarion call for en banc action on the Ninth’s conspiracy jurisprudence, see COTW blog entry here.  

Image of man with conflicting arrows from https://www.practiceportuguese.com/learning-notes/disjunctive-coordinating-conjunctions/

Steven Kalar, Federal Public Defender, N.D. Cal. Website at www.ndcalfpd.org.

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